For the most part my organization is happy with WSS 3.0 (no upgrading to MOSS) with one exception, there is really just one form we'd like to put up somehow. It's fairly big form (basically change requests for IT services, on paper it's easily 2 full 8.5 by 11 pages). We thought about Custom ASP.NET coding as a separate stand-alone page or maybe as a web part. What have other people out there done? MOSS and Infopath is not really an option as it really is too expensive for us at this time. Thanks in advance!
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A:
You could either build it as a standalone HTML/ASP.Net page and include it as a page viewer webpart, or roll your own WebPart for it. The latter is somewhat more complicated if you don't already know SharePoint development, although tools like STSDEV can take away a lot of the pain.
Steven Robbins
2009-01-09 23:24:07
+1
A:
If you have to develop it yourself, Do it in straight asp.net. There is no reason to do it in sharepoint. The learning curve is steep. The development infrastructure is to heavy for a one off solution.
Change request for IT services is part of a workflow most of the time. I believe that the best workflow tools are bug trackers. They use a state base workflow. Which fits better, in most scenario, the real world. So, If you have such a tool, and you should have. Check the option to use is for change requests management.
Igal Serban
2009-01-09 23:32:08
A:
You might want to consider simplifying the change request form. 2 pages of stuff is rather a lot of info to fill in for a change request.
I use standard sharepoint lists for collecting change requests and find that I am lucky to get people to fill in the first 4-5 fields.
The dataview webpart can be used to add data instead of the standard new item form.
A:
The Survey list is a good simple alternative to forms, and can be used without any coding. Enter the "questions" ie. input fields, then attach a mail alert for inserts. The drawback is that you have no control over the layout of the form, it is strictly one row per input field. This makes it perhaps not a good candidate for your large forms. But it is so easy to use that you should take a look at it anyway.
If you decide to develop yourself, write a web part, and add it to a WSS page. (Simplest deployment: Inherit from the ASP.Net WebPart class, put in GAC, create a .webpart file in the SharePoint webapp's wpcatalog folder). Re the person who wrote that the learning curve in SharePoint is too steep, I assume that if you're using WSS for your internal web applications you'll discover more needs for SharePoint customization in the future. Learning how to do that is a good investment.
Bjørn Stærk
2009-01-10 18:35:22
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The best way i would say is to create a web user control and add that to a web part (a container webpart) - user controls can be added in the 12 hive and picked from there. I have tried that and its very easy way develop given that the page has a lot of contents. Issue with Webpart and the standard asp page development is that, there's no design view.
MNM
2009-01-23 10:04:31
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You can accomplish most of this with Infowise Smart List Pro. It designed to be an easy solution for 80% of the common form needs. it does it with great SharePoint List enhancements like - Field Permission, Tabbed View, View Permission, Default Values, Rules and more. The grates thing is that Smart List Pro does not require MOSS Or SharePoint Server. it can run on WSS or SharePoint Foundations only. It works fine on WSS 3.0 And SharePoint 2010.
Here is the link: http://www.infowisesolutions.com/product.aspx?id=SmartListPro