Webinar July Q&A follow up: Why you should move away from InfoPath NOW

Erwin: “There is no official statement from Microsoft that Flow will replace SharePoint Workflow. However, history has shown that with every release of SharePoint a new workflow engine was released. The current workflow technology embedded in SharePoint is not being actively developed anymore, this means that what you have today, is what it will be. Microsoft Flow is a cloud only technology, and the only way that technology can be exposed on-premises is through a connector of sorts. Keep that in mind when defining your future workflow strategy. Having said that: Microsoft is investing heavily in Flow and they recently released approval flows in SharePoint Online which are based upon Flow too. It’s safe to say that the future of workflows in SharePoint Online is Microsoft Flow.”

Erwin: “While we were not able to demonstrate that during the webinar, yes we provide a migration path. SPTransformator will analyze your farm, discover the InfoPath workflows and then offer through 3^rd party plugins the ability to convert those InfoPath forms to the 3^rd party forms technology.”

Erwin: “SPTransformator focuses on customizations and not on content. For content migration we refer to other ISVs like for instance ShareGate.”

Erwin: “Yes, that is the recommendation. You can find out more information by scrolling to the bottom of this page and clicking the ‘Replace InfoPath’  button. Try out Rencore and skybow’s InfoPath solution first hand.”

Erwin: “Transformation consists of 2 components: the client, which we demoed during the webinar, and a farm inventory component. The farm inventory will run on a SharePoint farm and will run a full inventory of all customizations on that farm. The result of that inventory will be used as input to the SPTransformator application which will run an extensive analysis of that inventory. During that analysis we break down an InfoPath form into its underlying components (views, fields, rules) and we send that information to the 3^rd party plugin, in this case the skybow Rich Forms plugin.”

Adis: “The forms are embedded into SharePoint pages and fully follow their permissions. If the page is anonymously accessible in SharePoint Server, then skybow Rich Forms will be publicly accessible. This is not possible with SharePoint Online, where at least guest access and login with Microsoft ID has to be used.”

Adis: “Web parts can be freely placed inside the skybow Rich Forms. When a form is exported, the reference to the web part is exported as well. However, during the import, on the target site, the web part needs to be present in order to be imported.”