InfoPath Dev

 Hello everyone,

I'm new to this forum, hope I can get some answers about infopath and whether infopath is what I need to use for my forms.

 I need to create a form for doctors to fill out their daily notes on patients progress. Right now they are filling out paper forms by hand but we want it in the computer so its more legible and less time consuming. I started doing it in ms word with developer tools but it was too limiting and didn't look professional. I then found out about infopath and how it is specifically for making forms. 

I want to have general verbiage to be the same on every note with doctors picking specific patient problems from list boxes and drop down menus. For example: The patient complaints of (list box) pain. Inside the list box I have neck, shoulder, back, etc. So when the doctor clicks neck for example, when saved it would be saved as a sentence. "The patient complaints of neck pain." I tried making it that way but because my list boxes contain 5-10 options when I print preview it does not come out as a sentence.

 It looks something like this:

                                   neck

The patient complaints                  pain.  

Is there a control" or function"  that would allow me to somehow have it in a sentence?  Also under every section I want to have additional comments with text box but can I have it so it only shows up when something is typed in, if left blank it would not appear when saved?

 The next thing I want to do is to have all notes be saved to a specific location on the network with ease. What I mean by that is, the doctor has a copy of the template on his/her desktop. When they fill it out, they click save and it will automatically send it to the server and sort it by date and last name (i know it's possible to auto sort it when saved) My question is if its practical and whether a doctor who is not very good with pc would be able to do it without messing things up. 

 Sorry if I don't make much sense, I spent almost two full days making one template and it doesn't look how i need it be. My biggest issue is the list boxes, the selections don't match up with the rest of the sentence. 

 thank you,

Max

Hi Max, and welcome to the InfoPath Dev forums.

I think InfoPath would be a great tool for what you are trying to do.  It will be way easier and better than Word forms for sure!  We have a number of medical clients who use InfoPath (and also some of our InfoPath tools) to create their own electronic medical records system.  You are on the right path here.  Consider using Qdabra for some training, we offer both in person and webinar training.

To answer your question about writing a sentence bascially with the values your doctors pick from a drop down list - have you tried looking at the "Expression box" or calculated value control?  The Expression box control will allow you to create a sentence and you can concactenate in values from the different parts of the form.  This data won't be saved as a field in your XML but it can be used for what you need.

Regarding the saving of the form etc, do you guys have SharePoint at all?  (Microsoft Office SharePoint)?  If you have Windows based servers in your office you can get a free version of SharePoint that would let you easily save the InfoPath forms into Document libraries. 

If you don't have SharePoint I would suggest taking a look at our Formsboard offering which is a hosted InfoPath solution - this could actually be a fantastic way for you to store your documents, you can sign up for a free account here: https://www.formsboard.com/

Ted

 Thank you for your reply Ted. The suggestion you made about expression box and calculated value control is way over my head. I went to Qdabra website and tried going through the first training but stalled when it got to sharepoint as we don't have it. I was thinking about having a local machine in the office with external hard drive where all of the notes can be saved. I'm not sure if what I'm about to say is against the board rules so please let me know if it is and won't happen again. The form I've created is very simple, I'm just having a problem with list box options not matching up with the rest of the sentence and I don't know how to do calculated value control. If someone on the board would be able to do gotomeeting or something with me to help and explain how to fix it. Not for free of course. Please let me know as I need this done asap.

Thank you,

Max

Hi Max,

I asked Patrick to follow up with you and he said he sent you a private message thorugh the forums to setup a time to help.

You can contact me directly thorugh the forums too so we can setup a live meeting to assit and arrange payment for the support.

Ted