What is infopath

If administrator approval is required, the Publishing Wizard guides you through the steps of preparing the form template for hand-off to an administrator.

After a browser-compatible form template is browser-enabled, users can use their browser to fill out forms that are based on that form template. The user experience of filling out a form in a browser is nearly identical to that of filling out a form in InfoPath. For example, controls such as repeating sections and features such as formulas and conditional formatting work the same way in both environments. Although filling out a form in a browser is like filling out a form in InfoPath, there is one key difference.

In a Web browser, the InfoPath menus and toolbars are replaced by a toolbar across the top of the form, which displays options for saving, closing, printing, and updating the form. This bar also appears at the bottom of a form, so that users don't have to scroll back to the top of a long form to complete their form.

If you enable the submit options for your form template, users also see a Submit button on the toolbar. When they click this button, the form data is submitted directly to the data source that you specified when designing the form template, such as a Web service or SharePoint list. If your form template has more than one view, users will also see a View list on the toolbar. Users submit data to external data sources by clicking a Submit button on the toolbar.

Users switch between views by clicking an item in the View list on the toolbar. When you design your form template, you can customize the toolbar settings in the Form Options dialog box. For example, you can remove one or more buttons or hide the toolbar at the bottom of the user's form.

In the following sections, you will learn more about the benefits of using InfoPath Forms Services. When you publish a form template to a server running InfoPath Forms Services, you can distribute it not just on your corporate intranet, but also on external Web sites, such as extranet sites or corporate Web sites. This allows you to collect data from customers, partners, suppliers, and others who are vital to the success of your business.

For example, a large insurance company can use a single browser-enabled form template to collect and process insurance claims. An insurance customer can use a browser to fill out the claim form on the company's Web site. Alternatively, if the customer calls the insurance company to report the claim, an insurance agent can use InfoPath to fill out the same claim form on an intranet site. Similarly, a government agency can collect data from citizens by posting browser-enabled form templates on its Web site.

When users access the form, either by navigating to a library or by entering a URL for the form in their browser, one of two things can happen:. The form opens in a browser If users don't have InfoPath installed on their computer, the form opens in a browser, where they can fill it out just as they would any other Web-based form. The form opens in InfoPath If users have InfoPath installed on their computer, the form opens in InfoPath, where they can fill it out just as they would any other InfoPath form.

Because they are filling out the form in InfoPath, these users will have the added benefit of being able to use the full range of InfoPath features for filling out forms, some of which are not available in browser forms.

Note: It you prefer, you can customize the settings for your form template so that it always opens in a browser, even if users have InfoPath installed on their computer.

This can be useful when you want the experience of filling out a form to be identical for everyone, or when you don't want the form to be opened in InfoPath, because you want to discourage users from opening or modifying the underlying form template in design mode.

You are still using InfoPath! This is where I point out that my awesome friends are not necessarily endorsing the content of this blog as they sent me the videos before I wrote it and they are in no way representing their respective companies in the video.

They did it because they are amazing and because they do want to urge you to not use InfoPath. By this point, it should be obvious to you that the general consensus is that you need to give up InfoPath and there are many reasons why. In fact, they have since extended the deadline to get off of InfoPath to July 14 th , There is no roadmap! There will be no new updates to InfoPath, there is no future out there where your InfoPath form will be supported after They are giving us plenty of runway here to get off of InfoPath, that does NOT mean you are fine to keep creating new forms until !

So, if InfoPath is supported until , why should you necessarily stop creating forms in InfoPath today? Well, for one thing, you are creating a huge amount of technical debt. Think of all the human hours that it is going to take. We are still helping customers migrate off of SharePoint for crying out loud! Blog Corporate Training Become an Instructor. All courses.

Blog What is InfoPath? Related Blogs. Microsoft InfoPath helps you to design rich form solutions, even if you are a new InfoPath user. Automation and simplified workflow helps you more quickly and easily start to build simple forms.

Form template: The blueprint for a form, which you create in InfoPath Designer. Many forms that are unrelated in content can be created with the same form template.

The form template defines the look-and-feel and functionality of a form. Then users can open InfoPath Filler to fill out forms based on the form templates you created. In fact, InfoPath provides a lot of the same features as Word e. The main difference is that when users are filling out an InfoPath form, they are actually editing XML data.

In fact, its usefulness as a data-gathering and management tool is one of the most powerful aspects of InfoPath. Also, because the InfoPath form templates you create can be based on industry-standard XML Schemas and integrated with Web services, data stored in InfoPath forms can be integrated with existing processes in your organization and across other organizations.

Let's look at an example. Say that you run a sales organization. You have an existing database that contains customer and sales data. Your sales manager wants you to create two different forms—one for salespeople to input customer information and another for them to input sales data. Before InfoPath, there were many ways to create these forms.

However, since the data comes from a back-end database, all of these methods involved writing some code. And you would typically have to duplicate this code from one form to the next. With InfoPath, creating these forms is much easier. InfoPath allows you to create form templates that connect to existing databases or Web services, thus removing the need to write code to access the data.

This part is done for you. InfoPath also allows you to easily merge the data gathered in these forms so that you can create aggregate reports for upper management. Again, InfoPath enables you to do this without writing any code at all, unlike other form tools. InfoPath includes an extensive OM, so it's highly customizable. Using InfoPath, you can enable almost any data collection scenario you can dream up. The scenarios can be extended by combining InfoPath with SharePoint workflows to rapidly develop applications to automate business processes in the enterprise.

Deeper integration with SharePoint is a key development point in the latest release, which makes it easier to link your data collection forms to the processes they drive. As your business needs change, so should your software. InfoPath is designed to cater to these ever-changing data collection needs.

A few of the greater benefits of XML include the following:. InfoPath seamlessly incorporates each of these technologies into the experience of designing and filling out forms. For example, thanks to XSLT, one of the most important benefits of using InfoPath is the ability to separate data from how it is displayed. With the drag-and-drop UI of the InfoPath Designer, you can completely change the look-and-feel of a form without changing the underlying data that is saved when a user fills it out.

Another advantage is being able to merge data from multiple forms. This is especially useful when creating a report, for example. As we mentioned, InfoPath offers a plethora of built-in features geared toward collecting data that would require custom code in other form design tools. With InfoPath, for example, you can use data validation and conditional formatting to ensure that users enter valid data before the form is submitted to your back-end databases or Web services.

You can also design your forms to collect only the data you need. Traditional forms include many parts that don't apply to everyone. For example, employment applications often contain sections relevant only to people with college degrees.