Forms Designer for Sharepoint Services
// February 14th, 2010 // 1 Comment » // Uncategorized
Many of our clients operate in the small to medium entreprise (SME) and thus either make the investment into Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server (MOSS) whilst many opt for Windows Sharepoint Services (WSS) as a pilot or proof of concept.
The differential always comes down to a couple of deal breakers:
1) The extent that search will play a role in their organisation
2) The role of the automation of business processes within the organisation
When deciding between MOSS and WSS, for most organisations using Sharepoint 2007 as an intranet, it is normally the deal breakers mentioned above which entice them to go MOSS 2007 or WSS 3.0. When WSS 3.0 was released intially back in 2006, the difference between MOSS 2007 and WSS 3.0 was quite obvious. But as each of the above have been implemented, sharepoint services companies have slowly developed small features to make up the ground between the two. Take Stramit’s Masterpage Picker which gives one the masterpage and branding type functionality of MOSS with a simple feature or Bamboo’s Mashpoint allowing WSS to take advantage of BDC-like functionality. Im not saying that WSS with a couple of codeplex features will replicate the functionality of MOSS, things like Excel Services, Information Management Policies, Search and Navigation. But what am i saying is that WSS can provide a very rich interface for intranet and extranet deployments.
With the advent of Microsoft Search Server Express, search has become extremely powerful in WSS allowing organisations to use WSS to search Sharepoint Content, Website Content, Fileshares and Exhange Public folders (no people search which is at times a real make or break). Nonetheless i feel it still provides a rich functionality which makes me think that Infopath Forms Services is the real deal breaker. How many of you have used Sharepoint Designer to manipulate Sharepoint List Forms? Ever added a new column and then had a look if your customized form inherits the new column? Ever tried to create business rules around a form? For everything that Infopath provides us, i find that we suggest MOSS time and time again purely on the basis of automating business process within a organisation.
Many would disagree with the above, and yes, there are many features which MOSS adds where WSS does not compete, and theres no doubt, given a client has the budget, id suggest MOSS everyday. However id still love to have the “why do you suggest MOSS over WSS” discussion with some of our colleagues at Sharepint, especially to cash strapped SME businesses.
The crux of my post
Infopath has an almost complete set of functionality available to browser-enabled Sharepoint forms. The ability to “import” and “export” data from Line of Business Systems, addition of business rules and branding of Forms makes it the only option to publish forms with rich functionality to Sharepoint. Why is it that Infopath is the only player in the Forms department. There are multiple workflow providers, Nintex and Blackpoint to name a few. They make designing more complex workflows slightly easier to the average business user or sharepoint consultant and certainly have helped our clients save many hours in the solution development lifecycle. With the business process automation market almost captured, why is it that there isnt a forms provider who can compete with the Infopath juggernaut?
It would certainly lead me to recommend WSS to many cash-strapped SME’s depending on the price or licensing model and with the strong built-in workflow capability of WSS, it seems a no-brainer…. or maybe not?
