Forgive the length of this post, but I feel it necessary to give a little background information into our problem.
We were looking for a simple solution to a seemingly simple problem: Host ~15 safety forms online for field technicians (electricians) to fill out via their netbooks and submit to some sort of repository for archiving with the ability for the technicians to reopen the forms and make additions over the course of the job / week as well as firing an email off to our H&S rep per form submitted.
Acrobat + Remote Desktop Services (SBS 2011 network) + Reader seemed like a good solution and does work, but it's somewhat cumbersome for the less computer literate techs and proving to be more time in support then we are potentially saving going with paperless forms. This is the system we have in place now.
We initially purchased Acrobat Standard and subsequently upgraded to Professional when we found some limitations we weren't expecting in Acrobat Standard. An Adobe Sales rep also suggested that we check out Livecycle Designer 9, which was included with Acrobat Pro which included even more nice stuff. I started re-authoring the forms in LCD9.
The issue now is that I have Dynamic XML forms with flowed content that cannot be submitted by Reader to sharepoint. Why? You can't reader extend livecycle forms with acrobat, which it is bundled with.....
Why exactly adobe has two different and somewhat incompatible forms authoring tools bundled in the same product is beyond me, especially when one of them requires what I would imagine is an expensive server product to enable it's full use?
So it seems I have a choice between having my employer purchase Reader Extensions ES2 to maintain the nice form design with flowed content, purchasing 12 copies of acrobat to put on the netbooks when Reader SHOULD be all that we need or converting all the dynamic XML forms authored in LCD9 into static AcroForms so they can be reader extended and deployed to sharepoint.
We envision our technicians browsing to and logging in to our hosted sharepoint server, selecting the appropriate form template from a drop down list in a doc library or list, which opens the form for completion in the browser and on submit posts the form to a list on sharepoint for completed forms, preferably with some key fields mapped to custom columns in said list AND with the ability for the submitting technician to re-open the submitted form from sharepoint and make additions as the week / job progresses.
What would be the best option given our current situation and needs? With all due respect, I am looking for suggestions from technically oriented or experienced persons, not sales reps that don't fully know the product.