Those day to day forms in your school

[localzuk]

I am in the middle of a self-started project to replace all our random bit of paper forms with a single unified service hosting all of them electronically.

 

Has anyone else done this? If so, what sort of setup have you used?

 

I am going down the Sharepoint/InfoPath route, with workflows to handle the forms to go to the right people etc... But there are a number of ways to do this, so I'm interested to see what others have done.

[rich_tech]

I know from what we were looking at in work before I went off on Paternity leave here, the forms for time off in work for courses/medical leave/appointments were being automated.

 

We were looking at using PDFs for some forms with an option at the bottom to submit the filled in form to an email address whom the two people who deal with it then share for access to the submissions (it can be setup from what I recall when creating the form with Adobe Acrobat with a submit button sending it as email to an address you specify), @garethedmondson was looking at it more specifically than me with another member of our schools administration team and he may be able to fill you in if there was anything special, but I think it was fairly straightforward from when I was with him as he was doing it before I went off on leave.

 

Rich

[Seb1780]

I am in the middle of a self-started project to replace all our random bit of paper forms with a single unified service hosting all of them electronically.

 

Has anyone else done this? If so, what sort of setup have you used?

 

I am going down the Sharepoint/InfoPath route, with workflows to handle the forms to go to the right people etc... But there are a number of ways to do this, so I'm interested to see what others have done.

 

Many moons ago I had my (then) pet code-slinger set up something in PHP/MySQL utilising a retired server to host it all. It started with absence forms, leave requests and other HR-type documents but expanded to include expenses claims, CAPEX submissions, business plans, Performance Management reports etc etc etc. Heck, we even got the thing talking to our Finance / Payroll / HR software to automate the payment of expenses and the management of holidays and sickness.

 

We had stuff built into it so that, as far as possible, no paper copies were ever needed. For example, the expenses claim system had the ability to calculate the mileage allowance from the start and finish mileage; it worked out the VAT; it determined who was to authorise it based on the person submitting the claim and the amount claimed. It then generated a CSV file for our Payroll staff to load into the Finance / Payroll / HR which in one fell swoop updated ledgers, reimbursed the claimant through BACS and produced a report for the Main Board.

 

But that was in business, where time was money and the benefits of no paper we easy to sell. In my current role we still fill in forms based on nth generation copies of documents first drawn up when Adam was a lad.

 

*sigh*

[timbo343]

I would have thought infopath would be ideal but i have heard MS are dropping this from their suite.

 

I was asked to look for a cheap questionnaire creation software for catering but couldnt really find anything and survey monkey and sites like this were ok for short questionnaires but then had to pay for more questions... then i stumbled upon this site http://esurv.org. i created a form/ questionnaire and it did everything i wanted it to do, the trouble is it never took off but thats my recommendation.

[Arthur]

I would have thought infopath would be ideal but I have heard MS are dropping this from their suite.

InfoPath isn't included with Office 2016. It has already been dropped.

 

• windowsitpro.com/microsoft-office/reminder-infopath-not-included-office-2016
  
• blogs.office.com/2014/01/31/update-on-infopath-and-sharepoint-forms
  

survey monkey and sites like this were ok for short questionnaires but then had to pay for more questions.

Did you try Google Forms? That's completely free.

 

www.howtogeek.com/202008/create-a-web-based-survey-the-easy-way-with-google-forms

Edited January 8, 2016 by Arthur

[Bob_the_Goon]

I have plans to look into this over the next 12 months.I'm hoping that MS PowerApps will be ready when I start. I believe that your school needs an O365 subscription for this.

[localzuk]

InfoPath is EOL, sure, but its also supported until 2023. So it seems like a reasonable option still.

[7UD9]

I decided this morning to review the paper forms used for many of these things, my first place to look will be SharePoint as we have an unused install sat doing nothing at the moment (it was to be our VLE but we went with something else).

 

I'll be taking a look into the workflows and approvals first, in theory it should do everything we want.

 

I'll post back when I know more.

[Skibby]

I did something similar a few years back using InfoPath. The forms I made were all pretty simple, order forms, leave of absence, PL requests etc. Reduced the amount of paper forms here so thats good.

I found this site to be helpful...

Forums - InfoPath Dev

 

Like I said, I wasn't doing anything too mental with my forms, just real simple stuff like adding up numbers, submitting to budget holders for approval, and storing the forms in a sharepoint document library for archive purposes.

[Arthur]

InfoPath is EOL, sure, but it's also supported until 2023. So it seems like a reasonable option still.

I was thinking more of issues with InfoPath 2013 co-existing with future versions of Office.

 

For example, you can't currently use the C2R (App-V) version of Office 2016 alongside a MSI-based copy of Office 2013. I'm sure there will be additional issues that crop up between between now and 2023 when you mix and match different versions of Office.

 

https://support.office.com/en-ie/article/Office-installed-using-Click-to-Run-and-Window-Installer-on-same-computer-isn-t-supported-30775ef4-fa77-4f47-98fb-c5826a6926cd

 

Click-to-Run is the technology used to install Office 365 subscription and most other Office 2013 and Office 2016 products. Windows Installer technology (MSI) is used to install the volume license editions of Office, like Microsoft Office Professional Plus and Microsoft Office Standard.

 

Unfortunately, you can't have Office products of the same version (like 2013 or 2016) that use two different installation technologies installed on the same computer. This also applies to standalone applications like Visio, Project, Skype for Business, or OneDrive for Business.

 

You also can't have two different versions of Click-to-Run applications on the same computer. For example, you can't have Office 2013 and Office 2016 applications installed using Click-to-Run on the same computer. For more information, see "Stop, you should wait to install Office 2016" error.

[Divaldo]

We currently have LOADS of forms that we have made in InfoPath that submit or retrieve data to SharePoint. Things like leave of absence requests, school trip management, reprographics requests that allow users to attach a file and it works out the cost, a form for raising a purchase order and having it authorised... loads of things.

 

We are looking for alternatives to InfoPath though, to start re-developing them all another way.

 

It all works seamlessly at the moment with Office 2013 and SharePoint 2013 set up on site. However, early testing with Office 2016 has made us realise that since it doesn't include InfoPath, all of our forms must be InfoPath web forms and embedded in a SharePoint page.

 

Some of our more complicated forms, like the repro one, are reliant on the InfoPath client being installed. The web form simply doesn't include all the functionality we need for the maths and file attachments.

 

If we install Office 2016 with InfoPath 2013, we get lots of strange errors, or password prompts, or things not quite working as smoothly as we'd like, extra clicks here and there etc.

 

If you want to save yourself some work in the future, I'd advise against InfoPath. Microsoft seem to be doing their best to phase it out sooner rather than later.

 

I'm still struggling to find a replacement without having to learn asp.net, as it looks like that's my only option at the moment :-(

[Divaldo]

[Meldrew]

We've recently gone down the road of Adobe PDF forms. They are really quite sophisticated, but we do already have CS6 available to make the forms.

 

Meldrew

[7UD9]

We've recently gone down the road of Adobe PDF forms. They are really quite sophisticated, but we do already have CS6 available to make the forms.

 

Meldrew

 

Can you point me in the right direction? We have CS6...

[Meldrew]

Can you point me in the right direction? We have CS6...

 

Where we started was taking an existing form as a plain and simple PDF, ideally a computer generated version (ie printed to PDF) but a good quality scanned version might just work too. Load this into Adobe PDF Pro and under the toolbar at the right, there's (from memory) a forms tab. Somewhere in there, you can create a PDF form from the currently loaded document. Acrobat scans the document for field like things via OCR and creates text fields mating what it sees. To this you can add drop down boxes, radio buttons, etc and buttons. A button can then have a 'submit' functionality which can either email the completed form (it uses your default mail client to which you have to click the send button, although the email address is filled in) or upload to a webserver. I used the latter option with a custom upload facility that checked for an email address in the url and emailed the form to the specified email address (so the place to submit specified in the PDF form was http://[email protected] ) and this skipped out the stage where the user had to press the send button.

 

Either way, the destination recipient receives a full copy of the PDF, all complete with information entered. At the moment, the form is technically editable by the recipient, but some embedded javascript should fix that, which I'm working on.

 

Meldrew.