InfoPath Dev

 Hi to all,

 I'm not very familiar with infopath, so I want to make some questions in order to see if should I bother involve with it.

 Situation: small business with 30 employees inhouse. 10 users outside the company.

Needs: Certain information needs to be collected from the users outside the company (filling the relevant forms). The forms data must be available to the company's users in order to check and a history of forms must be retained.

Questions:

1. Is it feasible to create this with infopath?

2. What sw is needed (apart from infopath as a member of ms office)?

3. Any recommendations?

Best Regards,

xenos 

Yes, this is possible. You would need InfoPath, of course, but where will the forms be stored? SharePoint? Will the forms be sent out via email? There's a gap here that I don't think has been covered, i.e. where do users go to access forms, where the forms are submitted/stored, etc.

ErnestoM:

Yes, this is possible. You would need InfoPath, of course, but where will the forms be stored? SharePoint? Will the forms be sent out via email? There's a gap here that I don't think has been covered, i.e. where do users go to access forms, where the forms are submitted/stored, etc.

The forms will be stored on a windows server 2003 r2. 

I'm not familiar with sharepoint either, but I searched for it and I found that it only give a 180-day trial. From what I understand sharepoint is a way to share the data from infopath?

Can the forms be sent by email? 

The basic idea (and excuse mu ignorance on infopath/sharepoint) is for the external users to send the forms through email (meaning they need the infopath locally?) and a user (or better, an automated procedure) to take that data, store them and "present"them to the users. If it is through web interface (meaning we do not have to purchase other software), even better.

I'm not familiar with storing InfoPath forms on Windows Server 2003.

Some versions of SharePoint include InfoPath Form Services which allows users to view the forms in the browser (and thus not need InfoPath).

The forms can be submitted via email, sure. But where will the forms be stored long term - in a user's email inbox? We have a tutorial that uses both email submit and SharePoint, here: http://www.infopathdev.com/blogs/mel_balsamo/archive/2009/05/18/using-e-mail-forms-to-communicate-with-external-users.aspx

We have training available on this website if you'd like to familiarized with InfoPath:

http://www.infopathdev.com/blogs/jennifer/archive/2010/07/01/free-training-design-your-infopath-form-template-lab-1.aspx

Good luck!

ErnestoM:

I'm not familiar with storing InfoPath forms on Windows Server 2003.

Some versions of SharePoint include InfoPath Form Services which allows users to view the forms in the browser (and thus not need InfoPath).

The forms can be submitted via email, sure. But where will the forms be stored long term - in a user's email inbox? We have a tutorial that uses both email submit and SharePoint, here: http://www.infopathdev.com/blogs/mel_balsamo/archive/2009/05/18/using-e-mail-forms-to-communicate-with-external-users.aspx

We have training available on this website if you'd like to familiarized with InfoPath:

http://www.infopathdev.com/blogs/jennifer/archive/2010/07/01/free-training-design-your-infopath-form-template-lab-1.aspx

Good luck!

First of all, thanks for your kind response. To the point now, I understand that I have to install:

 *infopath on a pc (mine) in order to create the forms.

*sharepoint server on server side? And this sharepoint sw will connect with infopath someway? Or do I have to install infopath too on the server?

On which windows server version have you installed the infopath?