{"id":459,"date":"2009-03-31T12:21:11","date_gmt":"2009-03-31T12:21:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/andyparkes.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/2009\/03\/31\/sharepoint-designer-free\/"},"modified":"2009-03-31T12:21:11","modified_gmt":"2009-03-31T12:21:11","slug":"sharepoint-designer-free","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/andyparkes.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/2009\/03\/31\/sharepoint-designer-free\/","title":{"rendered":"SharePoint Designer – Free?"},"content":{"rendered":"

There has been a rumour kicking around the last few weeks that Microsoft are to make SharePoint designer available for free<\/p>\n

(Posts from various SharePoint based blogs here<\/a>, here<\/a> and here<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Any software announcement scheduled for April 1st always makes me suspicious (a couple of the blog posts I’ve mentioned have updated to say it\u2019ll be the April 2nd now) but the post that made me think this could be the real deal was from the Lady Licensing blog<\/a> (If you haven\u2019t already subscribed to her blog do it\u2026it\u2019s very helpful!)<\/p>\n

Product Licensing Changes to SharePoint Designer<\/b>, PerformancePoint Server and Forms Server \u2013 April 2009 <\/a><\/p>\n

The post outlines that SharePoint Designer will become free (if you have software assurance you can get a copy of Expression Web 2 in replacement) and also says that Performance Point Server 2007 and Forms Server 2007 are to be retired<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve got a few thoughts on this so lets start with SharePoint Designer<\/p>\n

If this is true then i think it\u2019s a move that makes sense. When your working with SharePoint you have three ways to customise your site<\/p>\n

1) Through the browser<\/p>\n

2) With SharePoint Designer (SPD)<\/p>\n

3) Using developer tools such as Visual Studio<\/p>\n

SharePoint designer is sort of pitched as an advanced end user tool but in reality (based on my own experience) someone with specific knowledge would do this on your behalf (such as your IT consultant) <\/p>\n

If you want to do anything more advanced then you\u2019d get developers involved who would side step SPD completely so I’ll bet Microsoft aren\u2019t selling too many copies of SPD and I imagine the people who are at this level are using Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) as opposed to Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) so they are already paying customers<\/p>\n

Since WSS is free making it a part of that adds to the overall feature set and wont make too much of a difference to the Microsoft bottom line<\/p>\n

Just for the ability to create workflows alone i think SharePoint Designer is an excellent tool, that\u2019s before you look at any of the other stuff it can do<\/p>\n

While it can be quite a scary product (people worry about \u201cbreaking\u201d their SharePoint sites) it is extremely powerful and worth getting to know (Penny Coventry\u2019s book<\/a> on the subject is great!)<\/p>\n

Forms Server 2007 and PerformancePoint<\/strong><\/p>\n

According to the information on Emma\u2019s post both of these products are being retired<\/p>\n

PerformancePoint is being rolled up into the next release of Sharepoint and will be called \u201cPerformancePoint Services for Sharepoint\u201d (see here for official details<\/a>). They did the same thing with Content Management Server<\/a> which helps build on the feature set of MOSS<\/p>\n

Forms Server though is an odd one which falls under the same category of InfoPath<\/p>\n

I personally think Microsoft missed a trick with InfoPath and the small business market. InfoPath is a very useful tool when combined with SharePoint but it\u2019s one of those products no one knows about. (I have the same argument about OneNote \u2013 but that\u2019s for another time)<\/p>\n

This is because of the way it is bundled. InfoPath 2007 comes with Office 2007 Professional Plus and Office Enterprise<\/a> (we\u2019ll just pretend \u201cOffice Ultimate\u201d doesn\u2019t exist) which means buying it under a volume license agreement. While we do have customers who buy office in this way lots of them prefer to buy their office software OEM with a new PC<\/p>\n

You can<\/strong> buy InfoPath separately but that means boxed product (expensive) or via volume licensing but if you going to do that you may as well get Office Professional Plus right?<\/p>\n

So if you don\u2019t already know InfoPath lets you create electronic forms which are much more powerful than anything you could create in Word (which is where most people create their forms!)<\/p>\n

They also integrate nicely with SharePoint so you can unlock the data within them and when combined with workflows you can create powerful solutions (timesheets and expense claims i always think are a good examples)<\/p>\n

The downside to this is that obviously you must have InfoPath installed to work with the forms. This is where Forms Server steps in<\/a>. You can create a form and then convert it into a web form so all you need to fill it in is a browser (you can even create forms for your mobile device!)<\/p>\n

This functionality is \u201cbaked in\u201d to MOSS so the product is aimed for those people using WSS but with the need for web based forms. Generally this means smaller businesses so as an example what costs more?<\/p>\n

\n

10 user system<\/u><\/p>\n

1 copy of InfoPath  + Forms server 2007 and CALs<\/p>\n

or<\/p>\n

10 copies of InfoPath<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I imagine Microsoft aren\u2019t selling too many copies of Forms Server so i can see why this is being retired. I couldn\u2019t find any official announcement so I’m not sure if that\u2019s the end of Forms Server and if you want that functionality you\u2019ll have to move to MOSS or if we\u2019ll see some Forms Server functionality in the next version of WSS (fingers crossed!)<\/p>\n

It\u2019s April 1st tomorrow so i guess we\u2019ll at least find out something then!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There has been a rumour kicking around the last few weeks that Microsoft are to make SharePoint designer available for free (Posts from various SharePoint based blogs here, here and here) Any software announcement scheduled for April 1st always makes me suspicious (a couple of the blog posts I’ve mentioned have updated to say it\u2019ll<\/p>\n

<\/span>Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[69,28,45,71],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-infopath","category-office","category-sharepoint","category-sharepoint-designer"],"yoast_head":"\nSharePoint Designer - Free? - Andy's Techie Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/andyparkes.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/2009\/03\/31\/sharepoint-designer-free\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"SharePoint Designer - Free? - Andy's Techie Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"There has been a rumour kicking around the last few weeks that Microsoft are to make SharePoint designer available for free (Posts from various SharePoint based blogs here, here and here) Any software announcement scheduled for April 1st always makes me suspicious (a couple of the blog posts I’ve mentioned have updated to say it\u2019llRead More\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/andyparkes.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/2009\/03\/31\/sharepoint-designer-free\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Andy's Techie Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-03-31T12:21:11+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Andy Parkes\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Andy Parkes\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/andyparkes.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/2009\/03\/31\/sharepoint-designer-free\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/andyparkes.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/2009\/03\/31\/sharepoint-designer-free\/\",\"name\":\"SharePoint Designer - Free? 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