Forum Discussion
Enabling InfoPath for SharePoint Online
We were thinking about enabling InfoPath on our SharePoint Online platform.
The attached message appears which caused some concern.
It states that O365 will support InfoPath forms through 2015.
When you go to the web site that is suggested, it takes you to the original InfoPath announcement. Which includes that for O365 - InfoPath will be support until further notice.
So was this 2015... or is this a typo?
Has anyone enabled InfoPath on SharePoint Online? If so can you share your experiences?
- not exactly an answer but we have tried many alternatives to infpath, nintex, nfowise, powerapps, but so far the best was nintex forms.
I agree with a lot of things said here. InfoPath has been incredibly valuable for years. It's value is now diminishing the longer it goes without new development. PowerApps is awesome - but it's not a feature by feature replacement. The window doesn't have to be all the way up or all the way down.
PowerApps can be frustrating for people like me with a long-standing InfoPath habit. Many times I find it helpful to re-focus on the required outcome rather than on a required feature. Frequently, if I stop drawing up the InfoPath solution in my head, I can more creatively use the new things PowerApps offers and solve the problem a different way.
One strategy I've seen work well with organizations that are going with a hybrid environment is to allow InfoPath on-prem, but not allow it online. InfoPath is not evil, it's not dangerous to use, and it's not redundant. Nothing bad happens if you start building InfoPath forms in your online environment - but you're creating work for yourself down the line. I do believe MS will eventually stop extending the date. This kind of split strategy isn't possible if your online-only, but it is helpful if you're going hybrid. It creates kind of a gate where you can still use InfoPath on-prem, but a trigger that forces you to consider PowerApps or something more modern for things that you want to put online.
I am a little disappointed that nobody answered your actual question. I pasted part of the text from the link (http://aka.ms/ipfs) in your screenshot at the bottom of my reply.
This is not to say I disagree with learning and using powerapps, I don't. It is clearly the future. However, I also think we are in the business of providing productivity solutions that work for our customers (in my case internal) now. If you view the Microsoft Product Lifecycle page https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/search/16653 you will see that Mainstream support for InfoPath 2013 is 7/13/2021 and the extended support is 7/14/2018.
I spent many hours developing solutions in InfoPath and SPD. I see no reason why I shouldn't use those tools if I, or an internal customer, has a modest need with a short lifecycle. However if I was to suggest an approach by someone who had to learn either one, I would suggest PowerApps since that is the right place to invest in skill development.
That said - Where do you enable it in SharePoint Online? Are you talking about the SharePoint Admin Center | Infopath | Browser-enabled Form Templates? I have both "Allow users to browser-enable form templates" and "Render form templates that are browser-enabled by users" enabled. I have not built anything as complicated as I used to in SP2010, but I have used infopath to customize list forms and they worked fine. It was a fun (to me) quick way to make a pretty form, with some field rules that satisfied the needs of an internal customer. They only needed the solution for 6 months, so it wasn't a long term investment.
Here is an update from 1/31/2014 - I am going to take MS at its word and I have not heard the "until further notice" message that says the InfoPath is no longer supported in O365. Has someone else? Did I miss the communication?
https://blogs.office.com/en-us/2014/01/31/update-on-infopath-and-sharepoint-forms/
As part of the update shared around the Evolution of SharePoint and the next SharePoint Server on-premises release, we are also updating the timelines for removal of InfoPath Forms Services components of SharePoint and SharePoint Online. Specifically, InfoPath Forms Services will be included in the next on-premises release of SharePoint Server 2016, as well as being fully supported in Office 365 until further notice. Customers will be able to confidently migrate to SharePoint Server 2016 knowing that their InfoPath forms will continue to work in their on-premises environments, as well as in Office 365.
The InfoPath 2013 application remains the last version to be released and will work with SharePoint Server 2016.
"Who has the laser pointer, and who are the cats"
Thank you Gregory Frick. I appreciate the updated lifecycle information. We did go ahead and enabled InfoPath on our SP Online platform. We are not going to promote it, however it will be there for users that have that comfort level. Now on to learning Power Aps!! I hope it will become second nature like InfoPath was to me.
- I will join you on the path to PowerApps mastery. I have to remember that I spent many hours with InfoPath and I even taught a couple of classes on it. I am sure I will have to exert a similar level of effort with PowerApps.
- Hi Lori, based on your usecase, PowerApps and Microsoft Forms might be a good option to look into instead of Infopath. Here is a guideline for starting with it. PowerApps: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powerapps/guided-learning/ Microsoft Flow: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/flow/guided-learning/get-started hth, Martina
Thank you everyone for your feedback.
We are going to use PowerApps, however since InfoPath is still available we figured it would be much easier to create a few forms this way as InfoPath is a more familiar tool to our users at this time. It's been very misleading when you read statements such as "You should continue to use InfoPath technology". Either way, it sounds like it is not a good idea to use InfoPath anymore.
Regarding Microsoft Flow, not sure how much we will use this as it appears to be more of a personal workflow application. Most of our workflows are set up by a site administrator or site owner, on a list/library for multi level approvals, permissions settings, adding users to AD groups, notifying groups of users, updating items that meet certain criteria, in which all users with access can start these workflows.
Or am I misunderstanding the use of Microsoft Flow?Hi Lori,
Good move to get into PowerApps.
Regarding Flow - a user or an admin creates the flow - but its available for all on that list or library - so not really a Site workflow - more of a list workflow. The key thing once the user creates it is to share ownership of the Flow to other admins to reduce any issues downstream in terms of editing it.
You can do a fair bit with flow - somethings like impersonation steps or have a flow run once a year type thing arent really there yet - but a fair bit is. So worth investigating.
Why do you think you want to use InfoPath? doing this will probably be a major headache. PowerApps is going to a be better choice in almost all scenarios.
Dean_Gross Reason for using InfoPath still is because PowerApps licenses are expensive. For a company that has warehouse workers and do not need an E3 license but need access to a form, IP still works for free.
- It is now 2020 and I can guarantee you this is not the case.
Dean_Gross Hello!
We need to create complex forms with entries displayed from multiple lists.
At the same time, some portion of the form in edit mode while some in new item mode.
Our list also has more than 2000 entries.
Can you suggest something for this?
Current forms are on-prem, we need to build this functionality on SP Online
Thanks,
