InfoPath Dev

Hi there,

 I have a company with five people and we use Office365. I saw infopath which i have never used before and wanted to learn more how to use it. For us, we use forms quite a bit, for instance when someone has taken a course and that document is filed (i.e. buried and never really used). Now I thought that with infopath, now I could easily make a form and perhaps I could query the data better. For example see if anyone in my company has taken the course I am interested in and if so, what they thought of it etc. Or what is the most popular course in a certain educational area.

Now, my question is where does the information go :-)? I.e. how is it saved and how can I from there query it? I know it sounds really dummy like but this is not something I know very well so I'm sorry about that.

Thank you for any help in this matter.

Magnus

Magnus79 Sweden:

Hi there,

 I have a company with five people and we use Office365. I saw infopath which i have never used before and wanted to learn more how to use it. For us, we use forms quite a bit

You mean paper forms?

Office in Office 365 might be a little misleading since you should have MS Office suite (Infopath is part of it) installed locally to create or utilize Office 365 applications there, remotely.

Magnus79 Sweden:

Now, my question is where does the information go :-)? I.e. how is it saved and how can I from there query it? I know it sounds really dummy like but this is not something I know very well so I'm sorry about that

I really wish I knew the silver-bullet answer.
But I shall honestly try to do my best attempting to explain it .

The Infopath forms are XML based which means they are stored as XML data for rendering forms and storing associated with them data. They can be stored and accessed locally (on the same machine where you created or filled them) or remotely.

There are templates (XSN) that determine how forms uniformly rendered when they are filled with data to be saved/stored as data in format of XML in .xml files

Well, there are MS Sharepoint or Office services as well as other tools or services that work with XML data and forms.  

I believe it would be best to formulate some small tasks solving a (small) working necessities and find step-by-step walk-through tutorials to follow and adapt/modify them for your needs.

 Ooops, I hope someone would correct me what I explained incorrectly, so far, before further continuation. 

Hi Gennady,

Thank you for your answer! Seems to me that if you have your data in XML files, shouldn't you be able to analyze them in excel then? Just using some pivot tables should be a powerful way of querying the data in my example, don't you think? Again, thank you very much, your answer was spot on!

 Regards,

Magnus

 Yes, exactly. 

Note that most functionality permitting to leverage MS Office suite apps (Outlook, Access, Word, Excel) is available ONLY while running Infopath Filler (but not Web Browser) Form types. 

In Infopath Designer 2010 one designs templates .XSN files which are run in Infopath Filler (also in Preview,  by F5) as instances of filled with (.XML files) data forms from where you can save them as .XML file or export to Excel: 

 on ribbon File > Save & Send > Export to Excel (Export form data to an Excel Workbook )

•  Export data from single or multiple forms
  
• Use Excel to analyze data
  

launches Export to Excel Wizard. 

Vice versa, In Infopath Designer 2010, File > New > Convert Existing Form

• Creates a new form template based on either a Word or
  Excel file. InfoPath creates the underlying data structure
  based on the layout of the original form, updating the data
  structure based on any changes you then make to the form
  layout.
   
  

permits to import Excel workbook into Infopath form

Wait a minute... In order to leverage Office, I need to use the Infopath filler to fill out the forms? 

 I was thinking to create forms, publish them in Sharepoint, and then analyze the data/answers in Excel. But will that only work if everyone that fill out the forms use Infopath filler?

 You can publish Filler Form to sharepoint )or even farther away), only they will be opened locally in Infopath Filler.

BTW, this happens with browser based forms by default, they require special configurations to be opened in browser.  

This is liability not obligation,

It is also possible to use  Sharepoint Online (Office 365) Excel Services

So many opotions... :-)

Well I have a lot to look into. Thank you very much for your kind help! I really appreciate it.

 Regards,

 Magnus