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SPF is available three ways: as an API you build your own interface on, as a Hosted employee-facing UI that Symmetry runs, or On-Premise, where that same UI runs inside your infrastructure. All three determine the same forms, ask the same questions, and produce the same PDFs and tax parameters. The choice comes down to who builds the employee experience and where the application runs.

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The API

You call SPF’s endpoints and build the employee-facing interface yourself. SPF tells you which forms apply, hands you one question set at a time, and returns the completed PDF and tax parameters when you submit the answers. This gives you complete control over look, feel, and flow: the employee never leaves your product, and the forms experience can be indistinguishable from the rest of your onboarding. It’s also the most work. You’re responsible for rendering every question type SPF can return, honoring required conditions and validation patterns, displaying jurisdiction-required notes and images, and following the navigation graph correctly. Core concepts covers what you’re taking on. Choose it when you have front-end engineering capacity and the forms experience needs to be fully yours.

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Hosted

Symmetry runs the UI at spf.symmetry.com. There’s nothing to install or deploy. A session starts from an SPF Registration describing the employee and your settings, and you don’t have to assemble that yourself: SPF’s helper pages can collect the employee’s details and build the registration for you. From there, either embed the session in an iframe or redirect the employee’s browser to it. Completed forms come back to a URL you specify. Symmetry handles server uptime, form compliance, and UI rendering. You get form updates the moment they’re released, with no action on your part. Customization is available through CSS (supply your own stylesheets to match your branding) along with account settings and per-session overrides that control behavior. Choose it when you want to go live quickly without building a forms interface.

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On-Premise

The same application as Hosted, delivered as a Java web application (spf.war) that you deploy in your own servlet container. Employee data never leaves your infrastructure. The tradeoff is that updates become your responsibility. Symmetry publishes new releases with current forms; you decide when to deploy them. That’s the point: you control the rollout schedule. But a jurisdiction’s form change doesn’t reach your employees until you update. Releases are cumulative, so you won’t miss anything by skipping one. Choose it when regulatory, security, or data residency requirements mean forms processing has to stay inside your own network.

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At a glance

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Hosted and On-Premise are the same product

Hosted and On-Premise share the same interface, the same configuration schema, and the same form modes. Because of that, most of what you build against one carries over to the other, and moving between them is a deployment change rather than a rewrite. The API is a genuinely different integration. It’s worth deciding between “build it yourself” and “use Symmetry’s UI” before you decide where that UI runs.
Hosted and on-premise clients can prototype a full session (settings, registration, and a real postback response) with Settings Builder, before writing any application code.

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Next steps

API quickstart

Build against the SPF endpoints.

Hosted quickstart

Submit your first SPF Registration.

On-premise quickstart

Deploy and verify a live installation.

Platform and browser support

Requirements for each implementation type.

Licensing

Credentials and authentication per implementation.