Making web forms easy with InfoPath and "InfoView"

InfoPath makes developing XML forms much easier than ever before. But how do you quickly make those forms available to people external to your organisation who may not be running InfoPath on their desktop yet? Enter InfoView.

A partner of ours in Sydney, Unique World Software, has recently released an exciting new tool called “InfoView”. InfoView uses the files created by Microsoft InfoPath to convert the InfoPath form to an ASP.NET web form able to be delivered through the browser. The XML data generated by InfoView is identical to the XML created by InfoPath, so  BizTalk can easily be used for routing and workflow.

The CEO of Unique World and I were talking last night about potential applications of InfoView for our customers. I particularly can see lots of opportunities for enterprises who have customers they want to complete browser-based forms (let's say a telco who wants an online customer self-service system) and then route the data in those forms to back-end transactional data systems such as their ERP and CRM using BizTalk 2004.

Comments

• Anonymous
  April 16, 2004
  And there is an article on ASPToday (its self a rare event) on how to do this by maninpulating the XSN files and altering the page response.
• Anonymous
  April 16, 2004
  Please tell the CEO of Unique World that they might get a lot more business if they do not try to impede potential customers by requiring customer data just to see a demo.
  
  They might think that they are getting customer demographics to be used to contact customers later, but all it does is make people leave the website after 10 seconds.
  
  If their product is good enough, customers will contact them!
  
  
• Anonymous
  April 16, 2004
  Take Outs for 15/16 April 2004
• Anonymous
  April 16, 2004
  Thanks Ray - this is a good suggestion.
  We might try this for a while and see what people say.
  
  Pls use these login details:
  
  Username = InfoView
  Password = wentworth
  
  I look forward to your feedback.
  Cheers,
  Christophe
  
  GM - Unique World Software (and ex-Microsoftee working with Cameron)
• Anonymous
  April 20, 2004
  Hi Christophe
  
  Thanks for supplying the login details :)
  
  I've tested the demo forms and it looks really good.
  
  I'll try to test the InfoPath form upload at a later stage.
  
  One small bug - your two demo forms do not work in in Mozilla Firefox 0.8 - I haven't had a chance to look at the HTML yet, so can't say what the problem is.
  
  Good luck with this product - it's what a lot of InfoPath customers have been requesting, even though it seems to be priced at a level that most customers would balk at.
  
  
  ray
• Anonymous
  April 21, 2004
  Thanks Ray.
  I am pretty sure that we have not tested with other browsers than IE5.5 and above...so not sure about Mozilla.
  
  Re: pricing level
  We are still refining it based on customers' feedback. What would you suggest?
  
  Thanks,
  Christophe
• Anonymous
  April 21, 2004
  Hi Christophe
  
  I think a per CPU pricing is good for enterprise businesses with hundreds of forms and thousands of Internet customers.
  
  However, for small to medium businesses who can really use this product, it would be impossible to justify the cost. For example, I have a client who is an independent motorcycle insurance broker who would really be able to use this product, but they cannot spend that much for the few hundreds of clients they have.
  
  I realise it is difficult to impose something like this, but it may be worthwhile looking at setting limits on the number of forms or the number of unique users for smaller businesses.
  
  Also, I think you are missing out on the Intranet segment where companies cannot deploy InfoPath to every client, but would still like to deploy the InfoPath functionality to individual users. In this case, a per named user pricing model might be better.
  
  This will allow companies to roll out Office System 2003 (with InfoPath) to selected users, while still allowing users who cannot be upgraded the opportunity to use InfoPath functionality. Pricing for the per user licenses would have to be comparable or lower than the cost of rolling out InfoPath to all users (this would be very difficult to determine).
  
  I'm sure that you must have looked at comparable solutions (Adobe Enterprise Solutions, etc) and you are probably priced on a par with the competition, but you could be creating a whole new market at a different price-point.
  
  Hope this helps.
  
  Ray
• Anonymous
  April 22, 2004
  Thanks Ray.
  If you want let's continue this discussion via email.
  Mine is cdumonet@uniqueworldsoftware.com.
  
  Cheers,
  Christophe
• Anonymous
  May 08, 2004
  We decided to drop the price of InfoView - the ideal web publishing companion product to InfoPath.
  
  New pricing is per server (not per CPU) and starts at US$7K (down from US$12K).
  
  Cheers,
  CD