As
Microsoft has announced on their blog, Infopath will be discontinued after the
version 2013. This means the next version of SharePoint will not support the
Infopath Forms Services. However they are already investigating in an alternative.
This will be necessary for several reasons.
Even though
Infopath Forms Services wasn’t the most popular function in SharePoint, I do
know a few customers of mine who use it. So it will be interesting to see how
the existing forms can be transferred into the new functions. On the other hand
Infopath can be used to change the SharePoint Forms or the Document Information
Panel. So talking about retiring Infopath sounds like nothing, but it will have
quite an impact on the next version of SharePoint.
I don’t
know why Microsoft is pulling Infopath from the market and myself I wasn’t
unhappy with the tool. You could create some nice forms and use it in your
business processes. However they might have had more success if the Infopath Filler
would have be free of charge, like the Adobe Reader is. But that is just speculation.
So, let’s wait what the developers will come up with to replace Infopath and rejoice
for all the projects in the future to convert existing Infopath Forms.
