S.Y.M. Wong-A-Ton

Kia Ora! My name is S.Y.M. Wong-A-Ton, and I am the owner and editor of BizSupportOnline as well as the author of all of the InfoPath tutorials, articles, and educational InfoPath videos on this web site.

BizSupportOnline is a web site where you will find articles on practical solutions to common challenges encountered when trying to build solutions using Microsoft technologies, and in particular, InfoPath, SharePoint, SQL Server, and the Microsoft .NET Framework.

If you are interested in learning more about me, you can choose from the following topics on this page:

• Professional Experience
  • Books
  • Online Articles
  • Work Experience
• Professional Skillset
• Industry Honors and Awards
• Education
  • Certifications
• Personal Information
• Contact

 

Professional Experience

 

Books

InfoPath 2010 Cookbook 2 (October 2011)
InfoPath 2010 Cookbook 2 explains the basics of designing SharePoint list forms, SharePoint form library forms, SharePoint workflow forms, and document information panels, in addition to providing guidance for how to work with SharePoint lists to provide sorting, filtering, and paging, as well as how to create SharePoint Designer 2010 workflows that make use of, create, or interact with InfoPath 2010 forms. This book is targeted towards semi-technical professionals who have already mastered the basics of designing form templates in InfoPath and who are familiar with the basics of SharePoint 2010, but who have yet to start integrating InfoPath forms with SharePoint. InfoPath 2010 Cookbook 2 extends the skills acquired from InfoPath 2010 Cookbook by showing how to integrate InfoPath 2010 primarily with SharePoint 2010 and secondarily with SharePoint Designer 2010, Excel, Access, and Word without writing a single line of code. InfoPath 2010 Cookbook 2 consists of 101 step-by-step tutorials spread across 6 chapters and 478 pages.

InfoPath 2010 Cookbook (February 2011)
InfoPath 2010 Cookbook explains the basics of designing form templates using InfoPath 2010. This book is targeted towards semi-technical professionals who want to master the basics of InfoPath 2010 from scratch by following step-by-step instructions without writing code. InfoPath 2010 Cookbook consists of 101 step-by-step tutorials spread across 9 chapters and 284 pages.

 

Online Articles

Create a toggle button (Microsoft Office Online Web Site, June 2008)
This tutorial shows how to use rules and conditions in InfoPath to create a toggle button with which you can select and deselect all the check boxes in a column of a repeating table.

Downloading InfoPath 2007 Forms in a Specific File Format from a SharePoint Form Library (MSDN Web Site, November 2007)
Learn how to use a technique that enables users to convert and download Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007 forms directly from Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 form libraries as files in a format that is not XML.

Accessing configuration settings from InfoPath 2007 browser-enabled form templates (Microsoft Support Web Site, September 2007)
Learn how to access custom configuration settings that are stored in Windows SharePoint Services web application configuration files from InfoPath browser-enabled form templates.

How to execute JScript code from an InfoPath 2007 browser-enabled form template (Microsoft Support Web Site, September 2007)
Learn how to execute JScript code from InfoPath browser-enabled form templates that are hosted in custom ASP.NET pages.

Printing InfoPath 2007 Web-Based Forms to PDF (ASP Alliance Web Site, November 2007)
While you can use the Microsoft Save as PDF add-in with the InfoPath 2007 client application or write code that uses the InfoPath 2007 object model to export the current view of an InfoPath form to PDF, these two options are not available for InfoPath 2007 web-based forms. This article presents a technique that you can use to print InfoPath 2007 web-based forms to PDF.

Saving InfoPath Forms to SQL Server 2005 as XML (ASP Alliance Web Site, January 2007)
The new XML data type within SQL Server 2005 opens new possibilities for persisting XML data of InfoPath forms. This article discusses and demonstrates how to save entire InfoPath forms to SQL Server 2005 as typed or untyped XML data.

How to automatically display the first item in a drop-down list box in InfoPath 2003 (Microsoft Support Web Site, December 2006)
This article describes how to automatically display the first item in a drop-down list box that has been populated with values from a data connection to an XML file.

Updating a Secondary Data Source in InfoPath Using AJAX (ASP Alliance Web Site, November 2006)
Microsoft Office InfoPath does not offer out-of-the-box persistence of data in secondary data sources; only data within the Main data source is persisted. To make updating secondary data sources possible, changes have to be saved back to the underlying source of secondary data sources. This article shows how you can use AJAX to update the data of a secondary data source.

Building an RSS Feed Reader with Microsoft Office InfoPath (ASP Alliance Web Site, May 2006)
While Microsoft Office InfoPath 2003 offers out of the box connections to several types of data sources such as XML files, databases, SharePoint lists and web services, we can also use InfoPath to connect to web sites to retrieve or submit data. In this article we will create an RSS feed reader sample form in InfoPath to retrieve data from the Internet.

Password-protecting Sensitive InfoPath Form Fields (ASP Alliance Web Site, March 2006)
Microsoft Office InfoPath forms are stored in clear-text and thus considered insecure, especially if you have an option to enter the Password. In this article, Wong examines how to enable a user to enter a password into an InfoPath form and use it to encrypt and decrypt sensitive InfoPath form fields without saving the password.

Slab detachment in continental collision zones: An analysis of controlling parameters (Geophysical Research Letters Volume 24 Number 16, June 1997)
During the early stages of continental collision when continental lithosphere is subducted after a prolonged period of normal oceanic subduction, changes in the temperature distribution and stress field of the subducting lithosphere can lead to failure within the lithosphere, and result in detachment of the deeper portion of subducted lithosphere (slab detachment or slab breakoff). We use a 2D time-dependent numerical model to identify the parameters controlling slab detachment and to estimate breakoff depths and time lengths. Temperature and rheology of subducting continental lithosphere are found to control slab detachment.

 

Work Experience

Technology Consultant (Hewlett-Packard, August 2006 through December 2010)
Advised customers on the use of Microsoft technologies. Proposed and implemented solutions. Trained and supported staff of customers. Maintained and extended existing enterprise applications both on- and off-site. Developed client applications, web applications, and web services.

Senior Software Developer (Macaw, September 2000 through July 2006)
Developed Internet and Intranet applications. Designed, administered, and wrote stored procedures for relational databases. Gave application support both on- and off-site to customers. Maintained and extended existing applications. Trained customers on using Microsoft products and technologies. Wrote several articles on the topic of security for the internal monthly newsletter of Macaw.

Application Developer (BT Syntegra, August 1997 through August 2000)
Developed desktop applications (client-server) and components. Designed and wrote (stored) procedures for SQL Server and Oracle. Created and maintained reports in Crystal Reports. Researched and optimized performance of applications. Wrote documentation (technical and user manuals). Was a member of the application support department and Quality Assurance team for 6 months. Guided junior developers with programming in Visual Basic, Crystal Reports, and SQL. Gave helpdesk support (autonomously) for a course registration application to a little over 40 internal customers.

Junior Researcher (Utrecht University, December 1996 through May 1997)
Did scientific research under supervision of Prof. Dr. M.J.R Wortel. Extended FORTRAN application to numerically model thermo-mechanical processes within Earth. Co-wrote (as the main author) a scientific article, which was published in August 1997 as "S.Y.M. Wong A Ton and M.J.R. Wortel, Slab detachment in continental collision zones: An analysis of controlling parameters". Article was published in one of the top journals in geophysics, Geophysical Research Letters, published by the American Geophysical Union.

 

Professional Skillset

I have worked with a large range of technologies over the course of my professional career (since 1997) as well as built, maintained, and supported a variety of applications ranging from small desktop applications to large and complex enterprise applications. The primary technologies I work with are listed below.

 

Industry Honors and Awards

I was awarded with the Microsoft MVP award for 2006-2007, 2007-2008, 2008-2009, 2009-2010, 2010-2011, and 2011-2012.

The Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) Program is an award program that Microsoft uses to seek and recognize the best and brightest from technology communities around the world. Microsoft MVPs are recognized for their demonstrated practical experience and willingness to share their technical expertise with the community and with Microsoft.

 

Education

My education has been a combination of formal education through university as well as education through professional courses and self-study.

Master of Science in Geophysics

In June 1996 I completed my Master of Science in Geophysics at the Utrecht University in the Netherlands, with an emphasis on plate tectonics.

In June 1997, I made a career change, because I enjoyed programming more than doing scientific research.

Professional Courses

I have taken the following professional courses:

• Introduction to BizTalk 2006 - January 2006
• Programming ASP.NET 2.0 - November 2005
• Time Management - December 2003

 

Certifications

I currently hold the following certifications:

• Microsoft Certified Professional Developer (Enterprise Application Developer) - July 2008
• Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (.NET 2.0: Distributed Applications) - July 2008
• Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (.NET 2.0: Web Applications) - April 2008
• Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (.NET 2.0: Windows Applications) - April 2008
• Microsoft Certified Solution Developer (For Microsoft .NET) - September 2005
• Microsoft Certified Application Developer (For Microsoft .NET) - August 2005
• Microsoft Certified Solution Developer (Visual Studio 6.0) - October 2001
• Microsoft Certified Professional - July 1998

 

Personal Information

I live in Wellington, New Zealand, where you can often find me running along Wellington's waterfront in my spare time. I also enjoy traveling around New Zealand, going on long strenuous day hikes, and taking landscape photos. I often report on my hiking and driving trips, and on other tidbits of New Zealand travel through my travel web site.

 

Contact

If you wish to contact me regarding paid InfoPath consulting, which includes modification of any of the InfoPath/SharePoint solutions I have written about on BizSupportOnline or elsewhere on the Internet to suit your needs, please note that I am currently not taking any new clients on board.

If you have a question or comment about one of the tutorials in my InfoPath 2010 Cookbook or InfoPath 2010 Cookbook 2 and therefore wish to contact me, you can send an email to the contact email address listed under the Support section in the Introduction chapter of my book.