We went back and reviewed Asif Rehmani’s video tutorial introduction to InfoPath 2010 with our Office 365 SharePoint E3 plan account to note any/all differences between the environment presented in the video and realities for SharePoint online.

The intended audience for this video tutorial includes power users, citizen developers, administrators, developers and architects.

In fact we noted no points of difference. Nonetheless, some procedures do require some further mention.

The first of these relates to the procedure for naming fields. As is noted in the video, for each control added to an InfoPath 2010 form, a field will be produced which can be used for several future purposes (for example, to serve as a site column for lists in a SharePoint Server 2010 Team Site). Our video tutorial recommends that unique names be given for each of these fields, which makes complete sense when one recognizes that the same controls will, in all likelihood, be used repeatedly from form to form. Therefore, it makes sense to rename each of the fields with a unique label to ensure that the accompanying data will be processed correctly and as required.

What is not noted in this specific video tutorial (though the point is made clearly in several other videos in this series) is that unique labels must conform to InfoPath 2010 string syntax. We found this point out when we attempted to replace “field1” with “Employee Name.” The system instructed us that InfoPath 2010 text string syntax does not permit the use of a blank space between terms. We renamed the field “EmployeeName” with complete success.

The second area where more explanation may prove helpful, relates to publishing the form to a SharePoint Online Team Site. Asif Rehmani alludes to this possibility at the conclusion of this first 9min video on InfoPath 2010. However, he does not actually demonstrate publishing in this video, but does so in a video that appears later in the series. Bottom line, we do not recommend that viewers go ahead and publish the sample form until Asif Rehmani specifically directs viewers to do so in a later video. If you have any questions about this video, the complete set of InfoPath 2010 tutorials that we offer, or SharePoint Online, please contact us at (630) 786-7026, or contact us via email to further a discussion about this offer. Of course we are happy to speak about your SharePoint development plans, as well.

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