InfoPath Dev

Im a newbie to infopath but can see its potential.
Heres what I am trying to do w/ infopath.

Similar to the feature that allows you to merge the infopath form to the body of an email, I would like to do the same thing in the body of a "New Appointment" in outlook.

For example, I have an infopath form/check list that has multiple milestones for multiple users. Instead of sending an email multiple times, I want to create an appointment in outlook and then invite attendees to the appointment and this way all parties will be able to update the appointment/infopath form and set the new milestone date and this will automatically update all the parties of the changes.

I hope I explained this correctly. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you so much!!!!

Clint Avalos
[email protected]

I believe this is possible. I would look at your architecture and design. The key is you want to share data between multiple users. To my knowledge with Exchange, appointments are not shared, each participant gets a copy and they are kept coordinated, so anything embedded or attached is a unique item. SO there would be know functionality within outlook or exchange to keep embedded or attached info synced you would have to do this yourself through some other means. Is the data from the checklist in a database, so that each form just accesses the current data? Otherwise, if the data is in the form, the challenge would be that they all work off of a single copy, and have their own individual copy.

Similar functionality would be to use links to the form instead of embedding it. This would allow one form out on a central share or website that everyone shared.
You can attach a file to an appointment, but these would be seperate copies. If you were databasing the information when submitted this would be fine since the data was stored centrally and the form is used to view the current data.
SharePoint is kind of the default platform for sharing forms between users.

Hope this gives you some ideas.

Thank you so much ClayFox.

I understand the problem you propose. I guess it would be possible for me to delegate the updating to a single person.

But prior to that I still need to just figure out step one and that is embedding the form into an appointment. I haven't even gotten that far.

Is it even possible to embed the form into an appointment?

If so, how do I go about doing that? Will it involve any coding?

Thanks again.

Clint Avalos
[email protected]

It definetly would require code, InfoPath has built in email support but nothing for appointment items. You could attach a form to an appoint ment like I said or have a link. I think that is as integrated as you could get using existing InfoPath and Outlook functionality. Even with code I am not sure how you would do it without form server converting it to a web app. I am not completely familiar with what content can be in an appointment object but I believe web content is allowed.

I would look for a simpler solution to sharing the form and linking it to an appointment or reminder.