Anyone doing any work using "offline" forms? We have an application that requires inputting data from outside our company. I was thinking about sending a form out via email, allowing the form to be filled out then sent back. Obviously a web application would be the best solution, but management doesn't seem ready to build the infrastructure and security to support that. I've read a little about PDF forms is that a good solution or are there other solutions?
Have you considered InfoPath? These can be created and distributed through email. And then the data can be collated automatically.
Also, consider using Google Spreadsheets with Google Forms. It's free and infrastructure is outsourced.
PDF forms can work as well.
Another possibility is to use Microsoft SharePoint. If your company uses Microsoft Office for the people filling the forms you referring to, you could deploy an Office based solution and gather information with Sharepoint Server.
Check this link out.
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In the Office.js docs one reads the following about the new ExecuteAsync() method/pattern:
"This also allows us to use the same APIs even outside of an Excel add-
in. Imagine, for example, that you wanted to call Excel APIs against an > Excel workbook stored in OneDrive, but you wanted to do so from a stand-> alone web application, rather than one running inside Office 2016 for
Windows or Office Online. This async model lends itself well to that
capability."
Nevertheless, I wasn't able to find any explanation on how to implement such functionality in a standalone web application. Does anyone know how to do that?
This is referring to the new Excel REST API. Please see the documentation here: http://graph.microsoft.io/en-us/docs/api-reference/v1.0/resources/excel
Excel is so far the only Office host to support REST APIs, with the exception of OneNote's REST APIs which are independent from the Office.js effort.
From what I understand Filemaker is a database. A friend of mine is able to make forms out of filemaker. Is it possible to publish those forms as a website?
Basically is it possible to use filemaker as a web platform?
Can I make websites out of filemaker pro's form generation facility.
If the answer is yes, is it the ideal tool for website programming?
Thanks.
In response to Your main answer "Is Filemaker a web platform?" i would says no.
Filemaker it's a database engine with gui facilities, so You can build things fast, it's an ideal tool for making projects (more or less specific) inside an corp or organization or to prototype/develop an application.
Filemaker has btw at least to modes/tools to share data and gui functions out of the box (http://www.filemaker.com/products/filemaker-pro/web-publishing.html):
Instant web publishing
avaiable in the Filemaker Pro (limited users and functionality) and Filemaker Server that enable You and Your group to share with minimum effort data and gui (forms)
Custom Web Publishing
only with Filemaker servershare data trough PHP code, with some tools to auto-generate PHP code.
So Filemaker i would says can share you data and forms build inside Your database over the web and can integrate with the Server version with PHP.
Good question btw!
Rob
Technically FileMaker server has a fairly good Web API that accepts GET and POST requests and returns data in XML. There's also an official PHP wrapper around it and a few unofficial wrappers, e.g. in Python. It's pretty much possible to use it as a database backend with Web projects.
We have several reports delivered via email in PDF and Excel formats. I am looking for ways to password protect these items, either natively via SSRS or using a process outside of SSRS.
If you cannot use the built-in authentication provided by reporting services, you have one other option. First things first though, you cannot use the "E-mail" based subscription and interfere that process to encrypt a pdf file. The only way to do this is to use the file share delivery method.
Deliver the report to a network folder and then use adobe's web service api to protect the pdf as outlined here: http://livedocs.adobe.com/livecycle/es/sdkHelp/programmer/sdkHelp/wwhelp/wwhimpl/common/html/wwhelp.htm?context=sdkHelp&file=quickStarts_Encryption.8.3.html
Once you do that you would have to write an app that takes the pdf and attaches it to an e-mail. (this part isn't too difficult).
I'm looking for a CMS for our extranet. We need users to be able to authenticate themselves and we'll want to design forms that submit data to a database. Just wondering what CMS systems people can suggest.
I think the majority of CMS systems can accomplish creation of simple HTML forms for data capture purposes. I guess it really depends on what you want to do with the forms - how complex are they? What do you need to do with the data afterwards?
I have experience with Ektron and can tell you that everything you want to do is possible with Ektron. You can setup Ektron to authenticate against Active Directory to enable Single Sign On for your users. Ektron users can create HTML forms for other users to use to submit data too.
It also depends on your budget - there are several open source CMS packages that you may also want to consider.
I'm currently looking into expanding a project to include the syncing of notes and tasks from a web application with exchange/Outlook.
Though at the moment, this is only an idea.
Unfortunately for me, it's the first time I've considered doing any form of Exchange integration at all from any application.
So I'm wondering, is what I've set out to do even possible?
I'll most likely be using ASP.NET MVC 2, .NET 4 and Exchange 2003.
The old way to do it would be to use Outlook Interop to automate Outlook to get access to the data. However, this isn't the neatest way of doing things, and you almost certainly wouldn't want to do it on a server.
The new way of doing it is using Exchange Web Services, you can find an article here about it, but I'm not sure if they're supported on Exchange 2003...