Digital forms are not a novel concept for enterprises around the world. They have existed for decades and helped businesses capture data digitally and reduce paperwork. But digital forms have evolved dramatically since then, especially as digital transformation has made its way into the forefront of modern business.
Today, most consumers and businesses see forms as more than just a way to capture data and more as a tool that adapts dynamically based on business rules and needs. Unfortunately, there are plenty of examples of outdated forms technology in the marketplace today that continue to erode business value and deteriorate customer relationships.
One such traditional forms technology is InfoPath.
At its peak, InfoPath was one of the most commonly used solutions for professional developers and information workers looking for a no-code tool. However, Microsoft has announced that mainstream support for InfoPath will end in July 2021. As such, now is the ideal time to consider which technology stack is right for your forms migration.
Tips on migrating your InfoPath forms
As you look to upgrade and transition from one form technology platform to another, there are some best practices that Nintex recommends:
- Take a critical look at your business and re-examine the existing processes you have in place. Oftentimes when you do a thorough analysis, it reveals a prime opportunity to streamline and improve forms as part of the business process. It’s important to determine what’s really needed versus what is good to have.
- Clean up your data. Start by performing an audit of the existing data used in forms from sources such as sites, lists, and libraries. Then you can begin to archive or delete unnecessary data to reduce overhead, improve integrity, eliminate redundancy, and increase load times of the data contained in your forms.
- Always account for your end-users who will be using the forms. Whether they are IT staff, salespeople, corporate users, or external customers, make every effort to meet user expectations. It is best to ask for end-user feedback and incorporate their suggestions throughout the forms development process.
- Focus on simplicity. Typically, forms start with a basic design, but somehow along the process, they become extremely lengthy and unwieldy. Take a look and ensure your forms are intuitive and easy to complete, as the more complex the form is, the more effort is needed to convert forms to a new technology.
- Provide ample time for testing. Solid testing helps prevent defects from occurring, facilitates a stable implementation process, and produces a sound technical form. By testing the forms in multiple browsers and on a variety of mobile phones and tablets, you will end up saving time and resources by not having to go back and fix the root issue.
Nintex Forms as an InfoPath alternative
A great solution to transition your forms on InfoPath is to migrate them to Nintex Forms. With our drag and drop interface, Nintex makes it easy to power your process management and automation efforts. Nintex Forms is built to work wherever you do – including SharePoint, Office 365, and our cloud offering, Nintex Workflow Cloud.
There’s a reason why more than 10,000 organizations across 90+ countries trust Nintex to deliver on our value. With Nintex Forms, you can:
- Empower anyone in your organization to design a form with our user-friendly, responsive Nintex Forms designer, with little to no code necessary. Utilize the drag and drop functionality to add features like barcode scanners, geotags, images, and more.
- Create and apply business rules to build powerful, dynamic forms that respond based on user input. Set in place conditional formatting and validation to allow your users to only see fields that pertain to them.
- Accomplish more with mobile-ready, responsive Nintex Forms, so you can easily access your forms on any device. This makes it easy for those of you with field workers, as they can receive and share crucial data in a matter of minutes, and then your customers can submit feedback on the go.
- Expand past forms functionalities by triggering an automated workflow with the click of a button. Using a Nintex Form submission as a start event, you can automatically kick off a review, approval, e-signature, and more.
If you want to learn more about transitioning from InfoPath to Nintex Forms, watch our on-demand webinar, check out our webpage on Nintex as the InfoPath alternative, or read our transition guide from InfoPath to Nintex.
Interested in discovering how Nintex could help your organization automate any of its processes? Contact us today.
