Microsoft Office

With Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007, you can create rich, dynamic forms that teams and organizations can use to gather, share, reuse, and manage information — improving collaboration and decision-making throughout your organization. Office InfoPath 2007 can help you gather information more effectively. Here are the top 10 ways Office InfoPath 2007 can help you extend the effectiveness of your business processes.

1. Deploy InfoPath forms as Microsoft Office Outlook e-mail messages.
With Office InfoPath 2007, you can deploy forms as Outlook e-mail messages, so colleagues can complete forms without leaving the familiar Outlook environment. After you’ve collected the information in Office Outlook 2007, you can export it to a Microsoft Office Excel spreadsheet or merge the data back to a single InfoPath form.

2. Extend business processes beyond the firewall.
Office InfoPath 2007 and InfoPath Forms Services make it easy to extend forms solutions beyond your firewall because you can complete forms using many different Web browsers and mobile devices.

3. Easily convert Microsoft Office Word documents and Excel spreadsheets to InfoPath forms.
By converting Word documents and Excel spreadsheets to InfoPath form templates, you can build data integrity, improve version control, and add structure to information gathering by converting legacy documents to rich InfoPath form templates.

4. Make complex form design easier.
Office InfoPath 2007 helps people build forms with a simple drag-and-drop interface and provides support for prebuilt template parts and shared data connections.

5. Create PDF or XPS records of your form data.
With the addition of a free plug-in, you can create a Portable Document Format file (PDF) or XML Paper Specification (XPS) version of your completed InfoPath form for archival and records management.1

1 You can save as a PDF or XPS file from a 2007 Microsoft Office system program only after you install an add-in. For more information, see Install and use a PDF or XPS add-in.

6. Master your forms workflow using Office InfoPath 2007 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.
Use the integrated workflow management tools in Office SharePoint Server 2007 to drive information-gathering processes efficiently.

7. Design a single form for Web browsers and Office InfoPath 2007 clients.
Office InfoPath 2007 includes a design checker to help ensure consistency for forms deployed to InfoPath Forms Services.

8. Enhance protection of important information in InfoPath form templates.
Office InfoPath 2007 includes support for information rights management to help protect forms from inappropriate usage and distribution.

9. Centralize forms management for the entire organization.
InfoPath Forms Services of Office SharePoint Server 2007 enables organizations to centrally manage electronic forms by providing access to only those users who have a secure connection.

10. Develop advanced forms solutions with Office InfoPath 2007 and Microsoft Visual Studio 2005.
Build InfoPath forms solutions by creating InfoPath projects hosted within Visual Studio 2005, so developers can build solutions using managed code and the Microsoft .NET Framework.