InfoPath alternatives for designing SharePoint Forms

As a SharePoint consultants, I usually get few queries on what is the best form designing options in SharePoint on premise or SharePoint online. After Microsoft declared there will be No new version of InfoPath will come in future, lots of people are asking what are the alternative options of InfoPath?

InfoPath is one of the most used forms development tool in SharePoint. By using this tool you can easily create complex electronic forms without using any code or very less code. As a developer with little knowledge you can add required validation rules, conditional formatting required in the form, you can pull data from various data sources and can show in the form easily.

 

End users also can fill out the form directly in the browser without installing InfoPath in their local system. InfoPath was quite popular even if it has few well known limitations like mobile versions of the forms are not user friendly. But after Microsoft introduced that InfoPath 2013 is the latest version of InfoPath and there will not be any further release, it is necessary to look for a perfect alternative of InfoPath for form design in SharePoint. Just to let you know that InfoPath is supported in SharePoint 2016 and will be supported in SharePoint 2019 the upcoming SharePoint on premise version. According to Microsoft InfoPath form service in Office 365 is supported until further notice.

One of the alternative is to develop custom solutions using server-side controls as a farm solution for SharePoint 2013/2016. Here you may need tools like visual studio 2015/2017. And for Office 365 SharePoint online you can use HTML, css and JavaScript object model to design forms and to save data into SharePoint. But this require time, development effort and development cost. Surly this will take more time and effort compared to InfoPath.

 

InfoPath alternatives for designing SharePoint Forms

One of the other alternative can think of is PowerApps which is again is not a direct alternative to InfoPath.

 

 

The last option you can go for is to use any third party products. There are lots of 3rd party products available but as a we should choose one which we can use to develop forms easily with less technical knowledge, which can provide some additional benefits apart from just form design and mostly importantly which is cost effective.

 

Some 3rd party tools are good for form design but the cost is too high which is not worth money always.

 

I was going through few 3rd party forms like K2, Nintex, kwizcom forms, Infowise ultimate forms etc. I found Infowise ultimate forms really very useful. Compare to InfoPath these tools provides various other things not just form design.

Infowise is fully no code solutions and you can develop rich business applications easily using browser only without using any tool. They supports various wide range of browsers like IE, Chrome, Mozilla, Safari, Opera etc. You will be able to create forms with tabs easily which is one of the basic requirement in any small, medium or large organizations.

 

Apart from forms, you can also implement business logic by using process without creating any workflows. You can also use various actions to connect to external applications like Skype, Twitter, Google plus, Email etc.

I have just explained here two widely used key features of Infowise ultimate forms here: Reporting & Printing. Apart from this there are lots of benefits and feature available which we will discuss in another article.

Reporting is another great feature of Infowise ultimate forms. By using reporting you can make SharePoint list with color coding, icons etc. which will improve visualization of your list data. Apart from this you can also display your data in calendars and charts. You can easily create visually attractive dashboards for your business users.

Printing SharePoint list data is a huge task in terms of alignment, how it will appear, it is not at all easy. But by using Infowise you can get a nice look, clean tabular view of the list data for printing. Apart from print you can also download the data in pdf format. Another important feature is you can email to other users as an attachment from the browser itself. Neither it will open your outlook or any email in browser.

 

Not only the full list, you can also select any individual item from the list and can print the item, or download as pdf or you can email to users. This is really a handy feature for the business users inside organization.

 

You can download a trail version from Infowise Ultimate Forms and can try out the functionalities. We will discuss some more features in details in other articles.