Novotronix provide a SharePoint Support & Mentoring Package to a number of our clients. For many of our clients their SharePoint environment is an essential part of their organisation. Therefore, when a problem arises within their SharePoint system our clients require a quick and effective solution to the problem. Clients also take out this package to help grow and improve their SharePoint system through our mentoring service. This service enables the client to call upon us and then we can mentor them through the development of their system.

The benefits to an organisation who take out a Support & Mentoring Package with us are:

• We will provide you with a free initial health check for your SharePoint platform. This will report on any existing issues in the SharePoint environment. This benefits your company as we can identify any issues and then deal with them accordingly, ensuring your SharePoint environment is running efficiently.
• With the support contract we will perform a platform health check every 6 months. This includes tasks such as checking the platform is running as it should be, and also checking the logs to make sure nothing has gone wrong. The benefit of this is so that the platform improves performance and also reduces unexpected down time for end users.
• Taking out a support contract with us can also benefit your existing IT staff. Our specialised resources and experienced staff will compliment your existing IT team and provide a mentoring a training service.
• You also gain access to the skills and services of our highly trained specialists who can ensure your support incidents will be handled quickly and effectively, meaning your platform can be restored to full working capability as quickly as possible, minimizing disruption for end users.
• Our support service is not only there for when something goes wrong. It is also there to help with your SharePoint progression. This benefits you because as the SharePoint platform grows it can improve business performance and efficiency.

Before I start this blog I would just like to say that I am a newcomer to the world of Microsoft Office InfoPath (however Novotronix have extensive experience with the application) and therefore this may not be as technical as you would like. However, through my own limited experiences with InfoPath I am aiming in this blog to enlighten people on its many uses.

In the simplest terms InfoPath is an application used for designing, dispensing, filling and submitting forms. There are two programs on the Microsoft Office package for InfoPath; InfoPath designer and InfoPath Filler. InfoPath designer is where all the magic of designing and developing the form happens. Here you can design your own template forms or use the existing templates. InfoPath Filler is therefore then used to fill in client based forms. However, if InfoPath forms services are being used then the form can be completed in the browser.

Microsoft InfoPath can be very useful for a business when dealing with its form document management and filling forms out. Using InfoPath on a SharePoint Site you replace all of your paper based forms. So now if employees or clients need to fill out a form they can go onto the SharePoint site, go into the forms folder and choose the form they need to fill out. Also once the form is filled out it again goes into a separate list with all the other forms (each type of form could have its own list) to be kept for reference at a later date. This would help form management as all the forms would be in one place on the SharePoint site, instead of thousands of paper based forms all over the place in different filing cabinets and offices.

There are many benefits on offer to a business if they have InfoPath installed and are using it. Firstly using InfoPath can save a business money in paper, and also storing the paper documents. Furthermore when using InfoPath it gives the business the ability to pull data from other systems, which can reduce costs and improves functionality/accuracy. A big benefit of having InfoPath is its ease of use. Fewer mistakes are made from having to re-key in information.

My benefits of using InfoPath:

1) In my opinion one of the biggest benefits of using InfoPath is its ease of use when designing and constructing forms. In the making of this blog I played around with InfoPath Designer and had a go at designing some of my own forms. I found it easy going thanks to the ribbon interface, which increases the efficiency and speed of making forms. In InfoPath Designer the forms you create are completely unique with options to have a company logo and company colours on the forms.

2) As I mentioned before I am no developer and because of this I worried that when using InfoPath Designer I would struggle as I came to some of the more complex aspects of the form. However, I was able to create a sophisticated form without writing code. I was able to use out-of-the-box rules, improves rules management and prebuilt layout sections to quickly create a form. Also I could add validation, formatting, or use actions on the form.

3) One aspect of InfoPath that I think is significant is you can create your forms based on SharePoint lists. The data in your SharePoint lists can automatically generate a form with all the SharePoint list fields, reducing time to create a form.

4) In addition to this I also found that when publishing it only took a single click. As I finished designing my form one of my worries was that publishing it would be a long and complicated process. However, I found that all it took was one click. This furthermore expressed the point of ease of use to me.

5) A further benefit of using InfoPath is the use of InfoPath Filler. This can either be used via the browser or using the software version. I think having InfoPath Filler, uniquely designed to fill out the forms you have just created, is a very useful feature and again increases its ease of use. With InfoPath Filler the way you fill in forms becomes cleaner and much simpler.