Beginning SharePoint® 2007: Building Team Solutions with MOSS 2007

10.2. Creating and Customizing an InfoPath Form

You use InfoPath in situations when you need to improve how information is shared or collected in your organization. One of the primary advantages of using InfoPath is that the interface can be made very simple and intuitive for users to add and complete information. An example of a typical InfoPath form is shown in Figure 10-1.

Before a user can complete an InfoPath form, you must start with a form template, which someone using the InfoPath application designs. You then have to publish the template to a location where users can complete the form by adding information. Each time a user completes and saves the form, a new file is created. For example, if you take the example of the weekly status reports described in the introduction of this chapter, a single form template exists that contains all the required and optional fields that the form should contain. This form template would be published to the SharePoint site using a method similar to that described in Chapter 4 for document libraries or Chapter 6 for content types. Each team member would then click the New button on the Library toolbar to open a new instance of the form. Once the form is completed, the team member would save it to the library and create a new form data file. If five members are on a team, then each week five new form data files are created in the library as the team members create their status reports. However, there would only be one form template file ...