InfoPath, the official message about its future

It has been in the dark for years, InfoPath didn’t get many updates when the latest Office version (Office 2013) arrived and on customer questions there was always the “we haven’t announced any plans or decided change of policy” kind of answer about the future of InfoPath.

InfoPath, if I am honest, never really got off and the adoption rate was low. It was however the foreseen application to build and deploy your forms (often to SharePoint, but could also be used locally). One of the main issues might have been that there wasn’t a free InfoPath forms client to get the adoption rate up.

To me the lack of information about the future of InfoPath always was an indicator that the product was close to end of life. This on the other hand really took a while to be confirmed.

That said, yesterday – out of the blue, there was this Official Office Blog Post to be found on the Office site:
Update on InfoPath and SharePoint Forms

In this blog Microsoft announced that, quote: “InfoPath 2013 is the last release of the desktop client, and InfoPath Forms Services in SharePoint Server 2013 is the last release of InfoPath Forms Services”

Existing customers will be supported through 2023 so no worries if you are using this technology. The blog post does not provide any other information on what will be offered as a follow up on InfoPath other than that it will be presented somewhere in Q4 of CY 2014 (this I think actually is Q2 2014 in real life as Microsoft has a broken book year).

My guess is that the announcement of InfoPath vNext will be at SharePoint 2014 Conference (with Bill Clinton as Keynote Speaker!). The SharePoint conference, with the Office Developer Conference disappeared for years now, will be the place to be if you want to know what happens to InfoPath or the other Office products. So… follow the news around the SharePoint 2014 Conference… attend the conference.

Showtime: Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit

JackRyan


The “Showtime” section on my blog is a reminder, mostly for my own reference but maybe helpful for other film enthusiasts as well, to remember what movies I’ve seen lately, what it was about and how I rated it in general.


Jack Ryan (Chris Pine, took me some time to realize that he also did a couple of the Star Trek features) is sure about it after 9/11, he wants to serve his country by joining the marines and meets Cathy Muller (Keira Knightley) when recovering in  the hospital after a dreadful accident with the militaries. It was somewhat funny to hear Keira talk. Her usual British accent was suppressed and she tried to make it sound a bit more American accented. Not sure if that was intended or maybe she took lessons in talking without dialect Glimlach.

After his recovery he gets the offer and joins the CIA. By doing so he gets involved in James Bond alike scenarios and one of those is that he discovered a terrorist group planning to disrupt the US economy by messing up the trade markets on Wall Street. Jack goes to Russia to sort this out and from there blocking the terrorists from executing their plans.

The movie is a nice “sit, relax and watch” movie. Nothing spectacular to remember though but it was sure fun to watch. Seven out of Ten should do it.

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