InfoPath Dev

Hi,

I am looking into web enabled InfoPath Forms to replace our paper forms. After reading http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/infopath/HA102105871033.aspx, there seems to be too many limitations that comes with it. 

Forms we want to automate are Expense forms, New Hire forms, etc. Would it be more efficient for me to build ASP.Net applications for each form? I was hoping that InfoPath could save me time coding each form, but the limitation list makes me think otherwise.

If you have any thoughts about this, please reply. Thank you.

Every platform has its challenges and limitations. Your choice depends on a lot of factors such as cost, accessibility, maintainability, etc.

InfoPath makes developing forms much faster and easier than ASP.NET, however, each computer that runs the form must have a copy of InfoPath installed.

As for limitations, it all depends on what you want to accomplish and how complicated you plan to make your forms. I've seen extremely complicated Expense forms created for internal use by Microsoft. Developed by a team of professionals, this form is not to be attempted for the faint at heart. However, not everyone needs such complexity. New Hire forms should be a snap in InfoPath.

Thanks, Greg.

We would like to have web enabled forms on the intranet for the empolyees. New hire form is streight forward. We also have complex forms to built, where once a user clicks submit, it should send an email notification to the admin of the form, stores the data in the SQL db and update tables if need be. We also want to allow form admins retreiving data from the db for export to Excel or print. We aren't planning to install InfoPath on users' machines. We would like to make them web based. It looks like we would be able to use InfoPath for our purposes if we don't make forms web enabled.

Much of what you describe you should be able to do with web-enabled forms. Export to Excel -- I don't think you can directly do that with web-enabled InfoPath... but workflow (employee-to-manager) and I think even the email should be possible.

However, if web-based is the most important criteria, then you might want to consider your other route of going straight ASP.NET as you can do whatever you want there without artificial limitations.

Great. If you have the time, a little experimenting can be a good thing. If not, its better to go the sure, familiar course.

Good luck!