Fields needed just to email a form?

[Mark Masters]

Greetings,

I'm looking at doing a number of forms for various things that would be sort of
fill in the blanks and email to someone to do something. Things like requests
for services and the like. The idea would be to have a series of forms stored
in a public folder that people could just open, fill out their request and it
would be emailed to a predefined recipient list.

In a case like that, do I need to define fields? Can I just add labels and text
boxes and check boxes and be done after publishing the various forms to this
public folder? Does this make sense? It sounds weird to me but I'm not the
Exchange admin or expert. I also don't think she's used forms before and I'm
just learning myself.

We'll be using Outlook 2003 (they won't go to 2007) with an Exchange Server and
I'll be designing most of the forms, probably based on the IPM.Note message
standard form. Users will enter data into the forms or maybe use check boxes or
radio buttons as well. All we need to do at this point is then email the data
to one or more recipients for processing. This would be for about 80-100 forms
so I'm trying to avoid going down a dead end path if possible.

I think InfoPath 2003 would be a better choice for this but then they'd have to
pay for it to be on all machines and well, heck, we already are pushing out
Outlook 2003 to a lot of machines (but not all. Non-supervisory staff will use
OWA and most forms requests would come from Supv's and above) so why pay for
anything more when it's already got a forms capability. Sigh.

Thanks,
Mark

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

If you want users to do more than type in the body of a message would give you, then you need to tell Outlook how to store the data: You need to define fields and provide data entry controls for them. Storing message forms only in a public folder, though, won't work. They would need to be published to the Organizational Forms library. If that's not done, recipients won't be able to see the custom field data.

I agree that InfoPath might be a better solution.

--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of Configuring Microsoft Outlook 2003

and Microsoft Outlook Programming - Jumpstart for
Administrators, Power Users, and Developers

 

[Mark Masters]

Thanks. I was fuzzy on where the data actually gets stored as it seems like it
can be "associated" with an item or with a folder.

Ah, okay. I guess our idea was having forms in a public folder and then users
would open the forms based on IPM.Note, which would be "pre-addressed", fill
them out and send/mail them to someone.

So does that mean, we COULD do that if they were also published in the OFL?
Like, they'd be in the OFL, but the user's wouldn't have to go to a forms lib
and choose a form to open?The idea being to make it super easy for our mostly
not computer literate users to find the forms by name in a folder, double
click, fill it out and mail it.

Love your book BTW. It already cleared up my question about needing to save the
data someplace. Now working through chapter 16. Still fuzzy on how you
associate a field/property with a specific folder. Using the approach we were
hoping to use, storing them in a public folder (but publishing them to the
OFL?) I would somehow need to associate a field with that specific folder?
Outlook is WEIRD. Give me a database any day. LOL.

Thanks,
Mark

If you want users to do more than type in the body of a message would give you,

then you need to tell Outlook how to store the data: You need to define fields
and provide data entry controls for them. Storing message forms only in a
public folder, though, won't work. They would need to be published to the
Organizational Forms library. If that's not done, recipients won't be able to
see the custom field data.

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

You need the forms in the OFL in order for them to work for the recipients. In the public folder, you might want to use the form launcher form from http://www.outlookcode.com/d/forms/formlauncher.htm, which supports your idea of "users ... find the forms by name in a folder, double click, fill it out and mail i t."

You shouldn't need to worry about creating form definitions in a folder, because you're using message forms, not forms that will create items in a particular folder. Just make sure the custom fields are visible in the form design on the All Fields page under User-defined Fields in This Item.
--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of Configuring Microsoft Outlook 2003

and Microsoft Outlook Programming - Jumpstart for
Administrators, Power Users, and Developers