Philadelphia Area SharePoint User Group Philadelphia Area SharePoint User Group Kristen Bryant RJB Technical Consulting

Philadelphia Area SharePoint User Group AGENDA Explanation of Demo Demo –Working Solution –How to Build Pros and Cons InfoPath Management

Philadelphia Area SharePoint User Group Change Request Form Demo This demo is of a simplistic change tracking mechanism InfoPath allows it the flexibility to grow to track things specific to the organization using it. Can build a useful form very quickly

Philadelphia Area SharePoint User Group DEMO Matt Vignau

Philadelphia Area SharePoint User Group Change Request Form Demo Simple Enhancement Ideas Promote fields to SharePoint to use views to summarize and report on changes. Repeating sections for groups of related changes. alerts based on views of open changes. Web-enable

Philadelphia Area SharePoint User Group Change Request Form Demo InfoPath Advantages Hide the Actual Implementation time and date until after the item is approved SharePoint HR Site Collection Maintenance Site Collection Site 3 Site 4 Site 1 Site 2 InfoPath Form Change Requests Supervisor: Area for Request: List of Areas List of Supervisors Control over the look of the form Can look up from lists on completely separate site collections !!!

Philadelphia Area SharePoint User Group Change Request Form Demo Use SharePoint version history to keep versions. This will guard against inappropriate approvals.

Philadelphia Area SharePoint User Group InfoPath Management InfoPath is great. Issue: How should an organization manage it? Typical Problems: Office comes with InfoPath. Users create beautiful forms. Some spend hours making a beautiful form instead of doing their regular job. This same person become InfoPath support for neighbors and co-workers. Person may not take advantage of SharePoint functionality or best way to do something in InfoPath because they don’t know (for example: Content Types.) Users ask IT about InfoPath. IT … Does not get back to them Wants to do complete Application Design before doing a simple form Tries to prevent InfoPath from being used with SharePoint User sees cool InfoPath demo, cannot figure out why InfoPath is not supported at his/her organization. User sees cool SharePoint demo, frustrated by inability to web-publish a form.

Philadelphia Area SharePoint User Group InfoPath management SharePoint Governance A joint business and IT Governance model for SharePoint can address InfoPath’s place in the organization, and things like training and support. Realistically, this may not exist and takes time and experience to put in place…

Philadelphia Area SharePoint User Group InfoPath management Even without governance, don’t lose the advantages of InfoPath! Start simple. 1. Keep a voluntary record of each form created in the organization –Have a SharePoint list where people can register their InfoPath forms. Users who want to use InfoPath will be eager to register so they can be part of a community using InfoPath. –Use the same list for people to enter form creation requests and ideas. Most end users will want IT to create the form rather if they have a choice. –The IT group should set the best example and always registers forms they create.

Philadelphia Area SharePoint User Group InfoPath management 2. Request a budgeted IT project for general forms creation and support, or get a director to agree to allow some time for two team members to set direction and support for InfoPath. 3. If your organization does not do this, at least find someone who can publish a statement explaining why there is no support and whether it is “OK” for people to create unsupported forms.

Philadelphia Area SharePoint User Group Questions? Kristen Bryant RJB Technical Consulting