A simple, yet practical example of this is this simple text translator. This was built on the back of a customer request to have forms available in multiple languages. No code is used in this development, but we do make use of the “Rules” functionality by which Business Logic and in-form workflow can be built.

While the result of some InfoPath experimentation presented here will not be putting any multi-lingual technical translating staff out of business I’m sure you can think of other applications which could benefit from a Web Service interface such as this.

Ok – so how do you go about creating a translation form? It’s as simple as baking a loaf of bread, so let’s start by looking at the ingredients we will need!

Recipe for InfoPath Translator – Serves 5 ( English, German, Spanish, French and Italian!)

Ingredients:

• One InfoPath Designer Client
• One Web Service API URL ( I use the Microsoft Translation API in this example) http://api.microsofttranslator.com/V2/Soap.svc
• One Application ID (Sign up and Register with Bing for this) http://www.bing.com/toolbox/bingdeveloper/
• A little bit of knowledge regarding the web service requirements (Follow the link below for all the information you need) http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff512435.aspx

   

Instructions

1. In InfoPath 2010 Designer create a new Blank Form and create a table with six rows and two columns
2. Create a Data Connection – Not built one of these before? – Don’t worry a wizard makes this really simple!
   1. From the ribbon select Data / From Web Service /From SOAP Web Service and enter in the web service URL as below:

3.Now from the list of Services select Translate

4. On the next screen you will see a list of Parameters that are used by the web service – Enter your Bing Application ID here by using the Set Value button (You do have an app id don’t you? If not, sign up at http://www.bing.com/toolbox/bingdeveloper/) In the content type and category parameters set the values to ‘text/plain’ and ‘general’ respectively

5. The next screen should be skipped – hit the Next button

6. Now we are on the final screen for our data connection set up. Deselect the “Automatically retrieve data when form is opened” check box – Best practice for forms is to only use data connections when needed, and we will only be calling this service when a button is clicked

Martin Hatch kicked off the evening with a great session on Sandbox solutions, and clearly explained what they were and how they work. Martin also looked at full trust proxies and solution validators, and kept us entertained with numerous demos. Picture below of Martin in action, with Visual Studio open and a demo of solution validators.

Next up was Paul Beck, with an excellent session on CRUD operations using LINQ to SharePoint. Again this session included lots of demos and Paul explained and showed the use of SPMetal. Paul’s talk followed on nicely from Martin’s. Here is Paul in action, again deep into Visual Studio.

After these two sessions we took an interval and made the most of the bar that literally adjoins the lecture theatre at Southampton University. We are so lucky to have a great venue – how many other user groups have not only a proper lecture theatre for presentations, but also a very nice bar right next door? What more could you want!

Then suitably refreshed we returned for the last session of the evening, from Chris McKinley and Darren White from Twynhams School. The duo lived up to their billing of “an entertaining and informative session” (no pressure). They showed some code for creating dynamic icon bars, and also a dynamic theme picker that stored settings in a SharePoint list. For anyone who didn’t want to look at code there was also the chance to complete a Sudoku puzzle, but perhaps the best bit of the session was the “name that hex code colour” competition!

The Twynhams guys also very kindly brought along loads of memory sticks to give away. Finally we gave away a copy of Windows 7 Ultimate Edition and lots of books very kindly provided by Apress.

That rounded off the evening nicely, so thanks again to our speakers, Martin, Paul , Chris, and Darren, to Apress for providing the books, to Twynhams for providing the memory sticks, and to Southampton University.

That will be it for Southampton meetings now until September, when the theme will be real world “This is how we did it” presentations. I’ll be encouraging first time speakers and there will be some shorter slots available, so if you’ve done some interesting stuff with SharePoint now is your chance to tell us about it! Just get in touch or leave a comment on this blog if you would like to speak.

Have a great summer everyone!

Ian

I was very pleased to be presenting Access Services: Better than Marmite? The session looked at the traditional problems of using Access in an enterprise environment, and how Access Services could help to address them. I also built a full Access Services based solution for tracking Freedom of Information Requests in a SharePoint site, from scratch, using Access Services.

My session slides can be downloaded from here.

http://pointbeyond.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/access-services.pptx

Hope you find them useful!

Back to PointBeyond web site.

Sign up here http://suguk.org/forums/thread/24475.aspx

Ian

Andy Ginn on HP white papers and sizing tool (not a great picture, blame the iPhone)

Below, Lee Fedder describes his SharePoint integrated web application for managing shipping insurance claims

Below, Mark Macrae on Reporting Services in SharePoint integrated mode

See you all at the next one, which will be in Southampton!

Ian

Back to PointBeyond web site

Topics include the latest research from HP labs on sizing and configuring SharePoint, plus SUGUK’s own Mark Macrae on getting the most out of SQL Server Reporting Services in SharePoint integrated mode.

Sign up here: http://suguk.org/forums/thread/21874.aspx, see you there!