EBME Forums Forums Maintenance Biomed Databases Infopath

Hi

Is anyone using Infopath to set up intranet/email forms to input into their equipment databases?

At present we are just making up our PPM tick sheets on Infopath, seems simple enough. Its free if you keep it on the PC's but have to pay if you load it onto the Server. So we will keep the documents on the server and run them on our PC's.

Our database has the ability of pointing towards the document but as the software is not on there you can not open it.

Its in its early stages here but hopefully in a year we will have all PPM documentation on Infopath.

Billy

Thanks for the info.

I was wondering whether to use infopath to feed in fault reports to the main database which is too clunky to let anyone non-technical near it

Can you do your reports through 'open office' ?

We've just started transfering all our standard forms and PPM result sheets over to Infopath, usual Microsoft quirks, but a damn site better than forms on Word etc. For what its worth were also saving onto our sharepoint system and pointing the equipment database to that to grab them as part of the job, and only uploading/saving onto the DB server when completed.

I had been looking at different systems to try and reduce the amount of paper test sheets we have and seen this thread. How easy is it to interrogate the information when you have it entered, i.e. how many services have been completed of a particular piece of equipment etc?

We have found that we have decreased the amount of paper but increased the amount of computers.

The forms are easy to produce and when published to the server they cant be buggered up unless you import it under construction mode which is always handy.

You can set the fields up to produce a report that can then be printed.

Billy

Thanks Billy, had you tried any other systems before this? I had looked at adobe forms but they only allowed you to print you couldnt save which is a little pointless. Word and Excel are ok but they arent the most user friendly to create or interrogate after.

How do you organise signatures/approving forms do you use electronic signatures?

If you are talking about databases ... why not use a database management language (such as Access, dBASE, FoxPro or any other of your choice)?

They may not be "user friendly" ... but so what (what computer language is)? Anything worthwhile usually takes a bit of effort, does it not?

And I must say that I disagree with what you're saying about Excel. If you only have the time (or inclination) to master just the one application ... then Excel should be the one. At a pinch, you can do anything you want with it. Especially when you become au fait enough to move on to VBA et al.

I was considering using it to allow people to complete a form for example to say a piece of equipment was broken or being moved..and that form would then upload into the database..without users having to fire up unfriendly databases or indeed have more licences etc