InfoPath Dev

hello,

 At work right now i have a template for a project. I want to make it so you have like one master copy that keeps all the data but be able to have multiple users add information onto a form that will update the master and everyone elses form that have it open. The template is more just they need to add new times when stuff is completed and want those times to be shown to everyone so if someone isn't there someone else can add a new time.

 Or another way is to just have one master copy that everyone can open and change the time on it but shows on everyones computer and you don't have to save the form and have someone reopen it to change the time again.

 I would like to help clear this up. We are both in the Air Force and have the need to track alot of things at once. For the past year we have been using an excel doc to track the times that jets land and take off along with other things. We created one file for each "mission" and posted it on the lan. Then our  "crontrol" section would open the file along with the cops "control" and the "HQ".

This way whenever anyone entered a new time it would be displayed at all three control centers. It worked great but there is alot more that we need to track now so i created a infopath temp thinking that i could use it to generate a form for each "mission" that would be easy to access on the lan and update by all.

This is not the case. When i create the form and post it on the lan only one person can update it at a time and all the others get a read only status. Is there a way to make it so that all of us can open it and add data at the same time? Maybe even add a button that could just "me.refresh" 

Thank you so much for the help.

I will attach the old temp so you can get the idea of what my goal is.

 please need help

Hi --

I think the reason no one has responded is that we don't know of a way to allow multiple users to use a single form.There are ways to merge multiple forms into a single form, and perhaps that might be a solution that could work for you. Each person would have their own .xml file as well as another form that shows the merged results. That being said, I'm not terribly familiar with form merging. I believe that some of the sample forms with InfoPath 2003 use merging, and it could be some of the samples with 2007 do as well.

Another thing you could consider would be storing your data in a SQL database -- SQL Express is a free download. Then you'd be able to base your form off the DB and use the submit functionality to add the changes to the DB -- running a new query would refresh the data the user sees, allowing everyone to see the changes.

I'm sorry I can't be of more help -- I just can't think of anything in IP that really mimics the Shared Workbook functionality of Excel.