Eric'o'theque!: Webcast about InfoPath 2007

Friday, April 14, 2006

Webcast about InfoPath 2007

Here's an ondemand webcast link to our recent InfoPath 2007 overview: MSDN Webcast: New Features in Office InfoPath 2007 (Level 200)

My notes...

An overview of forms scenarios - yes, there are lots of places to create forms with Microsoft technology. And I think that's okay. The main thing you have to realize is what the pros & cons are for each kind of solution and what is appropriate for our problem space.
Discussion of how InfoPath is integrated in other packages now like Word / Excel / PowerPoint / Groove and integrate with Access and Outlook. Synergy, baby!
So, what were competitive form techologies we now flip the view a bit given that InfoPath can be hosted within those technologies.
SKU discussion. Standard, Professional Plus, Enterprise...
Woof! That's a lot of server technology.
14:00 in - time to talk about InfoPath!
Yah! Reusable template parts. Secret: InfoPath 2003 had a way of support custom templates but it wasn't fully baked so we never documented it. I'd probably be hard pressed to figure out how to load and use those files now.
Visual Studio integration! Wow! Look at all of those task panes up at the same time. VS integration isn't just for writing managed code - you can just do your InfoPath form design in VS and enjoy that environment over the stand-alone designer.
Demo time!
Too bad that the addDays() calculation has to demonstrate -21... should we have just written adjustDays()?
TabletPC input scope work - better reco for your TabletPC users. InfoPath is still, in my opinion, one of the best TabletPC applications out there.
A win for users in drop-downs: display only unique names!
Form Deployment. Where do you want your XSN today? If it's on SharePoint there are interesting new options.
Workflow integration with InfoPath - technically challenging because this is InfoPath hosted inside of InfoPath. The workflow UI in Office 2007 leverages InfoPath 2007 as the structured editing surface.
Ooo! 31:43 - Outlook / InfoPath email form integration time! This is a good time to ensure your forms promote interesting fields so that they can show up as columns inside of Outlook (in addition to columns on SharePoint, should the form be published there, too).
Q: backward compatibility: we take backwards compatibility super super serious. All your old forms should continue running in the editor just fine. By default, all new forms designed in 2007 will start off as being 2007-based, but you can throttle this down to 2003-SP1 compatible if you're designing for a mixed environment. We might have gone option crazy to satisfy lots and lots of users but the end result is good.
Q: security design: our security model gets a bit deep in places. It's a bit easier to create full-trust forms now in 2007 given that you can create installer packages from the client.
Q: supported web browsers: lots of work has gone on here. Check out the Channel9 video we did where Danny demos running Firefox with an InfoPath form loaded up.
Demo of an InfoPath form running as DHTML in IE: Wow, looks a heck of a lot like the InfoPath rich-client. Plus Gray notes the work we've done to avoid hitting the server with intermediate requests as much as possible.
44:00-ish in: demo of the Outlook InfoPath email form folders. Special folders for InfoPath items - you create this special folder and then create a rule to send specific form instances into this folder. Your promoted properties from the InfoPath form now show up as columns in Outlook and you have the power of Outlook to manipulate info on these items.
Export to Excel! Way to go, Simin. It works great. So now you can use Outlook to collect and organize your forms and then shoot the data over to Excel for deeper analysis. Integration!
47:00-ish - on to Word 2007. Word? That's right. Want to edit structured information in Word? You can create custom InfoPath panels in Word now (the Document Information Panel has an unfortunate acronym).
51:30-ish: the store explorer. Goodness. We're getting deep here but it shows the coolness of InfoPath and Word both partying on the same XML data that comprises the document that the user is working on.
Q: sending InfoPath email forms as part of workflow... hmm... if you manage to structure the email message to look just like ours, but I can't promise we won't alter this message format in the future.
Q: InfoPath + Outlook Web Access - you're going to have to save your attachments and open that way. We don't have an OWA integration story.

Gray did a great job!

¶ 4/14/2006 05:02:00 PM

Comments:

Eric,

I have seen couple of cool demos on Infopath including Channel 9 & PDC demos. I am particularly impressed by the work gone into browser based experience. I have two questions that you may be able to shine a little bit of light,

1. Will the Form Services work (Infopath forms on web) work on Windows SharePoint Services 2007 or does it explicitly require SharePoint Portal Server 2007?
2. I have seen great examples of users filling in forms in the browser. But I am yet to see any on how these saved forms can be served back to users (for example, to update or edit at later time).
Let me restate incase above is not clear. For example, I have a site where users register and logs in to fill-in and save an info path form. Is it possible for the user to re-log in and be served the same form for either editing or updating? If so, do you have a URL or any other resource that demonstrates this function?

Great work,

Dave

# posted by Anonymous : Sunday, May 28, 2006 10:19:00 AM

Hi Dave,

On this rainy Sunday afternoon, let me first answer #2 before wandering into work on Monday to absolutely confirm the SKU plan for #1:

For #2: Yes, your user can reopen the same form later. Consider the forms saved as XML within a document library, for instance. It's just an XML file. If the user has InfoPath installed, it will open in InfoPath; if not, it will open up in FireFox / IE and save back to the SharePoint document library.

Of course, if you've written your InfoPath form to submit to a webservice or to email vs. saving, you're talking about a different (advanced) experience. But the default of just having "New" kick off a browser session and saving a file lets the user reopen that file later.

Cheers,
== Eric

# posted by EricRi : Sunday, May 28, 2006 10:53:00 AM

Thanks Eric for the interesting blog. I have some questions to you both technically and personally.

I am currently developing infopath via form server integrated with Sharepoint (WSS) v3. However, the form seems to take pretty long time to load on a browser (~20 seconds on a 2.8GHz 1GB RAM laptop / ~13 seconds in a 2.66GHz 1GB RAM desktop). After some detail investigation, it seems like loading the User Information List, a predefinded list from the sharepoint main site, takes around 5 seconds. Views, and repearting sessions with controls seem to have no factor on the speed. So, what causes the lengthy loading time? Second, it seems like the sharepoint library does not complain about the C# codes initially when I upload the xsn file to the form template. However, the codes NEVER get executed!! Those codes are simply codes like CreateNavigation.selectSingleNode(...) I checked the form option in infopath and everything seems alright. Does the form server support C# coding with infopath?

Personally
=====================
I applied to Microsoft last year at UCLA when i was still an undergrad. I passed the round in the job fair but failed the second round. The letter from MS stated that I could reapply after a year. It is now beyond a year... Does MS really consider returning applicants? How many rounds are there in the MS? What is your experience with MS? I have never stopped working since I graduated from UCLA last year; first as a .NET developer and is now a sales engineer/technical consultant-- help customer to migrate apps from IBM to Microsoft. How is my chance? What should I review if I really do apply to MS again?

Many Thanks,
Victor

# posted by Victor K.C. : Tuesday, July 25, 2006 4:12:00 PM

Hey Victor -

First, I have to admit that I'm a Win32 guy and work on the rich client, so I'm not going to have a lot of answers for the form server perf rendering issue.

But it sounds interesting. If you haven't already, I'd suggest posting your solution and a description to the public newsgroup for InfoPath; that way, we can have a tester look at your solution internally and decide if we have a bug we can address (though we are getting pretty close to RTM).

If you have C# business logic in your form and have deployed the form using the admin deployment tool, it should run.

As for applying / working at Microsoft: be sure to drop by the MSDN JobsBlog and engage in a conversation there: http://blogs.msdn.com/jobsblog/. They do an excellent job answering questions like yours.

Given how much technical growth you've gone through over the past year, I don't see any reason why you wouldn't be considered; I suggest pointing that out as part of any contact you make.

# posted by EricRi : Tuesday, July 25, 2006 4:33:00 PM

Hi Eric,

I have a browser enabled infopath form that collects the details from a user and submits it to a form library. Clicking on the submit button updates a lot of lists before actually submitting the form. So when the user reopens his submitted form and make any changes, I want to update the related lists and save the form instead of resubmitting it.How can I do this?
Also is there any way to change the warning screen with any thing more attractive and informative for the user?

Thanks & Regards,
Vishnu

# posted by Anonymous : Thursday, May 03, 2007 10:16:00 PM

Vishnu: that's not my area of expertise in InfoPath and I'm out of the InfoPath group now.

Your best place to describe your template and the issues it is having is on the public newsgroup for InfoPath. You should be able to find this off of the InfoPath Team Blog.

# posted by Eric Richards : Sunday, May 06, 2007 3:48:00 PM

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