InfoPath Dev

Hello, I manage a small team. We have SharePoint and Office 2003 with InfoPath. I am new to InfoPath.

My team currently use various word docs, either their own or shared to create fax headers to distribute information and requests to other areas of our company and to clients. There are about 20 variations of the docs we use. These variations do not include all possible client recipients or internal destinations. For the purpose of this post we have an unlimited number of clients and an unlimited number of internal destinations. Mostly the documents are sent to internal areas and refer to a client.

My issue is that re typing, re formatting and finding appropriate information to include is time consuming and the end result can be unprofessional, especially if the user is not very experienced with word or perhaps is in a hurry or does not care. Sometimes the time taken to prepare a header is considered too long so the document is hand written on before its faxed.

I want my team to be easily able to create good looking documents that easily include client info and internal destination info based on data I hold somewhere.

Can just InfoPath and SharePoint help me here?

A quick discussion with an internal IT person has me thinking it can. From the conversation I got that I could hold client info in one SharePoint list and internal department info in another SharePoint list then various InfoPath forms can be quickly populated from these lists thus creating the documents I need. Of course SharePoint already knows who the user is and this info should be included also.

I'm not interested in storing the finished docs but if I could it would be a bonus.

I don#%92t want this post to be too long but something else to consider is that I was thinking about building an Access database to do the same. It will have a Clients table, an Internal Department table and a users table with various reports for my various faxes. I know I can do this as I have done it before but I like the idea of keeping the functionality in SharePoint if possible because I want to move away from people looking for and storing files on the increasingly messy company network.

All opinions, suggestions and ideas to get the results I'm looking for will be greatly appreciated.

PS, I consider myself an advanced PC user who can handle most complex menu driven MS application tasks. I'm not fond of programming or macros but I can make stuff work when I must.

Regards, Derek.

Hi Derek,
I started using InfoPath three month ago to populate data from an Access database which works perfect. The program also offers a lot of nice solutions like dropdown lists, date selectors, etc. Funktions not offered can be created by using script or xml.
But InfoPath has at least one big weak. Designing printouts is very hard and needs a lot of knowlege to include page breaks, etc. I'm not sure how much work you want to spend to designe your printouts.
Could be a lot of work for Matt if you start the project ;)

I agree with Ben. I think InfoPath would be helpful in automating some of the processes you described. He is also correct in stating that InfoPath printing capabilities are rather limited (this includes printing to PDF, fax software, etc.). It takes a while to get things to look just right, but it is possible and once you have it set then the functionality is great.

If you're planning to make fax headers with dynamic fields such as Date, Subject, From, To, Department and things like that I think InfoPath/SharePoint/Access would be a great idea. You will be able to use drop-down lists and other various controls to allow simple collection and presentation of data. SharePoint is easier to manage through IE, but Access will be better performance with large amounts of data.

And, as Ben hinted, we are always here to help! Let us know what you decide to do.

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Matt Faus
InfoPath Dev Texas

Great replies and feedback so far, thanks.

Some more information...
I can and will (based in your replies about printing) limit the fax headers (print outs) to be one page only. Will this help? Plus the fax headers at this stage will be printed to paper and faxed manually. Printing to A4 paper is important to me. Will printing layout functionality be improved or have I missed the point of InfoPath? Maybe InfoPath is really about electronic use and no paper, which I understand.

Also I have reconsidered the amount of records.
Internal Departments approx 150
Clients approx 100
Staff 10


Question - Use of Access? I thought that my SharePoint site could be the source of the data? I really want my team to focus on SharePoint. Can you please explain a little why access is needed or suggested?

Thanks, Derek.

With that number of database records Sharepoint will be fine. If you are dealing with thousands upon thousands of records a database would be much more preferable.

With one page only Infopath should work fine, but you are correct when you say you are somewhat missing the point of Infopath. It is definitely doable and InfoPath might be a good path to take to achieve the affects you are looking for but InfoPath is created more for the collection of data. If you can get it to do other things, such as the display of data then great.

Overall, it doesn't sound like you're trying to do anything too complex and I think Infopath will be able to accomplish what you are looking for without much or any code/macros. I'm envisiong a "Fax Cover Sheet" form with several different views that are formatted for different paper types or correspondence and each view has drop downs for names and departments and a few textboxes for personalization. Also, you will probably be doing a lot of "tweaking" as you are getting the paper printouts just right.

Check out these tutorials for a little help before you get started.

http://infopathdev.com/howto/tutorials/default.aspx?s=Printing

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Matt Faus
InfoPath Dev Texas

This is great news so I will push ahead.. Thanks for the input.

Regards,

Hi Derek,
As Ben mentioned, print and fax layout is difficult but doable. Good luck. Let us know if we can help unblock you.

Patrick Halstead [InfoPath MVP]
InfoPathDev