InfoPath Form in SharePoint 2013: Part 1 (Forms)

Introduction

Hello everyone, in this article we will see InfoPath forms in SharePoint 2013.

So without taking much of your time, let's go for it.

As we are all aware of, InfoPath is an important part in our Development in SharePoint. We need not develop a custom farm to some extent since InfoPath fulfills much of the customization a developer requires. InfoPath is a quick approach towards many of the queries that cannot be done by OOB Forms.

Thereby making it as one of the good tools for SharePoint.

SharePoint 2013 InfoPath forms are not as promising as we thought of. It is still not compatible with Google Chrome and other browsers and you can only try to edit it through Internet Explorer.

Let's see what it got for us.

Go to your list and on the top ribbon you will find the icon as shown below “Customize in InfoPath”.

• Click on it.
  
  
  
  
• You will see the dialog box below. Click on Ok.
  
  
  
  
• You will be asked to log into Office 365 or your SharePoint 2013 web browser login.
  
  
  
  
• Once you are logged in, welcome to the InfoPath form in SharePoint 2013.
  
  
• As in the screen below you will see nothing about the look and feel that has been changed in the new version.
  
  

Top Ribbon

Let's see one by one all the components InfoPath is holding. Starting with the top ribbon I will discuss all the functionalities from left to right.



All the functionalities have been divided depending on their categories.

Under Home

• Clipboard
  
  • Cut
    
  • Copy
    
  • Paste
    
  • Format Painter
    

Format Text and Font Styles to design your labels and form fields.

• Controls

Since we can something all the following controls that can be added directly to the form without adding them as columns to the list.

As in the screen below all the controls can be dragged and dropped to the form.

Input objects Container:

• Rules
  
  • Add Rules
    
  • Manage rules

As in the screen below, rules can be added and managed. Here you can set up Validation, Formatting and Action. It is the same behavior as SharePoint 2010.

• Editing
  
  • Spelling
    
  • Find
    
  • Select All
    

Here you can have a check on your spellings, a search option and a click to select all the controls.

• Preview: Then we have preview to have a view of your created and designed form.

Under Insert

• Tables
  
  • Table Design
    
  • Custom Table
    

Here we have a default table design as well as an option to customize the table.

• Illustration
  
  • Picture
    
  • Clip Art
    

Here you can insert a picture and clip art to the form.

• Links
  
  • Hyperlink: You can insert a Hyperlink here on the form.
    
    
• Page Format
  
  • Page Break : an option here for a page break.
    
  • Horizontal Line: an option to insert a straight line.
    
    
• Symbol
  
  • Here you can insert an symbol.

Under Page Design

• View
  
  • Default View
    
    Here you can select the view of the form you need to design like New, edit and view.
    
    
  • Properties
    
    You can click on the control and see its properties.
    
    
  • New View
    
    You can create a new view here.
    
    
  • Delete
    
    You can delete it here.
    
    
  • Page Setup
    
    You can set up your page here.
    

• Page Layout Templates:
  
  It contains default templates of various page layouts.
  
  
• Themes: You have many new themes here to provide a good look and feel to the form.
  
• Header and Footer: Here you can configure your header and footer on the form or page as default values.

Under Data

Under Data you have the following.

SharePoint Form Data

• Show Fields: Here it will show all the fields.
  
  
• Refresh Fields
  
  
• Resource Files
  
  Add resource files by clicking on Add and add the files.
  
  
  
  
• Default Values
  
  

• Get External Data
  
  
  • From Web Service
    
    
    
    
  • From SharePoint List: Getting connected to data by SharePoint list.
    
  • From SharePoint Server: Getting connected to data by SharePoint server.
    
  • From Other Sources: You can also get connected to other resources from a database and from XML Files.
    
    
    
    
  • Data Connections: You can manage data connections here.

• Submit Form
  
  
  • To email: You can submit the form as an email by configuring the form below.
    
    
    
    
  • To SharePoint Library: To submit the form directly to a library.
  • To Other Options: you can submit the forms to a web service or a SharePoint server.
    
    
    
    
• Submit Options
  
  
  
  
  • Here you can also configure the options for what you have chosen, like web service, email, list or server.

• Rules
  
  
  • Form Load
    
    Here you can add up rules you want the form to do while loading.
    
    
  • Form Submit
    
    Here you can add up rules you want the form to do while submitting.
    
    
  • Rule Inspector
    
    You can inspect your code and see all validations on a single page.
    
    
    
    
  • Format Painter

• Roles
  
  
  • User Roles
    
    Here you can add up rules you want the form to do when a specific user tries to login, like hiding or showing controls based on the rules.

Center Form

The center part of the InfoPath Designer contains the form with its controls associated with it. Here the fields and the controls can be dragged to the form directly here and it will be available when you publish it.

As we can see the table having the left part as the labels and on the right we have their controls.



Right Part of the form

Here as in our screen below we can see the fields present in the list and along with that we can see their advance view on the right.

Clicking on them we can directly configure the tools, set up default values, rules and other functionalities.

• Manage Connections:
  
  As in the screen below you can manage the connections to your form. How?
  
  
• Click on Add.
  
  
  
  
• You can either create a new connection to submit or receive data or use one from your servers.
  
  

• The following are the services available to users:
  
  
  • SOAP Web service
    
  • REST Web service
    
  • SharePoint Library or List
    
  • Database ( Microsoft SQL Server Only)
    
  • XML Document
    
    

This article might be helpful to a new user but not to the experienced ones; as we saw, we do not have much new functionality in this new version as if it is like SharePoint 2010 attached with 2013.

But let's see in my next blog, I will be covering the form options to publish and other form settings since this article was mainly on the title of the InfoPath Form. Let’s see what is in there, maybe something new.

Until then Keep Learning! Cheers.