Beginning SharePoint® 2007: Building Team Solutions with MOSS 2007

10.4. Working with Form Templates

Now that you know the design-related functions of an InfoPath form template, you can start creating some actual form templates that can help you collect and view information. This section discusses creating a new form template, and then addresses some options for publishing and customizing the form to further meet the business requirements.

10.4.1. Designing a New Form

Before you can begin creating a new form, you need to figure out the form's requirements. This might involve gathering information from the group or sponsors who are requesting the form. However you gather the information, you should know the following:

• What types of information should the form collect?

• How should you present the information, and what special rules are there for submitting the information? For example, you can create Name and Email fields because they are required to contact employees after they submit feedback.

• How should you format the Data field? For example, you may apply special formatting or filtering that disables other fields based on a user's input in another field. This is helpful to ensure that users only have to deal with the fields they are required to complete.

Once you have the information that you need, it's time to do the actual work of creating the form template.

Although there are many steps in the next Try It Out, they represent a small portion of the steps required to create the most basic of electronic forms. In the second Try It Out of this ...