General information
Microsoft Office Forms Server 2007 is a scalable, security-enhanced, standards-based data-gathering solution that your organization can use to extend the reach of forms-driven business processes to anyone with a Web browser.
Benefits
- Extend data-gathering solutions to anyone with a browser
Make your forms-driven business processes accessible to customers, partners, and suppliers through a Web browser. By using the advanced browser-based form-rendering technology built into Office Forms Server 2007, you can design forms that provide a smooth, elegant user experience and distribute forms on corporate intranets, extranets, or the Internet.
- Streamline business processes and connect forms to multiple line-of-business applications. Develop easy-to-use forms solutions as front ends for business processes with less time, effort, and cost. Office Forms Server 2007 helps connect forms to multiple existing data systems through Web services.
- Centralize the management and control of your forms solutions. Use Office Forms Server 2007 to provide a centralized forms solution repository that helps network administrators control who can create and publish forms and helps users find forms easily. Connections to database systems can be shared across form solutions. In-place form version upgrade mechanisms help reduce downtime.
- Reduce time spent filling out forms. Provide easy-to-navigate smart forms to guide people through data entry. Fill in some of the form fields automatically by drawing appropriate information from network data stores. This approach helps avoid duplicate data entry and reduces the time needed to fill out forms, resulting in a more efficient user experience.
- Develop advanced forms functionality without coding. Use Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007 to design sophisticated forms—including advanced data validation, calculations, and rules—without writing any code. After you deploy forms to Office Forms Server 2007, anyone with a Web browser can fill them out.
- Validate data at the time of entry. Check for errors at the time of data entry with validation rules built into InfoPath forms. These rules, which run in the browser, avoid network delays and help prevent rework later.
- Help business users develop their own forms. With the intuitive Office InfoPath 2007 user interface, business users can create forms, deploy them to Office Forms Server 2007, and automatically submit form data to a Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services technology library, with little or no IT assistance. A design-once approach enables people to view and fill out forms in either a browser or a rich client.
- Rapidly deploy sustainable forms solutions. Provide developers with reusable code, rapid development and debugging tools, and the ability to write Visual C# and Microsoft Visual Basic .NET managed code without leaving the familiar Microsoft Visual Studio environment. Intuitive forms design in Office InfoPath 2007 and tight integration with Visual Studio .NET enable developers to reduce the time and cost of delivering advanced forms functionality. Versioning capabilities and the ability to upgrade forms side by side reduce the time and cost of forms deployment and management.
- Capture common form information consistently. Design forms with reusable components, which are transferred from one form to another, to ensure that common data is collected the same way every time.
- Access forms from mobile devices. Deliver InfoPath forms through mobile devices. Microsoft Office InfoPath Forms Services can detect when users access forms with a mobile device and can render forms in a compatible format automatically.
For more information look on: http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/servers/formsserver/
Licensing
- For intranets: In this type of deployment, Office Forms Server 2007 is licensed using the Server-CAL model. The customer buys 1 server license per physical server and as many CALs as needed to cover the number of users or devices.
- For extranets and internet: In this type of deployment, customers need to license the product offering named Microsoft Office Forms Server 2007 for Internet sites. This is licensed on a per server basis (irrespective of the number of processors) and customers can use the full product functionality but for external facing websites only.
Requirements
Office Forms Server 2007 is built on and requires Windows SharePoint Services v3. You can publish form templates to Windows SharePoint Services for easy deployment across an organization. Users can submit forms to Windows SharePoint Services form and document libraries. Forms can also be integrated into document management and lifecycle tasks such as archiving, workflow, and rights management.
2007 Microsoft Office System Servers
- Windows Server 2003 SP1; supports 64-bit versions of Windows Server 2003 operating system
- Single box installation: Server with a processor speed of at least 2.5 GHz; RAM capacity minimum of 1 GB, 3 GB recommended; disk space: up to 2 GB for installation; 5 GB or more of Farm deployment: Web server with a processor speed of at least 2.5 GHz, minimum 2 GB of RAM; application server with dual processors of at least 2.5 GHz, minimum 2 GB of RAM; Microsoft SQL Server 2000 SP3a (or later) or SQL Server 2005 with dual processors of at least 2.5 GHz, minimum 2 GB of RAM
- Broadband connection, 128 Kbps or greater, for download and activation of products
- Internet Explorer 6.0 with service packs
Refer to the Microsoft Office Enterprise Project Management (EPM) Solution and Microsoft Office Project Server 2007 Product Guide for details on the system requirements for the EPM Solution which includes Office Project Server 2007, Microsoft Office Project Professional 2007, Microsoft Office Project Web Access, Microsoft Office Project Portfolio Server 2007, and Microsoft Office Project Portfolio Web Access.
Availability
English language: mid November
Swedish / Danish / Finnish and Norwegian: mid-end February
Note: Office Forms Server is not available as Full Packaged Product