Introducing InfoPath 2010

InfoPath is a product in the Microsoft Office family that enables you to quickly and easily create electronic forms. InfoPath has become one of the most popular Microsoft products in the last few years due to its ease of use in designing and filling the electronic forms. With every version InfoPath has become more advanced with many features from simple form creation and validation to handling complex business logic. InfoPath Form Services integrates InfoPath with SharePoint and makes it possible to fill the InfoPath forms from the browser, which is a big reason for the increase in InfoPath’s popularity in the last few years. InfoPath Form Services enables managing electronic forms in a central location. Also users don’t need InfoPath installed on the local machines to fill the form. As long as the form is browser enabled users can fill the form through the browser. As you see in this hour, it is easy for anyone to design InfoPath forms, design a compelling user interface, and add validations. In addition you can write custom .NET code to do more complex tasks in the InfoPath form. The advantages of using InfoPath are as follows:

• As discussed earlier, filling InfoPath forms does not require InfoPath to be installed locally. A browser-compatible form can be filled from the browser. This is a great cost-saving advantage for enterprises that don’t want to buy an InfoPath license for every user.

• Because InfoPath stores data as XML it can communicate between two incompatible data formats.

• Being a part of the Microsoft Office family, InfoPath also integrates better with other Office products such as Excel or Word.

• InfoPath also provides offline support. This means that you don’t need to be connected to the network to fill an InfoPath form. Users can save forms locally, work on them offline, and sync back when connected to a network.

• Ease of designing and use makes fast development possible.