InfoPath

Today on the Office System beta home page there's a link to Using InfoPath 2003. That got me thinking about what I've seen in the little bit of time I've looked at it.

Now, keep in mind that in order to really get a look at how usable InfoPath is for everything MS claims it is, I'd have to be in some sort of Enterprise environment and have multiple users using the data generated from the InfoPath forms. Looking at it as a single user is something altogether different. Still, I can see where this becomes very, very useful. Creating forms isn't that hard to do. Turning a filled-out form into XML data is something that presents you with a ton of potential, as the scenarios in the link point out. Creating the back-end, either in some form of XML database or using SharePoint Server, is something that might involve quite a bit of work if you don't already have that, but I'd have to think that having easy access to all this information, and having it all immediately available as soon as a form is filled out online (whether it be on the internet or an intranet) would be worth it.

Like I said, creating a form and tying it to a back end database doesn't seem all that difficult. It's not really any more difficult that creating a form in Access, for example. Now if you've never created a form there before, this might seem a bit more complicated to you than I make it out to be, but even then it's probably not that hard. On the other hand, much like OneNote, all of the options are a bit overwhelming. Like OneNote, this comes, to me, as something that I've never even tried to do before. OneNote is a note-taking tool. I've never used a PC to take notes before, so I wasn't even sure where to start. InfoPath is the same way. I've never really sat down and thought about creating forms from scratch and sharing the information. I've always created forms to do data entry into a database that already existed and within the database program itself. (Access) I find myself at somewhat of a loss as to where I want to use InfoPath, although I could certainly see where businesses would use it to share information in the XML format. As a single user, who isn't sharing my info, I don't see why I would want to use this as opposed to Access. I'll have to take a look at the given scenarios and see if I can "fake" one. :)
posted 9:55 AM | 0 comments | Links to this post

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