InfoPath Dev

Hey everyone.. New to the site.. I've been searching and I'm sure I'm not being patient enough, but I thought I would post and see what came back at me..

I have been trying to convince my managment team that we need to upgrade our SharePoint service to MOSS 2007 in an effort to streamline essentially almost every aspect of our business.  We are a regulatory agnecy that adminsters certification examinations for HealthCare providers.  Our staff is frequently in the field administering these exams.  Everyone logs into our server at the office via VPN and Broadband wireless connection.  Accessing simple access database is very slow and laborious and lags badly.  So, my thought process was this.  If we publish the forms we need to use onto our SharePoint site in browser eabled forms, we would be able to write to and retrieve information from the various databases.  At the moment our databases are all Access 2007.  We currently are running SharePoint 3.0.  Our SharePoint site is only accessible if the user has his VPN connection. In our office, each of us has InfoPath 2007, but on our laptops, we do not have IP installed (hence the reason for browser enabled forms).

So I have the basic process down, however, when I go to publish my first form to SharePoint, it indicates it cant because InfoPath foms services isnt enabled/installed.  So my first question is 1) In order to use this functionality, am I correct in telling my management team that we need to upgrade to MOSS 2007? 

The secod question is, I would then like to extend this form functionality to the public/customers.  What I woud like to do, is publish a web enabled form, to our website.  Customer, clicks on form, enters appropriate information,hits submit and I want that information to be written to my daabase(s) who's backends are located on my SharePoint site (the one that is only accessible with a VPN). Is this possible if the customer does not have a VPN connection?  Will the information be writen to the database tables? 

The last point I want to make to my managment team is that by upgrading t MOSS 2007, I would get access to dashboard reporting that is not available in 3.0.  Is that correct?  On the MS website, I've seen examples of dashboards that measure/quantify various organizational KPI's.  If I could create a dashboar that reports the pieces of information that are needed in real time, I might be able to eleviate some of my reporting workload, which takes u a lot of my time. 

 Am I going in the right direction here?  I know this is an InfoPath website, but their so closely tied its hard to sometimes distinguish the two.  Just so you know, in the long term, my plan is to take all of my databases to SQL, but I'm still learning.  Any advice would be greatly appreciated... 

Thanks!

Chip Franklin

Hey Chip.

 Great to see you pushing our public institutions to leverage technology.  I have spent time both in governement and in healthcare and both are challenging. Not to find opportunity, but to find someone willing or that cares to do something about it.

You are definetly on the right track but the architecture and design is pretty important.

Here are your options for mobile dtaa collectioin solutions.

Get IT to put in a Windows 2008 server, they might already have one.  Add terminal Server clients. Install Office with InfoPath and use Application Virtualization with Remote App.

What you get is InfoPath or any other application, which will look and feel to the user that it is running locally but is running remotely on the server.  So it does not matter what computer or software they have as long as they have connectivity.  It also has great performance over a WWAN.  You can also use the terminal server web site so they can pick InfoPath out of a browser and integrate it with SharePoint.  I have set this up and I think it is much cheaper and easier than the other alternatives.

Your other option is to Upgrade to MOSS 2007 and SQL.  To have browser based forms with InfoPath Form Services you must have MOSS 2007. It is not included in any other software.  Also you would need to move to SQL backend databases so that you could use the web services required by browser forms.  I would check out the Database Accelerator from Qdabra. This is fast and easy to get migrated to SQL and then have your form data available for all kinds of reporting such as SQL reporting services or other web reports. Also Excel or whatever.

Those are the two options I see to get Infopath functionality to mobile users without InfoPath clients.

Thanks Clay...

 My role is centered about Public Safety, EMS and Rescue to be exact. Part of the struggle we have in our industry is standardization.  We dont do a good job I'm afraid of defining what exactly we want.  Defining educational objectives and measuring them scientifically is a difficult task to say the least.  You can always spin numbers the way you want them.

Ok, so I'm thinking for sure that I want to go the MOSS direction.  My reasoning for that is becuase many of staff members arent all that savy when it comes to computers and the fewer steps I can have them take the better, even if it means I put a little extra money into it.  With that said, I'm no expert either.  So the prospect of moving my database to SQL sounds a bit daunting.  I have my Access skills fine tuned and have all my databases up and running without hitches.  Is moving to SQL necessary?  If I do move them to SQL, can I still use my Access FE's in our office?  Or would I have to redesign them?

I looked at the Database Accelerator.  The price tag is a bit steep, considering that I will have to get managment to shell $4500 or so for MOSS 2007.  Would the upzing wizard built into Access be sufficient?

And one final question, is the following statement correct.  WSS 3.0 can NOT provider any form of dashboard reporting.  If there is anything that my boss will want is a aimple dashboard, that he can use and get the numbers he needs at a moments notice.  And I spend a lot of time producing these numbers on montly, quaterly and annually reports.  I wont obviously be able to cover all the bases, but if I can avoid the panic 11th hour phone call for a routine piece of data, I would be a much happier camper.

To do browser based from you would have to use SQL.  The transisition is not that difficult from Access.  You can migrate the data and still use Access as the frontend, its just a wizard.  Or replace your Access front ends with InfoPath, which is also common.

You have Business Data Catalogs in Sharepoint, which i have not used since I always have SQL as a requirment, but I know they are not quite as feature rich but may work for you.  There are ways of using Excel now to create KPI's and dashboards.  The big issue is being able to aggregate all of your Form data. Just storing in Sharepoint won't do this. You must submit the data to SQL. For that you need web services like Qdabra provides.

 I would still price out a 2008 terminal server.  I believe it is much cheaper than MOSS and you would probably need one to run MOSS anyway.  The cals are pretty cheap and it really works nice.  Then you would not need to change anything with Access or InfoPath. Also you get all of the functionality since you are running the full client rather than the browser version. Then you could continue with SP 2003 for the time being as well.

I would at least look at both options.

Good luck and have fun.