InfoPath 2010 is unveiled at the SharePoint Conference
As many of you may know, the SharePoint Conference 2009 is taking place this week in Las Vegas, Nevada and it's been a particularly exciting week for the InfoPath product team. Over the past 3 years of product development, we have made huge investments in integrating with the SharePoint platform. Finally, this week, we got the opportunity to unveil the fruits of these investments to the world, and so far, the reception has been tremendously positive! (Check out what people are saying about InfoPath 2010 on Twitter.)
SPC is taking place at the Mandalay Bay Hotel:
InfoPath Booth:
(from left: Umut Alev - development lead, Peter Allenspach - group program manager, Rick Severson - test lead):
InfoPath 2010 is well represented at this year's conference with a total of 5 sessions. The 1st session took place on Monday and was presented by Peter Allenspach and Bojana Duke from the InfoPath program management team.
The InfoPath session drew big crowds:
The session opened with an introduction to InfoPath 2010, followed by 3 feature demos which illustrated just how easy InfoPath 2010 makes it for Information Workers to create their own solutions without reliance on IT departments. Some highlights below -
InfoPath 2010 Overview:
Demo 1: Customizing a SharePoint list form
In this demo, Peter and Bojana walked through a real Microsoft internal College Recruiting scenario. Employees use SharePoint lists to sign up for recruiting trips. Bojana wowed the audience by taking the Recruitment Trip list form and customizing it in InfoPath in under a minute!
Peter and Bojana then went on to show how this form could be further enhanced and customized. Our new out of the box rules were used to add data validation and to conditionally show or hide sections in the form. A data connection to the Colleges list was added to pull details about the colleges into the recruiting trip sign-up form. The form layout was customized using our new pre-built layout tables and themes. They then showed how in a single click, the form could be published to SharePoint. Not only that, but they then showed how the list, including the customized form could be taken offline in SharePoint Workspace.
Last but not least, they opened the form in Firefox showing that you can use your browser of choice to fill out your forms.
Before Form:
After Form:
Offline Form in SharePoint Workspace:
Demo 2: Creating Mashups using the InfoPath Form Web Part
The 2nd demo took the Recruiting scenario to the next level. In this demo, Bojana created a simple portal page with 2 Web Parts, the Recruiting trip list and the new InfoPath Form Web Part. In only a few clicks, she connected the 2 Web Parts. Now when she selected an item in the recruitment list, the details for that trip were displayed in an InfoPath form.
Portal Page:
They concluded the 2nd demo by showing that both SharePoint solutions and InfoPath forms are truly portable and reusable. The site was saved as a template (WSP) and a new site was created from this template. The SharePoint list, portal page and InfoPath form were fully functional on this new site.
Demo 3: Office Business Applications: Procurement scenario
In this final demo, Peter and Bojana showed the audience how InfoPath helps IT departments develop full Office Business Applications on the SharePoint platform. They used a procurement scenario to demo these capabilities. In this scenario, an employee submits a request to purchase a new laptop computer. The solution used an InfoPath form that connects to a vendor database, that brings in details about the goods you can purchase.
Procurement Form:
This type of application can be built in SharePoint Designer, using web part pages to create the user experience. The data can be stored in form libraries, SharePoint lists, and external systems using Business Connectivity Services. If InfoPath rules don’t do the job of defining the desired form behavior sandboxed or full trust code can be added to the forms. SharePoint workflows can be used to send e-mail notifications and track status. And once you’re all done, you can package your application so it can be tested and eventually deployed to the production servers.
Procurement Portal Page:
This first session set the stage for the remaining InfoPath sessions of the week:
- Building Applications with InfoPath and SharePoint Designer (this session took place on Tuesday - more details to follow)
- Performance Best Practices for Forms Applications
- InfoPath 2010: Form Design Best Practices
- Form-Driven Mashups using InfoPath and Forms Services 2010
Stay tuned for more updates from Las Vegas!
Comments
Anonymous
November 01, 2009
Hi guys! I attended this session. Thanks for a really good presentation. I was talking to someone else who was present and he said he came up to you at the end asking for a copy of the forms. Apparently you guys said you'd upload a copy (or send a copy?) to him. I wasn't smart enough to do the same! Would it be possible to get my hands on a copy of your procurement form? Thanks, Lisa.KAnonymous
November 11, 2009
Hi Lisa, Thanks for your feedback on the session. We want to make the materials available over the next few months. The applications were built using pre-beta builds so they need to be upgraded first. We are planning on making certain parts available earlier, specifically the workflow action to generate a Word document. Please check back on the blog for information about this. Also, what specific parts of the application are you interested in? We may be able to share some code snippets or rules with you sooner. Thanks, RobertoAnonymous
January 03, 2010
Would you happen to have a video session of this presentation that I could watch online? I'm having trouble getting my web-browser form from Sharepoint 2010 in InfoPath 2010 to email to an email address, so when someone fills out the form, it gets emailed to a specified recipient after clicking submit. Thanks!Anonymous
March 12, 2011
May be get a copy of demo source about the "Office Business Applications: Procurement scenario" ?