Is Infopath the right tool for me? What basics do I need to learn?

[Curious_George]

Example project: Our office randomly selects employees for drug testing.
Managers are expected to process those drug tests and return results. A
manager should only get the request for their own employee(s). We should be
able to track when the results are provided by the manager, as well as
capturing what the results actually are.

I've been looking at automating Excel to send targeted emails via Outlook,
so in the above example, I can have Excel identify that Manager A needs to
process a screening for Employees W and X, and Manager B needs to process a
screening for Employee Z. I can send the customized emails out no problem,
but replying in Outlook means manually data entry of the responses.

I looked at Outlook forms, but it is not clear to me how (or if) I can
automate it the same way, where each manager would recieve email
notification, only for each employee that needs to be screened. In addition,
I would need to send out reminders to managers who do not comply within the
targeted time period.

Then I found out about Infopath. Our organization has a mix of Office2003
and Office 2007. I read a bunch of the newbie questions, but those seem to be
more about how to use Infopath, rather than /whether/ to use it for
particular scenarios. So here are some questions:

* I'm assuming I can link an Infopath form to a source database; can I
further screen it so that only managers with selected employees are notified?
I'd want almost all fields for that employee (name, location, phone, etc.) to
be populated from our HR database, leaving the managers only to enter the
date of the test, the results, and any comments.

* How much of this process can be automated in Infopath? Once we have the
list of employees (for example, a list of employee IDs), could we just feed
that in to Infopath and have the rest of it automatically happen?

* Can Infopath automatically send reminders (and flag the administrator) for
delinquent requests based on a ruleset (e.g. if a result isn't recieved
within 10 days)?

I welcome any information or advice; including whether this is too basic for
infopath (or too complex for a novice user to set up in infopath) meaning
should I go back to looking at outlook forms. My first step is to identify
which platform to use, then I can figure out how to implement within that
platform.

Thank you,
CG

 

[S.Y.M. Wong-A-Ton]

Your scenario is about gathering information, which makes it a perfect
candidate for using InfoPath. Furthermore, if your organization uses
SharePoint with InfoPath Forms Services, you could automate the entire
process using a combination of InfoPath, SharePoint, and workflow.

InfoPath Form Services will allow you to display InfoPath forms in a web
browser, which will not require users to have InfoPath installed on their PCs.

SharePoint would allow you to store all the forms in a central location (a
SharePoint form library) and through the use of views, display forms that
only pertain to the logged in manager. Forms of other managers would not be
displayed.

* I'm assuming I can link an Infopath form to a source database;

Yes, you can set up a Receive data connection to a database (or a web
service, which retrieves data from any non-SQL Server database) to retrieve
information from that database and display it in InfoPath. And yes, if your
database has a table with a link between employees and managers, you can use
this link to pre-populate data in InfoPath.

* How much of this process can be automated in Infopath?

The process has to be kicked off by someone by filling out an InfoPath form.
On the click of a button, you could for example submit an InfoPath form to a
SharePoint library and kick of a workflow. The workflow would then take care
of sending out reminders and monitoring the process for each InfoPath form
until the end.

* Can Infopath automatically send reminders

No. You need an external process to monitor InfoPath form data and send out
emails. You could use either a Windows Service or if you are using
SharePoint, a workflow.

Depending on the complexity of the workflows, you could implement them
without writing code in SharePoint Designer. If you require more complex
workflows, Visual Studio would be required.

What you would need to learn: InfoPath, SharePoint, InfoPath Forms Services,
workflow, SharePoint Designer, and perhaps Visual Studio workflow
development. It will be a pretty steep learning curve for anyone who is not
already familiar with these technologies.

Hope this helps.

 

[michael dupre]

great post, i would just add that if your form is based on a sample form, pre-existing XML Schema, database, or Web service, you can change the data type only for fields that you have added to the data source. You will not be able to change the data type of existing fields.