SharePoint Administrator's Blog

Nintex Forms is the newest product from Nintex that gives you the ease of creating forms without a lot of hassle.  It uses the same drag and drop interface as its counterpart, Nintex Workflow, which is another great product if you do not already know.  Forms 2010 lets you create forms that are visually appealing with background images, custom buttons, and rich HTML formatting. 

Just like Nintex Workflow, Forms 2010 fully integrates with SharePoint 2010 making it all that much easier to Customize SharePoint.  You never have to leave your browser to use Workflow 2010 or Forms 2010.  Everything you do is right within SharePoint itself.  How great is that?  It is always cumbersome to have to alt+tab between screen or use multiple monitors just so you can view multiple things at once.  Since everything stays in SharePoint, you can easily view everything on one screen and do not have to jump around.

One of the coolest features about Nintex Forms 2010 (I think), is its ability to create Mobile forms.  It comes with some form layouts for specific devices, out of the box.  For example... IPhones, Androids, tablets etc.  As always, you can edit these basic layouts to better suit your needs, but to be honest, they do a pretty good job at that already.  To set a form to a mobile device is as simple as clicking a button in the ribbon (which is how you do it).  After you selected your device its just another couple clicks and its published to the Internet and ready to be used!  Any SharePoint Experts, SharePoint Developer, or just a basic SharePoint User will love this feature.  In a demo I saw, they had a mobile form up and running within a minute.  When I say up and running, I mean just that, I could log into the form from my phone, fill it out, and submit it. It is just that simple.  Hence the slogan "SharePoint Forms for Everyone on Any Device" (Nintex.com)

One other neat feature with mobile forms, is that you can create a number of ways to set authentication.  You can set it up to use Facebook log in, twitter, or have it set to be the same as the authentication for SharePoint 2010 itself.  Oh and did I mention you can also set the form up for anonymous users with just a few clicks? 

Forms 2010 also fully integrates with Workflow 2010 making the two work seamless together.  You do not have to ever leave SharePoint 2010, not even to set up a workflow for your form.  Just click a button and your in the Workflow settings, simple.

Nintex Forms 2010 is in no way a replacement to InfoPath 2010, as there are many things InfoPath can do that Forms cannot currently.  One example of this is the ability to connect to a database.  Forms 2010 is a great product and can meet most needs of a company, but I wouldn't throw InfoPath to the fishes...just yet.

IncWorx Consulting is a leading Microsoft Gold Partner focusing on SharePoint Consulting, SharePoint Support, and SharePoint Application Development.