I have been asked enough times now about the licensing requirements of SharePoint to be able to show InfoPath forms in the browser that I’m finally putting together this blog entry about it . With InfoPath 2010, you can create SharePoint Form Library Forms, SharePoint List Forms and SharePoint Workflow Forms. Let me try to break down each of these briefly and talk about the licensing requirements.

SharePoint Form Library Forms

InfoPath’s ability to create form templates that can be posted to a form library in SharePoint dates back to to 2003 when InfoPath 2003 first came out. Once the form is published to that library, your users can click on the New Document link/button and that will open up the form. This form can only be opened in the browser if you have SharePoint Enterprise license. No exceptions here. If you don’t have enterprise licensing on your server then your users will require at least the InfoPath filler application (or InfoPath Designer application) on their machine to open up the form. If that’s not the case either, they will get an error saying that no compatible application can be found to open up the form (just like the error you would get if you didn’t have MS Word installed and you tried to open up a .doc document).

SharePoint List Forms

This functionality is new in 2010 products. SharePoint lists (such as Tasks, Announcements, Links etc.) come out of the box with ASP.NET forms that let you take actions on the list (viewing a list item, editing an item, creating a new item). You can see these forms in the browser or through SharePoint Designer 2010. If your SharePoint server has SharePoint Enterprise license, you can modify these out of the box forms or create new forms (recommended) using InfoPath 2010. If you don’t have enterprise licensing, you can still customize or create new list forms without code. However, you will need to use SharePoint Designer 2010 to do that and the resulting forms will be ASP.NET forms as well.

SharePoint Workflow Forms

This functionality is also new in 2010 products. When you create a workflow using SharePoint Designer 2010, it creates forms that users interact with as needed (for example task forms, initiation forms, association forms, forms to collect data from users etc.). If your SharePoint server has SharePoint Enterprise or Standard license applied to it, you can use InfoPath 2010 to modify these forms. If you are instead running SharePoint Foundation, you can still modify these forms, but that would have to be done using SharePoint Designer 2010 and the forms will be ASP.NET forms.

I hope this breakdown eliminates some confusion. InfoPath 2010 is an Awesome product! If you have the proper licensing, I would definitely recommend using it!

Have you checked out our videos presenting no-code solutions on SharePoint, SharePoint Designer and InfoPath at YouTube? If not, here is the URL to it. Check it out:

http://www.youtube.com/user/asifrehmani.

I had the pleasure of meeting the folks from RepliWeb early this year. They gave me a tour of their application (RepliWeb Operations Suites for SharePoint – ROSS) and I thought it was Fantastic! So I decided to create a video explaining its functionality briefly and how it can help You in your business! Hope you love it as much as I did.

Here’s the story about ROSS – When using SharePoint as a Development Platform for intranet, extranet, and internet sites, organizations are encouraged to stand up a multi-stage topology (example: Development, Staging, Production). This multi-stage architecture can present challenges when managing updates within the Content & Application Lifecycle. This video reviews a 3rd party solution called ‘ROSS’ by RepliWeb which is built to streamline the deployment/replication of content, solutions, and other functional artifacts across SharePoint Farms. Check out the short video demonstration of the product here: http://www.sharepoint-videos.com/repliweb-operations-suite-for-sharepoint/.

If you need to get connected to the RepliWeb folks, let me know and I can make the introductions.

The InfoPath 2010 Training DVD-ROM containing all of our video tutorials on InfoPath 2010 has now been released. This DVD contains demonstrations showing you exactly how you can build form solutions using InfoPath 2010 by itself or on SharePoint 2010… without using any programming! Here are some of the topics you will learn by watching the videos on this DVD:

• Introduction to InfoPath 2010
• Convert Word and Excel forms to InfoPath
• Enhance forms using Validation and Formatting
• Fetch data from SharePoint Lists and Databases into your forms
• Publish form templates to form library
• Publish forms using content type
• Create SharePoint list forms using InfoPath

• and more…

To celebrate the release of this DVD, we are offering a $20 discount to the first 20 people who purchase the Single User license DVD. Once at the checkout page, enter the coupon code INF2010DVD (please remember to click the Apply button to apply the discount to the price)

The complete list of all videos and purchase information are available on the site: http://www.sharepoint-videos.com/products/

Our next webinar is on Thursday, June 24th from 2 to 3 pm Eastern. Here’s more detail about the webinar:

User Interfaces of SharePoint 2010

Skill Level – 100 (Beginner)

SharePoint 2010 ships with a variety of functionality waiting to be discovered. You can easily build your collaboration based solutions directly on top of this platform without the need for any programming. You need just the browser to create your robust solutions with lists, libraries and other site components. But how do you know where to get started? This session will dive into the user interfaces of SharePoint 2010 to show you how easy it is to get started.

This is an interactive webinar so bring your questions with you. I will try to answer your questions to the best of my ability. If you would like to join me, here is the link to sign up:
Register here: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/850656289

There are several good reasons for setting up SharePoint 2010 virtual machine:

• Proof of Concept
• Development environment
• Demo machine (for presenters)

Whatever your reasons are, if you need to get this done, my recommendation would be to check out the Critical Path Training channel on YouTube for the exact steps to make it happen. Each step is depicted in an easy to follow along video.

It is surprising to me how many companies are still not utilizing the powerful capability of content types in SharePoint. Just like every other capability in SharePoint, I believe in showing the power of it rather than just talking about it. So to that end, I have made the understanding and using Content Types video (created by Wendy Henry) available free on the site (it will be free until the end of this month). This video is for SharePoint 2007, but the concepts apply equally well in SharePoint 2010. Hope this helps.

The Customize Form button in the List Settings page lets you customize the list form using InfoPath 2010 (if InfoPath 2010 is installed on your computer and you are running SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise). If this button is not working, your site is not trusted by your computer and that’s why it is not letting you open up the form in InfoPath. Check out the animated image below to see how you can add your site as a trusted site.

If you are new to SharePoint 2010, the v-Article on introducing SharePoint 2010 will help you get started.

What is a v-Article? Check out the explanation here.

A written article can only convey so much information. As they say, an image is worth a thousand words. Building on that saying, my belief is that a video is worth a thousand images. At http://www.SharePoint-Videos.com, we have 174 videos so far (and more being added every week) which total up into dozens of hours of video tutorial based training.

Since our videos are task based (about 8 – 12 minutes for each video), we needed a way to tie the videos together to have it flow like an article. In addition, we also needed a Wikipedia style way of linking the articles together. So we have decided to combine the story telling power of articles with our videos. Each article has links embedded within it to relevant videos. Also, when appropriate, articles refer to other available articles much like Wikipedia does. We call these Video Articles (or v-Articles). To see an example of how a video article works, check out the ones already available on the Video Categories page. More will be coming soon.