If you are new to InfoPath 2007 or are 'used' to working in InfoPath 2003 (even with SP1) you will have tough time adjusting to the fact that InfoPath forms can be browser enabled. And I say this is because as a Developer as much as we like to learn new things we always wants to go back and develop the applications 'old' way. InfoPath Forms Services allows developers to design and develop forms in forms designer and with the use of a simple 'design checker', it can assure you that the form is going to work as designed. The biggest advantage that this feature provides is that the end users are not required to have InfoPath clients. Now, Microsoft would still require users to have CAL for MOSS as a whole, but more important, this provides flexibility to end users of working from any PC (as long as network security allows access to SharePoint portal). One more thing that I would like to point out that Forms Services is a part of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server Enterprise Edition. If you are running on plain vanilla WSS 3.0, a separate product called Forms Server is available that can work in the same fashion as Forms Services in MOSS 2007.

So how does this works? An InfoPath form template consists of one package with an .xsn extension. An InfoPath client parses these files and transforms the XML files into HTML files for  display. Forms Server converts the files in the package to .aspx, .css, and .jscript files to render them in a browser.

This blog outlines the steps required to configure Forms Services in MOSS 2007 so that SharePoint sites can render InfoPath forms in HTML. This blog assumes that you have administrative privledges to configure both Central Administration and Site Setting of individual site collection.

First RDP to server running Central Administration. Remember, there can only be 1 Central Adminisration site in a given server farm. Go to Application Management and then click on Manage Web application features.

You want to Activate the "Office SharePoint Server Enterprise Web Application features" feature.

Once you have activated the feature at Farm level, the Next step is to configure it at Site Collection level. For this, login to your Site Collection (inside a web application), and go to Site Settings and under Site Collection Administration, click on Site collection features.

Activate the Office SharePoint Server Enterprise Site Collection features.

Thirdly, come back to Central Administration site and go to Application Management tab again. Only this time, you will see a new section called InfoPath Forms Services. This was enabled when we activated the Enterprise features that includes Forms Services. Click on Configure InfoPath Forms Services.

You want to ensure that under User Browser-enabled Form Templates section you have Allow users to browser-enable form template and Render form templates that are browser-enabled by users checked.

Now, it is also possible to force users to open form in a browser even if they have InfoPath clients installed on their machine. In order to do this, browse to your forms library under your site. Then Lists Settings go to Forms Library Settings. In General Settings section click on Advanced Settings.

This opens up Forms Library Advanced Settings page. In the browser enabled document section, ensure that you select "Display as a Web page".

 Thats it. The steps outlined above can be used to configure Forms Services on a MOSS EE environment.

Configuring excel services for a document library can sometimes be a difficult task. IMHO, Microsoft has made the terms rather confusing which has made following directions relatively difficult. Once you can get a hang of those terms, I think it is relatively straighforward on what needs to be done in order to configure excel services on document library. Needless to say that excel services only works for excel document (thought, I should make this clear). Here are few simple steps that you can take to enable and use excel services.

Step 1: Enable Excel Services

Under Central Administration-> Application Management -> Under Office SharePoint Server Shared Services click on Create or configure this farm's shared services. If you have not created an SSP yet, this is the time to do so. Click on New SSP link on the toolbar. You would need to designate a name of this new SSP, a web application that this will be running for (tip: This needs to have an application pool that does not run under Network Service account), the database server that this SSP is going be running under and authentication or service account for this SSP. Once entered, click on OK and this should create a new SSP. Once created, click on SharedServices1 (SSP that you just created), and locate Excel Services Settings -> Trusted file locations.

In order to enable excel services for the document library, you will need to add document library list to the list of trusted file connections. e.g (http://Contoso/Marketing/Expenses). While creating this, make sure that you choose "trusted data connection libraries only". This will restrict the excel workbooks to query data against trusted connection that you will create in Step 2.

Step 2: Create Trusted Data Connection Library

On Marketing site, on Site Actions menu, click on Create.  Under Libraries, you will see a link to Data Connection Library. Create a new data connection and name it as MarketingDCL by ensuring that the document template as Microsoft Office Excel spreadsheet.

Step 3: Add Trusted Data Connection Library to Excel Services SSP page.

Click on Trusted data connection libraries and add a new Trusted Data connection library. On Address field enter /Contoso/Marketing/MarketingDCL (tip: no http).

Step 4: Create a new data connection file.

For this particular step, you will need to open Excel that already has an external data connected to it. For this exampe we will assume that excel is connected to Northwind database. In this step, your focus is to create data connection file and make SharePoint aware of it. In order to do that, In the Excel workbook click on Data tab -> Connections. This should pop up the window(Screenshot below). Click on Properties -> Definition tab  click on Export Connection File. Type the path to the new data connection library that we created in step 3 (http://Contoso/Marketing/MarketingDCL/Northwind.odc) and click Save.

Now, ensure that the connection type is SharePoint Library and UDC purpose is ReadWrite.

Thats it. Now you can test your connection. Open a workbook and click on Edit in Excel. Once open, go to Data tab, click on Get external data Click on existing connections. In connection files on the network, you should only see the connections that are enabled on SharePoint library.

Thats it. This is all it takes to get the excel services configured and going on your SharePoint environment.

If you work under heavily regulated industries like Banks or Pharmaceuticals; I am sure you ran across several governance, audits and security drills that kept you scratching your head. And every interal/external audit goes by 'they' come up with something new to 'ding' you. Now a big buzz word is document security. Well, you would say that you have configured security within SharePoint so that Sue Thomas in Purchasing department dont have access to SOX compliance documents that Phil Langer in Compliance department does. Well, let me throw some light on this particular subject that has been a problem area since Eve ate that forbidden fruit. You can secure your documents inside SharePoint by leveraging SharePoint's native security infrastructure, but what if the document is copied on a users hard drive and is then circulated to the group via email or simply a plain copy to a thumb drive. How do you prevent users from doing this? Also, a disgruntled employee, can print a company's chemical formula, product specifications, or some patent method stored in SharePoint site to which he/she has access to and take those document home or keep in safe until the judgement day to reveal those to competetors or even worse to the Press. Well, look no further, SharePoint (both WSS and MOSS) has support for Information Rights Management which can be configured to use corporate IRM server.

What good is this IRM Server Anyway?

Per Microsoft: IRM server is actually a service ("Windows Rights Management Service") that is available in Windows 2003 server and now also in Windows 2008 server that works with RMS enabled application (including SharePoint) to help safeguard digital information from unauthorized use.

How to configure IRM Capabilities in SharePoint

1. Log in to SharePoint Central Administration Site and click on Operations. Under Operations, under Security Configuration click on Information Rights Management. (Screenshot below) 
2. By default, "Do Not use IRM on this server" is selected. You want to change it to either "Use the default RMS Server specified in Active Directory" or "Use this RMS Server" and enter the RMS server that you or your organization would like to use. Needless to say that, in order to choose "Use the default RMS Server specified in Active Directory", you should have a pre-configured RMS inside Active Directory.
3. Now you are ready to enable IRM settings to your document library. Remember that, in order to execute IRM settings, you need to have Adminitrative priviledges. You enable IRM by going to specific document library -> Settings -> Document Library Settings -> And under Permissions and Management click on Information Management by policy settings.  (Screenshot below)
   

IRM helps you in safeguarding digital assets by.

1. Disabling Print for the documents. This way, people cannot print and take the document home.
2. Disable 'Save' for the documents.
3. Assigning if a user can run Macros or other custom code in the file.
4. License expiration: meaning # of days before the document expires.
5. Restricting users to allow uploads for files types that cannot be rights managed. Remember that out of box, SharPoint and IRM only supports Powerpoint, Word Doc, Excel, InfoPath forms and XPS documents (similar to pdfs).
6. Helps prevent an authorized user from even taking a screen shot of the document. Pretty amazing huh!

There are few 3rd party tools available that can help you with rights management for adobe pdf documents. A prominent one that I know is GigaTrust. I am not endorsing them by any means, but majority of the companies actually use PDFs and GigaTrust has a product that integrates with SharePoint and seamlessly allows you to manage information rights just as seamlessly as IRM does for a .docx file.

Hopefully, now you have some idea on IRM and how it can help protect digital assets within your organization.