Monday, May 7, 2012

Multiple Ways to deploy InfoPath form templates to SharePoint

You can perform an InfoPath SharePoint deployment of form templates in one of 3 ways:



•To a SharePoint Form Library.

•As a SharePoint content type.

•As an administrator-approved form template.

1. Deploy an InfoPath form template to a SharePoint form library



The simplest and quickest way to deploy an InfoPath form template is to a SharePoint form library.



You can deploy an InfoPath form template in one of two ways to a SharePoint form library:



Create a SharePoint form library from within InfoPath when publishing the form template to SharePoint.



Pre-create a SharePoint form library in SharePoint and then update the InfoPath form template of an existing SharePoint form library from within InfoPath.



Here are the detailed steps:



1. Browse to the SharePoint site you need to create the Forms Library.



2. Click in Site Actions -> Create -> Select “Form Library” under Libraries Section.



3. Enter the Name and the Description for the Form, Click on “Create”



4. Once the Form Library is created -> Select Settings -> Form Library Settings



5. Select “Advanced Settings” .



6. Select “Yes” for Allow Management of Content Types.



7. For “Browse-enabled Documents” -> Select “Display as Web Page”. This option is beneficial when users do not have InfoPath 2007 installed on their local machine. The Form will open in the browse if this option is selected.



8. Click OK



2. Deploy an InfoPath form template as a SharePoint content type



SharePoint content types provide several benefits one of which is having the ability to reuse a single content type across several sites and document libraries.



Where InfoPath and SharePoint are concerned, deploying an InfoPath form template as a content type provides the following benefits:



Being able to deploy an InfoPath form template once and then reuse this template in more than one SharePoint Form Library.



Being able to define several InfoPath form templates on a single SharePoint Form Library.



3. Deploy a template as an admin-approved InfoPath form template



You are forced to deploy an InfoPath browser-compatible form template as an administrator-approved template, whenever you write .NET managed code (C# or Visual Basic) in the form template using either VSTA or Visual Studio, and want to browser-enable the form template when you deploy it to SharePoint.



Administrator-approved deployment of InfoPath form templates to SharePoint is by far the most involved (as it requires the most steps) method of deploying InfoPath form templates to SharePoint, so it is recommended that you consider your InfoPath form template design carefully if you want to avoid this deployment method.




No comments:

Post a Comment