10 Best New Features in Microsoft Infopath 2010

Microsoft InfoPath 2010 allows great features to address the data quality issues. It has been designed to make information gathering more efficient by delivering electronic forms that reach the necessary participants easily, reduce redundant data entry and improve the quality of data collected. Infopath 2010 features fluent user interface that allows the creation of powerful, interactive forms, without having to write any code. Office users can customize SharePoint list forms and add custom layouts and rules to validate the data with just a few clicks and take them offline in Sharepoint Workspace. Professionals can create custom forms for document workflows and Office Business Applications that include managed code, digital signatures and connect to line of business data.

1. Quickly design forms with easy to use tools

Features to help you create quickly and easily create forms include our new Fluent UI, out-of-the-box rules, improved rules management, pre-built layout sections, and varied styles. The New tab in the Designer Backstage allows you with the available form templates that you can choose from. The majority of templates start with the default layout table.

2. Pre-built page and sections layouts for more attractive forms

Laying out the form and making it more attractive is easier than ever. You can insert a pre-built page layout to get a form structure. Insert some sections of the layout into the page layout and try building your form.

3. New and Improved controls

Infopath 2010 adds a number of new controls

• Picture buttons
• Hyperlink capabilities
• Date and time picker
• Person/Group pickers – Updated
• Signature Line (Editor Only)

There are new supports in browser control

• Bulleted, numbered, and plain lists
• Multiple selection list boxes
• Combo boxes
• Choice group and sections
• Filtering

4. Adding new rules to your Forms

Infopath 2010 features new out-of-box rules or quick rules and improved rules management UI. With the quick rules you might easily add rules to validate data, format your form, perform other actions with just a couple of clicks and without any code.

5. Create SharePoint applications

Using Infopath 2010, SharePoint Server 2010, and SharePoint Designer 2010 you can easily create useful powerful team, departmental or enterpriseapplications. Three types of application that can be developed are

Form-based application

Infopath forms can be integrated with components such as workflow reporting and custom Webpages to create rich form-based applications

Document Workflow

Infopath can be used to design custom workflow initiation and task forms that drive document management processes

Business Connectivity Services

By integrating with BCS you can design InfoPath forms that create, read, update and delete business data from a back-end system.

6. Create forms for SharePoint lists

In InfoPath you can extend as well as enhance the forms that you use for creating, editing and viewing items in a SharePoint list. To customize the form simply navigate to a SharePoint list and on the SharePoint Ribbon under List Tools, choose the Customize Form option. This would automatically generate a form that appears quite similar to the default out-of-box SharePoint list form.

You can easily customize and enhance this form by modifying the layout, creating additional views or pages, adding rules to validate your data, show or hide sections of the form or set a fields value.

7. Publish Forms Quickly

With the new quick publish feature you can publish forms in a single click. In the previous version, it required clicking through the Publishing Wizard every time you wanted to make an update the forms.

8. Creating InfoPath Form Web Part

Infopath 2010 allows you to host your InfoPath browser forms in Webpages by simply adding the InfoPath Form Web Part page. You can also connect it to other Web Parts on the page to send or receive data.

9. InfoPath Editor

InfoPath 2010 Editor features a fluent user interface and provides an enhanced, simpler user experience for filling out forms.

10. InfoPath Forms Service Administration and Management

Applying the Visual Studio Tools for Applications you might add manged code to the forms.

Source:- http://blog.taragana.com

Microsoft Office 2010 Deployment Tools Availability

The last couple of weeks have brought the release of tools (4 tools in 2 weeks!) to help IT Professionals expedite Office 2010 deployment. This posts highlights those four newly released tools and provides links to get started learning about using them. Respectively, these tools help you assess and plan for an Office 2010 deployment, assess potential Office application compatibility issues, and customize your Office 2010 deployment.

1. Microsoft Assessment & Planning Toolkit 5.0 (MAP)

MAP is an assessment and planning tool targeted at IT Professionals to help them begin the deployment process. The tool inventories your current environment and assesses the readiness of those computers for migration to the new technology, in this case Office 2010. MAP is an agentless tool, this means it can discover the computers in your network without installing any components on the target computers. MAP uses technologies already available in your IT environment to perform inventory and assessments. These technologies include Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI), the Remote Registry Service, Active Directory Domain Services, and the Computer Browser service. You can explore all of the capabilities of MAP on the MAP website.

We previously posted about the beta availability of the MAP 5.0 toolkit here. Thanks to community feedback we were able to improve the tool to provide an improved assessment proposal and report. You can have a quick view of the sample Office 2010 readiness reports here: Office 2010 Summary Proposal Sample, Office 2010 Assessment Report Sample

2. Office Environment Assessment Tool (OEAT)

OEAT scans client computers for add-ins and applications that interact with Office 97, Office 2000, Office XP, Office 2003, the 2007 Office system, and Office 2010. The tool is designed to be used by IT Pros who are assessing application compatibility as part of their Office 2010 migration planning. The tool now incorporates functionality to compare the discovered add-ins and applications against the list of add-ins that are pledged to be compatible by ISVs who submit them to the Microsoft Independent Software Vendor (ISV) Application Compatibility Visibility Program. OEAT compares the vendor name, product name, and version name and reports the results as partial or exact matches in the summary report spreadsheet. For more information, see the Microsoft Office Environment Assessment Tool user's guide in the technical library.

3. Office 2010 Code Compatibility Inspector (OCCI)

OCCI is an add-in developers can use in Microsoft Excel 2010, Microsoft PowerPoint 2010, Microsoft Word 2010, and Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 to troubleshoot and resolve potential issues with Microsoft Visual Basic for Application (VBA) Macros and add-ins. The tool helps guide a developer in remediating issues in VBA code to expedite migration to Office 2010. The tool scans code in a project for known compatibility issues, and then notifies you if it finds items in the code from the object model that have changed in some way or have been removed. For more information, see the Microsoft Office Code Compatibility Inspector user's guide in the technical library.

4. Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010 Update 1

MDT 2010 offers a great way to package Office 2010 and expose the Office Customization Tool and Office config.xml settings for easy manipulation. IT Pros can use this tool to build a complete desktop deployment package including Office 2010. You can see a complete example of how to utilize MDT 2010 to deploy Office 2010 in this blog post on the Springboard Series Blog. Get MDT 2010 Update 1 now and get started using MDT 2010 to build a complete deployment package. See the full description of the MDT 2010 update 1 here.


If you are looking for a way to see the tools in action we have a proof of concept kit to help you get started. The PoC Jumpstart is designed to help demystify the process of desktop deployment that delivers Office 2010, Windows 7 Enterprise, Internet Explorer 8, & Application Virtualization (App-V) in a controlled environment. The tools above, and others, are featured in the Microsoft Proof of Concept Jumpstart kit to help you quickly experience a complete desktop deployment. Explore the PoC Jumpstart kit here on the Springboard Series site.



Source:- http://blogs.technet.com

Microsoft InfoPath Tutorial

Use InfoPath to gather your information easily and efficiently. You can purchase InfoPath separately or part of a Microsoft Suite, such as MS Office 2007. The program enables pre-populated fields, with validation in real-time, to connect to valuable information sources. InfoPath helps MS Office users collect information in work groups by simple forms and stores the gathered information in areas you designate in MS Office.

Getting Started with Microsoft InfoPath

1. Imagine the scenario where information is required from a large number of people in a work group. The information is specific and is needed as soon as it becomes available. InfoPath enables an easy form-filling experience that is accessible from many popular web browsers, in email messages or over mobile devices. All information can be centralized simply and easily through management and control of the input. Forms can be designed using existing XML, via a SQL Server database or another ODBC data source.
After the information has been gathered from the form recipients, it can be promulgated out again rapidly via a shared web page, accessible across computing platforms.
Form designs can be shared in the group using MS SharePoint Server applications or easily designed using one of the many predesigned forms, which have been created for common business purposes, such as employee absentee requests, change orders, service requests and simple invoices. InfoPath can also be used for asset tracking.

Integrating Information Across the Work Group

2. InfoPath and MS Office enable advanced integration capabilities. InfoPath extends into other modules in the MS Office Suite, gathering information for databases, documents and many commonly accessed projects.
Because this is an advanced Microsoft tool, support for many different forms of authentication is included. Via SharePoint, the management of forms that are used on multiple platforms via multiple servers for nontrivial activity can be accommodated.

The Future of InfoPath

3. InfoPath today is being used as part of an enterprise mashup. The application lends itself particularly well to this. In a typical national sales setting, a marketing manager could see sales information on a map mashed together, and this would provide the key to the locations of most impact in a sales promotion.
An InfoPath form could be used to roll out a new promotion. The data appears in real time and everyone, anywhere can access this information to gain the best knowledge about its progress.
InfoPath was part of the MS Office 2003 Suite, and it is currently a part of MS Office 2007. It is also included in MS Office 2010. It is an integral part of all Microsoft Work Group products and will always be a valuable component in Microsoft information gathering.


Source:- Ehow

For More Detail:
Microsoft Office 2010
Microsoft Office 2010 Product Key

Microsoft Office 2010: The History and Reviews

Back in the 1990s, Microsoft Office still seemed new and exciting. Users were amazed by its powers: it highlighted typos, suggested grammatical changes and automatically recognised when you needed an accent on a foreign word or needed to renumber a PowerPoint list. It could do your sums for you and create graphs from sets of figures. It could even supply presentation handout notes as aides-memoires.

Back then the Office productivity suite of tools was almost universally used and widely admired (a few security exploits notwithstanding). Encouraged by the praise heaped on what was to become the most successful program of its type, Microsoft added more and more features and bulked out the number of programs and variety of editions customers could choose from. The result: too much choice and too much bloat, cried commentators.

In the days of Windows XP, a feature-laden copy of Office Professional was accused of taking up far more than its share of system resources. With less than 1GB of RAM powering the programs on the average home PC, the dictionaries and templates, Clippy the assistant and the context-based help began to rile consumers who simply wanted to type a letter or fill in their household expenses spreadsheet.

Microsoft responded to the criticism by reining in Office’s intrusions. Microsoft Office 2007 saw the introduction of a ribbon menu that made it easier to get to the items related to your current task, rather than interrupting you to check that you are doing things Microsoft’s way. Intended to be a less overblown take on Office, however, the 2007 version was berated for making unnecessary alterations to a largely successful interface. Many people never upgraded from Office 2003, while plenty still use earlier versions.

With Office 2010, Microsoft hopes to find us all on the same electronic page. It’s cut back on the number of versions, with home and non-business users offered a single Office Home and Student Edition. It’s given the constituent programs in Office a uniform look (Outlook’s design lagged behind the other main programs), it’s made a concerted effort to add web-based elements into the mix and it’s allowed plenty of time for both closed beta testers and the general public to try out Office 2010’s various features and provide feedback on them.

To this end, Office 2010 has been available as a free beta download for the past six months. That’s given Microsoft plenty of time to gather valuable feedback from users about what does and doesn’t work, and to iron out any glitches that may have been uncovered.

In mid-April 2010, Microsoft announced that it had completed this process and was ready to start rolling out its office suite in time for a June launch. But the trial version was still available as we went to press, so it’s not too late to try before you buy.

As you’ll learn from our reviews over the following pages, we think many readers will want to become Microsoft Office 2010 users. Should you agree, we’ve got some advice on how to go about doing so for free or on the cheap.

Source:- pcadvisor

MS Office Professional Plus 2010 Installation & Screenshots

If you have already downloaded MS Office Professional Plus 2010 software directly from the Microsoft website the next step would be to install it and take advantage of all its features. In this article we are going to show you with some features and screen shots of the software which are have installed and how to get started using them.

The beginning would be with the Extraction of files from the large downloaded file. Next you will find that there is a option to Upgrade because i had MS Office already installed of a older version and hence i could customize this to keep all the previous versions or else upgrade it. The installation process would start, though i felt that it took a long time to install because the progress bar was quite slow in moving and at a moment i did feel to cancel the installation.

MS Office 2010 Install

You will find a list of programs installed on your computer, in the Start>All Programs section. The following screenshot can give you a idea on this.

Ms Office 2010 Programs

Here are few screenshots of MS Office Word, Excel, Powerpoint & Infopath Designer.

Source:- amitbhawani.com

Microsoft announces Office 2010 pricing

MICROSOFT HAS CHOSEN CES week, the time when exciting announcements are usually made, to provide us with details of its Office 2010 pricing.

Yeah, no skateboarding music player mobile phone for Microsoft, rather the exciting news out of Redmond is that its Office 2010 applications suite is nearly out of beta and on release will be available in four different versions.

Micrsoft expects sales to be high. It said that in just seven weeks, more than two million people around the world have downloaded the beta version. To get a better appreciation for that number, says Rachel Bondi, general manager of Microsoft Office, "it's a rate of more than 40,000 downloads per day. That's approximately twice the number of people who run the Boston Marathon each year, or the entire population of Olympia, WA, or Annapolis, MD, downloading the Office 2010 beta every day!" Wow, two Boston Marathons. That really puts it into context.

Office 2010 will be released in four versions, Office Home and Business, Office Professional, Office Home and Student, and Office Professional Academic, and they will cost $279, $499, $149, and $99, respectively. Product key card versions are also available and cost a little less, presumably since they do not require boxing and all that other non-green stuff.

Unlike the other options, this can only be used on one machine, however, while for example the home and business, and professional editions can be installed on two.

Most interestingly however, the Vole said it will drop all discounted 'upgrade' pricing for customers who previously bought earlier versions of its Office productivity suite. This will in effect amount to a hefty price increase for a lot of users.

We imagine that this decision by Microsoft will drive more people to download the free - and interoperable with Microsoft Office - Open Document Format (ODF) alternative, Openoffice.org.



Source:- theinquirer.net

Microsoft Office 2010 Volume Product Key

Microsoft Office 2010 volume licensing customers have to activate their volume license suites using a volume license key (VLK). Microsoft made it mandatory to go through volume license activation in order to start using the volume licensed products like it did in case of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008. Like Office 2007 and Office 2003, you have to provide a 25-characters volume license key (VLK) during installation, so that the end-users won’t have to activate it all over again using the licensed product key, they can simply bypass this step.

This drawback allows users to download pirated copies of Microsoft Office 2010 as it will require no activation using product keys. In order to tackle this issue, Microsoft is planning to stem the counterfeit Office with Office Genuine Advantage (OGA) Validation and Office Genuine Advantage Notifications, but soon hackers will develop cracks or patches to bypass OGA limitations, this does not seem to be the way to control piracy.




With the announcement and release plans of MS Office 2010, Microsoft is taking an another step to fight against hackers and crackers and it’s Software Protection Platform (SPP), which was initially implemented on operating systems like Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008. As a result, all Office 2010 license acquired through volume licensing channel has to be activated, via KMS host (Key Management Server) for local activation of more than 25 licenses, or MAK product key (Multiple Activation Key).

Microsoft Office 2010 activation method is almost similar with Windows 7 activation. You have to configure Key Management Service (KMS) host to activate Office 2010 clients. Note down the following MS Office 2010 activation tricks.

1. Key Management Service (KMS) hosts configured to activate MS Office should be installed on operating systems such as Windows Server 2003, volume editions of Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2

2. If you want KMS host to activate multiple Microsoft products (e.g. Office 2010 and Windows 7), you will need to install the Windows KMS host key with Office KMS host key and activate both of them

3. Microsoft Office KMS clients are only activated when five or more than five computers with MS Office installed attempt to get activated using the KMS host. In case of operating systems (e.g. Windows Vista and Windows 7), activation starts after 25 or more than 25 computers with Windows client request for activation.



Source:- solidblogger.com