SharePoint Forms & InfoPath Go with what you know

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1 SharePoint Forms & InfoPath Go with what you know January 2015 Colin Phillips :: SharePoint MVP :: itgroove

2 Who I am: Colin Phillips My Background 16+ Years in Technology Today: SharePoint Consultant and MVP (with itgroove) Previously: 12 Years Developing Software, IT Infrastructure Projects, Workflows, and Many Other Related Topics B.Sc. in Computer Science from UVic My Socialness Blog: mmman.itgroove.net / Where to learn more cphillips@itgroove.net

3 InfoPath!? Are You Crazy? It s 2015! The Good, The Bad, The Ugly Seriously? InfoPath is dead, how can you be recommending it? Why isn t this presentation about how we should use another forms product instead? What s wrong with out of the box SharePoint column settings and calculated columns? Why shouldn t we just customize the out of the box SharePoint forms? Developers Rule! Surely there s some free JavaScript / jquery solution that can do the same thing

4 InfoPath is Dead Well, it is, isn t it? (Insert smirk here) Anyone who says this is simply not facing the facts. InfoPath does a lot of things, and it does them very well, even if it s a product that has a limited shelf life (depending on how you look at it). Quote: Glen Furnas at sharepoint-community.net: "Simply put, InfoPath is a multi-purpose product that s been put to use in a wide variety of ways, and no single alternative will ever replace it in all its roles. Ask around and see how many people are still using Windows XP. Now ask those same people about running XP this time last year, two years ago, even three upgrades happen slowly, and typically only when motivated.

5 So Let s All Calm Down and Think About This Rationally InfoPath is still a product in the current Office product suite (as of Jan 2015) A deprecated product is not a product that is EOL today, in fact, to quote the Office Team, InfoPath 2013 desktop client and InfoPath Forms Services for SharePoint Server 2013 will continue to be supported through 2023 There is no Microsoft offering yet released (even in beta even alpha!) that is designed in whole or in part to replace any portion of what InfoPath does Microsoft is aware there are literally millions of InfoPath forms in widespread use. They ll come up with a plan to handle migration in some form. Right?? Q.E.D InfoPath is not going away anytime soon

6 The Potential Future of Forms in the Microsoft World Microsoft Slide from SPC 2014

7 A Quick Look at FoSL (Yeah can we hire a new naming guy?) Is it / was it released? No ish. A question appears in the forums with this pic: Looking further at the roadmap is amusing Under In development Forms on SharePoint Lists This feature will allow for in-browser list form customization on top of SharePoint lists and will allow for in-browser list item editing without having to go to a different view as well as adding and rearranging list columns in the custom view. Apparently it was briefly released in Office 365 developer environments like a day or two? The More Info link takes you to a completely unrelated page with no mention of FoSL (not even the word form ) More on FoSL:

8 So Then, Why Not Another (3 rd Party) Forms Product? First reason To paraphrase The Simpsons; o Trying to get any of our customers to seriously consider a 3 rd party option has proven very difficult (regardless of the ROI) o Why pay for some third party product when you already have a powerful tool at your disposal? (Hint: InfoPath) o Thus far, only InfoPath has all the power on premise as well as online. Third party Office 365 solutions leave somewhat The finger thing means the money! to be desired (often much more than somewhat).

9 What Are Some 3 rd Party Options? A reasonably complete list of options Product Available on Premises (2013) Available in Office 365 Nintex Forms Yes Yes Formotus Forms Yes, but not direct integration with SharePoint Yes, but not direct integration K2 SmartForms Yes Yes when combined with Workflow? KWizCom Yes No SPForm Yes Yes (different name & functionality) PDF ShareForms Yes No Forms7 Yes (in version ) No Dell Quick Apps Um yes? Their website was really unclear No 5 Alternatives to InfoPath for SharePoint forms (from ShareGate):

10 Why Not Just Use the Out of the Box SharePoint Columns / Forms Hello? Anyone? When talking seriously about what SharePoint can do with just modifying the column settings, you start to run out of options fairly quickly. Yes, mostly all the column types you could want are there, but the logic rules you can apply to the columns is severely limited There s no concept of views Depending on your column choices early on, this can adversely affect downstream behaviours (things like Business Intelligence) these can be mitigated with form tools; like InfoPath

11 Why Not Just Customize the Out of the Box SharePoint Forms? It s Just ASP.net. First off if you have a developer on staff that has the skills to customize these great, this is a possible option. Almost none of our customers (regardless of size) have this option. Two of the major downsides of customizing out of the box SharePoint forms are maintainability and upgradability. If you re afraid of the upgradability future of InfoPath forms, don t kid yourself, ASP.net forms aren t going to be any easier to upgrade. Additionally, MS will most likely provide an upgrade path for InfoPath forms you re on your own with custom built forms.

12 What About Some Free JavaScript / jquery Solution? Good luck with that! Remember that thing in v ? A free solution is never a free ($0) solution What happens when your developer leaves will new changes ever be possible? Finding new talent (hiring that same skill set) to take over a role can be difficult and/or expensive Developing your own talent can be time consuming and just as expensive, and then what do you do when they leave? You can always farm it out to an overseas agency and end up with something that doesn t do anything that resembles your needs Above: From a presentation on implementing an open source solution at the College of Charleston

13 Ok, Ok, So Why InfoPath? At its most basic, InfoPath can be used: To create custom stand alone forms. The XML format is easy for developers to work with. To create custom forms for SharePoint lists. These forms save their data back into SharePoint as a list item with the data saved as the items columns. To create custom forms in SharePoint libraries. These forms save their data as a file in a SharePoint library. Data can be moved in / out of the forms by promoting columns. To create workflow forms in both SharePoint Designer and Visual Studio workflows.

14 Reasons to Use InfoPath Rich editor to create a form that can look like anything you want. Rules based business logic to hide, show, format and validate fields. External connectivity to offer dropdown lists populated from SharePoint lists, SQL server and many other sources. While a forms designer needs a licensed copy of InfoPath, the end user only needs a web browser. Users do not need any InfoPath product or version if the forms are hosted in the Enterprise Edition of SharePoint 2007, 2010 or No knowledge of JavaScript, jquery, XML, HTML or CSS needed to create custom forms and custom validation. Multiple views of data. Example: A user might see 50 fields when filling out the form. The approvers might see a 10 field summary and after approval or rejection the user might only see 2 fields and a comments field. Optional bidirectional data (edit a property in the InfoPath form and it updates in the library metadata, edit library metadata and it updates in the InfoPath form - great for workflows!) From:

15 But (There s Always a But) The Future is Rather Muddy InfoPath vs Forms Services InfoPath is supported until 2023 but there is no such policy in place for Forms Services On Premises SharePoint vnext will likely drop support for Forms Services How will users / enterprises obtain InfoPath in the future? InfoPath won t be in Office vnext, so how do you maintain older forms? Office subscription models are changing and phasing it out Becoming a standalone (discontinued) product? InfoPath 2013 Dec 2014 Hotfix: Users can submit data to messages when they install InfoPath 2013 side by side with future versions of Microsoft Office Will it become free like Money and Flight Simulator Turbulent times ahead, but InfoPath forms will live on for a long time, regardless

16 A Few Keys to Success With Any Form You Create Don t take on a form you know you can t create Learn what the tool is capable of first & apply that in practice Don t be afraid to say I don t know Try stuff out in a safe area (sandbox) before committing to a yes or no InfoPath isn t going to solve world hunger *anymore*, don t think it s capable of anything or everything Understand what your customer wants and draw it out in a very simple format you can both agree to it s a lot easier to change paper than what s on screen Colour, graphics, sexy fonts, flare that s&%t can go a long way

17 Summary InfoPath isn t going to be easy to replace and the motivation to go back and change old forms will follow the arc of a slow moving train InfoPath is still a great product. It does a lot of things really well. It will remain a viable option for the foreseeable future Until we start to see more out of the folks over at Microsoft regarding the future of forms (life after InfoPath), my advice is to continue using InfoPath as it s still an awesome tool, and it accomplishes a great deal of tasks all in a single package

18 Questions? Contact Info Colin Phillips blog: mmman.itgroove.net