HttpCode

The next integration method that I want to discuss is the collection of data. As a web developer you’ve no doubt been asked to create a form that does X a number of times, you might even have created some tools to aide in this, it’s pretty common. So now that you’ve moved across to the dark side of MOSS development we need to break your thinking, if you want to create a form, first have a look at Microsoft InfoPath, InfoPath files can be published to MOSS running the InfoPath Forms Service.

The benefits to this approach are:

• Less development – I won’t go as far to say that even the worst coder on your team could use this tool, that guy can’t do anything, but for simple stuff it’s not too hard to get your head around.
• Central management of forms – You can easily keep track of your forms, how many times have you written a form that has already been developed? But seriously because each form is a content type, you can manage the metadata of a form from a single location, regardless of how many libraries you’ve added the content type to.
• Can easily use existing MOSS features - This is the biggest feature, you can easily add workflow capabilities or publish your results to a list, I bet most of your forms currently just send an email and get written to a database.

The disadvantages are:

• It requires a different way of thinking - This might not be a bad thing, but some large organisations have teams of programmers who spend 90% of their time doing some sort of forms based programming. It might be a hard sell for these guys.
• Anonymous access might cause some issues – I’ve seen a few issues around anonymous access to forms, it’s by no means a show stopper, but you should think about this before you deploy.

I think the benefits far out weigh the disadvantages, in any case hopefully the next time you hear a developer say they’ll create a web part for a form, you’ll think about it a little more carefully.