"Got to tell you, for someone developing Web-based forms with no programming skills, an idea, and a do-it-yourself attitude, qRules has got to be the best thing ever invented. It takes the pain away and works brilliantly. Thank you"

--GP in Australia

Aruna has a Master's degree in Computer Science  from the University of Washington,  in addition to 5+ years of industrial experience. She worked on Outlook and MSExcel object models in previous projects. She is married with two kids and lives in Redmond, WA, USA.

- Aruna Akella
Test Engineer

 

Daenna will be graduating this summer from Washington State University with a BA in Management Information Systems. She has worked in the areas of data analytics and test over the last 10 years. She is married with twins on the way and lives in Kirkland, WA, USA.

- Daenna Gidwani
Test Engineer

Congratulations to Greg Collins, who received his sixth MVP award in April! Greg is a frequent contributor in the InfoPathDev.com forums and the public InfoPath Newsgroup.

Qdabra is the InfoPath Authority, with more InfoPath MVPs than any other company.

Hi Everyone!

We’re thrilled that Microsoft has finally launched Office and SharePoint 2010. Now, more than ever, you can quickly automate your business processes without having to go to your IT team. InfoPath 2010 is still the best electronic forms application in the world and it comes with some great improvements. Here are my top three:

• Office ribbon - quickly add conditional formatting to your form without opening multiple dialog boxes,
• Quick publish - one click publish makes deploying your form changes a breeze, &
• SharePoint - send your data to web parts, quickly customize your SharePoint lists using InfoPath.

SharePoint 2010’s new Business Connectivity Service (BCS) goes a little way towards connecting your InfoPath forms to SQL but, unfortunately, it’s still not data-driven, which means you’ll need to reconfigure the mapping when make changes to your form and you’ll still need a developer to help configure the mapping in the first place. Qdabra’s SharePoint and InfoPath accelerator, DBXL, is still the fastest and lowest cost solution for migrating your InfoPath form data into SQL. Once your data’s in SQL you can pull it out into Excel or create reports to keep you updated on the health of your business process. We now have a standalone version for worker without access to a server - DBXL Desktop lets you do reporting from a standalone desktop computer. You can also set it up to synchronize with SharePoint or DBXL on the network and use it as an offline solution for field workers. Submit your forms offline and upload them later. See below for more details…

For customers who want to use InfoPath without SharePoint, we offer FormsBoard InfoPath Hosting - you can choose from the following options:

1. Public Cloud - customer uses the public instance on https://www.formsboard.com/. Free for up to 5 users and 1mb of data. You can sign up today.
2. Private Cloud - Qdabra provisions a custom cloud instance for customer. Unlimited but costs $995 to setup and between $150 and $900+ per month depending on how many front end servers are needed.
3. Standalone - non-cloud install. Qdabra gives installation instructions and help to customer. Customer runs on their own hardware. Cost is $1-2k for initial setup, $2-9k/year for license and support depending on configuration.

We’re super excited about FormsBoard, and we are investing resources to make it a low-cost alternative for small businesses. We even have an iPad application in development so you can quickly fill out forms, monitor and manage your business process without InfoPath. Thank you for your continued support!

- Patrick Halstead, Qdabra Chief Project Manager

Extending SharePoint to handle InfoPath Business Processes has never been easier - here’s a quick summary of DBXL 2.4!

• Report on your repeating InfoPath data
• Versioning - use Convert to make significant changes to your schema without leaving old data behind
• Notifications - server-side emails when submitting or assigning forms; event log warning notifications for admins
• Save Images as Links - built-in support for converting images to links
• FormsViewer - quickly view forms in a browser without SharePoint or InfoPath Form Services. Submit simple forms from the browser.

Hot on the heels of our qRules 2.1 release in March, qRules 2.2 is now available. qRules, which lets you use rules in place of code to quickly add common features to your InfoPath forms, now contains 30 of the most commonly requested functions accessible via rules—even things that aren’t available in InfoPath today, like encrypting fields.

New for qRules 2.2:

• Insert and Remove Processing Instruction - No code needed to change where your form resides. Eases migration.
• Clear Errors - Publish XML forms with errors. Great for testing!
• Get Attachment Attribute - Extract the details, including file name, extension, and size
• Delimited List - Concatenate a repeating field into a single delimited value.

New to qRules? Learn more and download the free trial today. Already a qRules customer? We’ll be sending you an email in the next week with download links and upgrade instructions.

Get up to speed on InfoPath and SharePoint 2010. We’ve updated our master training class for 2010 and we are posting module 1 online for free download. Module 1 has four labs that are a great place to start if you’re new to InfoPath and want to build forms.

• Lab 1 shows you how to build an InfoPath form template.
• Lab 2 introduces design elements and integration with SharePoint.
• Lab 3 takes you on a tour of business logic - make your form smart with conditional formatting.
• Lab 4 extends your form into a multi-form solution - you’ll link an RSVP form to your Event Planning form.

We’re releasing the labs once a week on Fridays, starting July 2nd, 2010. Learn more and access the labs here. Get up-to-the-minute notifications by following InfoPathDev's Twitter channel.

Please visit Qdabra free download page to checkout new free/trial products:

• qRules v2.2 trial: add commonly requested features to your InfoPath form, without having to write code
• Qdabra Free Template Parts: Add Smart Links, part of Contact Block Advanced, and save time. Open Google Maps, Live Search, and MapQuest directly from your InfoPath form
• Qdabra AD User Info XTP: populate From and To fields with valid email addresses retrieved from Active Directory

Blog highlights:

• Using qRules' SaveToSharePoint Command Without SharePoint: qRules provides  SaveToSharePoint, that allows you to save attachments in your InfoPath forms to a SharePoint server, to reduce the size of your XML forms, and allow these files to be accessed without opening up your forms in InfoPath.
• New documentation for Qdabra's Excel to XML Tool: Did you know the tool also allows you to export XML files directly to SharePoint?
• Working with a qRules solution that uses DBXL and IPFS: How to configure your qRules-based solution that can submit documents to DBXL and load them in IPFS?
• How to Use Qdabra’s Encryption XTP:  To get you started on using qRules encryption in your forms, Qdabra created a template part that you can easily add in your InfoPath Custom Controls and drag over to your forms.
• Saving Forms as New to DBXL: This short tutorial teaches you how to do that using Qdabra qRules, or using code.

Thank you for your continued support!

Qdabra Software: The InfoPath Authority - Streamline data gathering to turn process into knowledge.™