Customers have been asking us about the future of InfoPath and SharePoint forms, and today we’re ready to share some information on the next generation of Office forms.
Industry trends and feedback from our customers and partners make it clear that today’s businesses demand an intelligent, integrated forms experience that spans devices. We are looking to make investments that allow you to easily design, deploy, and use intelligent, integrated forms across Office clients, servers, and services—forms that everyone can use on their PC, tablet, or phone. Our goal is to deliver tools that are flexible and agile, so you can quickly connect to your data and processes in new and exciting ways.
So how are we evolving our forms technology? In an effort to streamline our investments and deliver a more integrated Office forms user experience, we’re retiring InfoPath and investing in new forms technology across SharePoint, Access, and Word. This means that 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. The InfoPath Forms Services technology within Office 365 will be maintained and it will function until further notice.
If you’re an InfoPath customer, we want to reassure you that we’re working on migration guidance in parallel as we’re building our next generation of forms technology. Until we have more detailed technology roadmap and guidance to share with you, we encourage you to continue using InfoPath tools. We also want to remind you that the InfoPath 2013 desktop client and InfoPath Forms Services for SharePoint Server 2013 will continue to be supported through 2023 as part of our Lifecycle support policy.
We’ll provide more details on the future of Office forms later this year. If you’re attending the SharePoint Conference in March, you can get a sneak peek of what we’re building in “InfoPath and SharePoint Forms Roadmap” session. If you can’t attend or you want to review or share the information later, you’ll be able to view this session online after the conference.
InfoPath frequently asked questions
1. Will Microsoft be shipping another version of InfoPath?
No, there will not be another version of the InfoPath desktop client or InfoPath Forms Services. We are focusing all of our investments on new intelligent, integrated forms experiences across Office technology.
2. How long will InfoPath be supported?
•The InfoPath 2013 client will be supported through April 2023.
•InfoPath Forms Services for SharePoint Server 2013 will be supported until April 2023.
•InfoPath Forms Services in Office 365 will be supported until further notice.
For more information on InfoPath Forms Services support in Office 365, please review our Online Services Support Lifecycle Policy.
3. What should I use to build and complete forms?
You should continue to use InfoPath technology.
4. Will there be a migration tool or process for the next generation of forms technology?
We’ll provide more details on migration scenarios and guidance in Q4 of CY 2014.
5. What will the new forms capabilities be in SharePoint, Access, and Word? When will they be available?
We’ll be sharing updates throughout the year, with a sneak peek in March at the SharePoint Conference.
