The Power of InfoPath

I’ve read a lot of articles about InfoPath over the past few months and took a few minutes to play around with it myself, but to be honest it never clicked as to why it was truly needed given that we had ASP.NET Web Forms and .NET WinForms.  I even created my own FormBuilder.NET application to simplify creating basic ASP.NET forms and integrating them with databases (it’s all browser based).  My original take was that it was simply a way to generate basic forms and I wasn’t thrilled about the fact that you had to install InfoPath (clients have to install it as well) in order to fill out the forms.  Well, my initial impressions about InfoPath were wrong!

I’ve been asked to research InfoPath for a project that is fairly intensive as far as forms go.  Since I’ve had more time to explore it’s capabilities I’ve actually been very impressed with the ease with which forms based upon databases, Web Services, XML files, etc. can be created.  The built-in rules and validation engine makes it a snap to automatically ensure specific fields/controls are validated properly before data is submitted.  All of this can be done 100% visually in an extremely easy to use GUI.  Of course that means that deployment is easy since you don’t have to worry about re-compiling (deployment is built right into InfoPath).  People with absolutely no design or graphics skills can even create nice looking forms by taking advantage of built-in color schemes.

Since Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) includes InfoPath integration there’s another great “win” for me since forms can be aggregated into document libraries, secured as desired, and even searched.  I’m psyched about the different ways it’s going to make my life (and my team’s life) much easier.  If you’re interested in more on InfoPath check out the free online Webinar at http://msevents.microsoft.com/cui/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032259532&Culture=en-US.

After reading back through the text this blog comes across somewhat as marketing crap…sorry about that as it wasn’t my intention.  I just like what I’ve seen so far….if I hit any brick-walls I’ll report them.

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4 Comments

  • Don't know about you but I prefer IE/ASP.NET.

    InfoPath is simply extension of IE based on "behaviors" functionality available for a long time now+form's designer.And how about server validation logic-mandatory for any serious project.And...any web page can be searched and secured using numerous ways.

    If you need strong XML functionality on client side try msxml4/5/6-all you ever need I suppose;-)

  • While in many cases ASP.NET Web Forms may be the way to go, for internal applications I'd actually disagree given what you can do in InfoPath. I'm in a situation where InfoPath is free to everyone in the company (Enterprise agreement...so "free" isn't actually a true statement I guess) so giving end users the ability to create forms or having dev teams create complex rules-based forms within hours rather than days is quite attractive. It's all about productivity and the ability to maintain/update the forms without re-compiling and touching programming code.



    Again....that's not to say we'll never use ASP.NET (we currently use that technology for everything we do). I'm just saying that in many internal situations InfoPath can be more productive. InfoPath is much more than simply IE behaviors. You have to try it out though to realize what it can really do.

  • I tried it earlier;-)I know about behaviors from my own experience as you can suppose.But as designer surface for internal users we're using word/excel+html export-what's all;-)

  • Don't forget BizTalk! I think there's a tremendous resonance when you put Sharepoint, InfoPath, and BizTalk together in a solution.



    Sharepoint and Infopath then become the human workflow interface to large BizTalk orchestrations, with Infopath acting as the data entry mechansiam and Sharepoint providing a buffer visible to both man and machine. Pretty cool, I think.

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