With the death nail on InfoPath, there’s a lot of talk on workflow and forms engines in SharePoint…We choose AgilePoint

Formotus is another option and they have a completely independent white paper that you can download from their web site.  Of course, it’ll be totally independent, given that it’s from their web site.  🙂

The Good:- What’s really cool about the product

1. 1.      UI:

–        User-friendly development.

–        Easy to deploy and use.

–        Neat Mobile friendly forms available

–        A parallel process of two applications possible using subprocess using no code.

–        SharePoint workflows in Agilepoint solve most purposes for which event receivers are needed.

–        Wide variety of controls available for various functionalities.

–        Different process models are available for different uses. I.e. E-forms, Sharepoint Forms, System  Integration, etc.

–        Can add Jquery/ CSS to controls easily through shared/ individual files.

1. 2.      Runtime:

–        Detailed information about variables/fields used available at runtime.

–        Multiple data sources can be used at various events.

–        Running applications will continue to run when a new change is published, as a result of which the system doesn’t have to be brought down to deploy changes.

–        Can use APIs to access any kind of data from other resources.

1. 3.      Product features:

–        SharePoint version independent will work with future versions.

–        Easy to be integrated into different systems because SharePoint, Salesforce has AgilePoint Dashboards available.

–        Log in using various Authorization methods possible. (OAuth2 covers a lot of authorization methods)

–        Very easy to export applications to other tenants and reuse them.

–        Globally reusable tokens can be created and exported to multiple applications increasing reusability.

–        Individual forms also can be exported and re-used across multiple applications and tenants.

1. 4.      On Premise /Private Cloud

–        Multiple tenants possible on a private cloud

–        Can access data stored in XML and create various reports based on the data

The Bad:

1. UI:

–        A canvas designed in a way that plain text cannot be placed on a form. It has to be in control.

–        Controls take up a specific size that cannot be changed in height. This does give a neater look but the desired look is difficult (I may be biased as this is easily possible in MS word/ Infopath).

–        Nesting controls is difficult except put in subforms which in turn do not support a lot of controls

–        Custom HTML controls rendering is difficult.

–        Autosave doesn’t happen and the UI becomes unresponsive at a time causing loss of data

1. Runtime:

–        Lookups take a while to load.

–        Page submit actions can’t be modified.

–        Poor integration with IE

–        Offline modification of forms not possible

1. Product Features:

–        Look and feel can’t be modified to look like SharePoint to maintain consistency

–        Difficult to integrate into SP if not using Agilepoint dashboards as a physical location of forms/tasks is not available

The Ugly:- What totally sucks

1. UI:

–        Very poor support for multiple controls in design time and runtime. Hence not suitable for larger forms.

1. Runtime:

–        Can’t access forms from a physical location as forms are available as tasks. This is usually a major requirement by the client.

–        Can’t access data on the forms anywhere hence can’t be put in reports easily.