Prerequisites
Tenant App Catalog
Before creating the first solution, ensure there is a global app catalog available in the SharePoint
Admin Center. It’s available under More Features > Apps.
Administrator access
To create a Solution with Lightning Tools Forms Studio, you will need to have administrator access to the SharePoint site to which you wish to deploy your solution.
Enable scripting
Scripting must be enabled on the SharePoint site to which you wish to deploy your solution. Scripting can be enabled during the Solution creation process as shown in the walkthrough below, but only by a Global Administrator. If you are not a Global Admin, ask the admin to use the following SharePoint Online PowerShell command to enable scripting on your site:
Set-SPOsite "https://YourTenantName.sharepoint.com/sites/YourSiteName" -DenyAddAndCustomizePages 0
Register for Lightning Tools Forms Studio
You also need to have registered for Lightning Tools Forms Studio, so that you can go to formsstudio.lightningtools.com
You may wish to bookmark formsstudio.lightningtools.com in your browser so that you can easily return to the Lightning Tools Forms Studio dashboard.
Walkthrough
To begin creating a new Solution in Lightning Tools Forms Studio, click New Solution under the My Solutions tab.
Next, choose whether to Start from scratch, or Start from template (if your organization has created any templates).
This article will show how to create a new Solution from scratch, using an Employee Onboarding example similar to the one shown in our November 2024 webinar.
Select Start from scratch, name your Solution, and paste in the URL of an existing (or newly created) SharePoint Online site where this solution will be created. This site could be a Team Site, a Communication Site, or it could be created with a site template such as Microsoft's Employee Onboarding Team template. Your name should be filled in as the SharePoint User, but you might need to click Add other user to grant your account permissions the first time.
NOTE: If this is the first time a Forms Studio solution has been built on this tenant, you will see a message just below the site URL field, that Forms Studio must be approved by a tenant administrator. If you are a Global Admin in your tenant, you can click Approve this Tenant. (If you are not, you can copy that link and provide it to a Global Admin.) You will then see a dialog (as below) stating the permissions which will be granted to Lightning Tools Forms Studio. Please see Lightning Tools — Lightning Tools Forms Studio Architecture for more information about this.
After this has been done (if needed), tick the box to agree to the license agreement, and then click Start. You'll see a message that your Solution is being created.
You might see a message that the Solution can't be created because scripting isn't enabled on this site (see the Prerequisite above). If so, click Enable Scripting. If you are not an Admin, this will need to be done separately by someone with the ability to enable scripting on this site.
The Solution creation process will continue, and after a few moments, you'll be taken to the Build tab of your new Solution within Lightning Tools Forms Studio.
The next step is to add a Dossier: Lightning Tools — Forms Studio Dossiers
However, if you're not ready to completely create a Solution at this time, you can always come back to it by going to formsstudio.lightningtools.com, and clicking to Edit the solution.
