Microsoft Office Forms Server

Microsoft Office Forms Server is a server product built on Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services as an ASP.NET Version application. It enables users to fill out Microsoft Office InfoPath forms by using a Web browser instead of, or in addition to, the Office InfoPath client program. Like standard InfoPath forms, InfoPath forms published to the Microsoft Office Forms Server are based on Extensible Markup Language (XML).

Microsoft Office Forms Server allows the business analyst and/or IT to develop attractive forms for BPM solutions in a fraction of the time required to create traditional coded forms. The primary advantage it offers over the full InfoPath client software is that Microsoft Office Forms Server renders the form in a browser window and does not require that the Microsoft Office InfoPath to be installed on the desktop. The second advantage is that it executes the form on the server and downloads a smaller HTML based form similar to an ASP.NET form. As a result of not having the Microsoft Office InfoPath client, it is recommended that Microsoft Office Forms Server be used with AgilePoint BPMS solutions under the following conditions:

• Microsoft Office Forms Server licensing has been obtained or budgeted for the Microsoft SharePoint front end web servers.
• The form design is basic and can be created with a limited set of data controls.
• The form does not require Jscript for conditional presentation or data validation.
• The development team can support the use of managed code to create and maintain custom form functionality.
• JavaScript and cookies can be enabled on the client browser.
• Active forms in the Microsoft SharePoint document library can be limited to 2000 items at a time.Topic paragraph.