InfoPath Dev

Hi. .

I’ve got a fairly straight forward web project to do, integrating to a large SQL database. Lets say for the sake of argument its a form to request holidays which need to be approved by a manager.

Now, the company I’m working for already have web parts for their SQL system which we can simply drop into a sharepoint page to do the job. However, the suggestion has been made to use InfoPath 2003. Bearing in mind I already have something which does all this, before I spend the next few days investigating Infopath2003 as an option, I wondered if someone could indicate whether InfoPath 2003 would be able to do the following effectively :

1. I need to enter a simple holiday request online, which reads from/writes to a SQL database.

2. The manager (via the SQL database application) needs the ability to notify me that the request isnt approved.

3. I need a way of retrieving the form with the data I’ve previously entered, so that I can amend it and resubmit.

4. I need reporting capabilities, so that I can pull up a report of all holiday requests I entered to see their status   (which would be stored in SQL)

 (I’m not looking for a ‘how-to guide’, just any pro’s/cons involved in using InfoPath for such a project)

Thanks

Hi Clunk2008 and welcome to our forum!

Your requirements 1-4 are common ones that we see over and over again for InfoPath solutions. Believe it or not, you can do it all without any code, which will reduce your maintenance and deployment costs, but you will need a Web service similar to the SQL Accelerator that we offer. Anyway, you'll have to create the Absence Request form and hook it up with AD and submit it to SQL and create a form library in SharePoint and using list views or data views show the forms there. You can use a search webpart to find and open existing forms and SQL reporting or Excel ought to do the trick. We could prototype the above solution in 2-4 hours of work, but as you can imagine, we get this kind of request all the time. I'd be happy to show you one of our forms that does exactly what you are asking. Let me know if your interested and I'll schedule a demo for later next week.

Best regards,