InfoPath Dev

Workaround for deprecated GetUserProfileByName web service method

Hilary Stoupa — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 21:34:00 GMT

If you are using Qdabra Forms and SharePoint Online, you may have run into this issue - the old UserProfileService.asmx service has been deprecated! This means we can't create a data connection for that service any longer. The qRules Command "GetUserProfileByName" doesn't rely on the web service for data, but it does need a data source to put the user data in.

One option is to use one of the XTPs we have provided here. The XTP already has logic set up you can easily leverage, and will add the needed data connection to your form.

You can also just use the XML from a previously created GetUserProfileByName data connection - I've uploaded a copy here. Just download the file, and add it to your form as a resource file. Create an XML data connection to the resource file - be sure to set it to query on load. I name mine "GetUserProfileByName" so I don't have to pass the data source name into the command.

DBXL Migration Tool - Handling errors with the GetListItems Method on Reshred All

Hilary Stoupa — Fri, 23 Sep 2022 16:43:00 GMT

The DBXL Migration Tool uses the DBXL Document Service GetListItems method to return a list of documents when performing some actions, like Reshred All Documents (resave the XML data to the SQL database):

Sometimes, the GetListItems method returns an error which will block you from being able to reshred all the documents for the document type.

You might see an error in the Qdabra Event Log that looks like this:

GetListItems encountered a critical error and needs attention:

User: domain\username
Url: /QdabraWebService/DbxlDocumentService.asmx
System.Threading.ThreadAbortException: Thread was being aborted.
   at Qdabra.Dbxl.Implementation.ServiceImplementation.GetFieldValue(Document doc, String field)
   at Qdabra.Dbxl.Implementation.ServiceImplementation.AddRow(ListResults table, Document doc)
   at Qdabra.Dbxl.Implementation.ServiceImplementation.GetListItems(String docTypeName, String viewName, XmlNode query, XmlNode viewFields, String rowLimit, XmlNode queryOptions, StatusInfo& info, Boolean onlyDocumentLevelAccess, String logonUser)

The stack trace was:    at Qdabra.Dbxl.Implementation.ServiceImplementation.GetFieldValue(Document doc, String field)
   at Qdabra.Dbxl.Implementation.ServiceImplementation.AddRow(ListResults table, Document doc)
   at Qdabra.Dbxl.Implementation.ServiceImplementation.GetListItems(String docTypeName, String viewName, XmlNode query, XmlNode viewFields, String rowLimit, XmlNode queryOptions, StatusInfo& info, Boolean onlyDocumentLevelAccess, String logonUser).

The Migration Tool may become unresponsive after logging just one line:
Executing action ListDomains…

Instead of using the Reshred All Documents option on the Other Operations tab, you can use a scenario on the Custom tab:

Select the "ReshredDocuments.xml" scenario from the Scenario path dropdown. Click the "Load" button, then under the "Scenario runs" column on the left side, select "ReshredDocuments".

For the docType variable, you need to enter the numeric ID for the document type. You can find that in the document type URL:

Or on the document type's General tab in DAT:

In the screenshot above, the ID for my document type is "70" as seen in the Form Template Properties section.

The "listDocumentsMethod" variable needs to be changed from "getlistitems" to "db":

Once you have configured these two variables, you can click "Run" and your documents should start to reshred.

Power Automate (Microsoft Flow) Demo Videos

Hilary Stoupa — Thu, 31 Oct 2019 22:14:00 GMT

I've recorded a couple of short demo Microsoft Flow videos recently and wanted to add links here - I'll add more as I record more. Add a comment if there are any techniques you need a hand with!

Windows 10 May Update & List Form Issue

Hilary Stoupa — Thu, 06 Jun 2019 23:45:00 GMT

The May update for Windows 10 appears to have caused issues with opening customized SharePoint List forms in InfoPath from the list.

From the list, if you click on Customize in InfoPath, you may get the following error:

The SOAP response indicates that an error occurred on the server:

Exception of type 'Microsoft.SharePoint.SoapServer.SoapServerException' was thrown.
<detail><errorstring xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/soap/">
    List does not exist.
    The page you selected contains a list that does not exist. It may have been deleted by another user.
    </errorstring><errorcode xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/soap/%22%3E0x82000006%3C/errorcode%3E%3C/detail>

Nice, right? Especially since you were in the list when you clicked the button, so you know full well the list exists.

Click Customize in InfoPath again from the ribbon and the form should open in design mode. Or, start from InfoPath Designer - New > SharePoint List > enter your server URL and select your list - that opened the list form on my system without an error.

Content Type Update Issue in SharePoint 2016

Hilary Stoupa — Wed, 17 Oct 2018 19:44:00 GMT

We saw an issue recently updating a content type in a SharePoint 2016 subsite. The error InfoPath returned on publish was "InfoPath has encountered an error. The operation failed. The parameter is incorrect."

Using Fiddler while attempting to publish, we noticed that not all content types were being returned from the library where they were stored when InfoPath queried for them. Turns out the view item limit was restricting the number of items returned to the query, so the content type we were trying to update wasn't being found:

Changing the default view for the library with the content type templates to include all items (i.e., increasing the item limit for the view) resolved this, and the content type could be updated successfully. In the SharePoint 2013 environment previously in use, this issue did not occur, so if you recently moved to SharePoint 2016 and have the same error updating content types - increase the default view limit and try again!

FormsViewer & SharePoint List Data Connections

Hilary Stoupa — Fri, 12 Jan 2018 23:16:00 GMT

If your SharePoint List or Library data connection returns an error in FormsViewer with the following text:

No adapter found for the name <Your Data Connection Name>

The most likely culprit is your form's compatibility! InfoPath changed the data structure for SharePoint List and Library data connections with the release of InfoPath 2010. Check your form's InfoPath version under Form Options > Compatibility. Set it to Web Browser Form (which is InfoPath 2013) and then walk through the data connection again to update the schema.

How To: Save Images to SharePoint

Mel Clemente — Tue, 05 Sep 2017 13:10:00 GMT

Prerequisites:

You should already have FormsViewer installed and understand how to upload and open forms.
You should already have an XSN form template that includes a Picture Control or File Attachment Control. If you are not familiar with Picture Controls, please see our How To: Capture Camera Images
Your form template should already be injected with qRules.

Steps:

In SharePoint locate or create document library that you would like to use for storing images or files from your form.
Open your form in InfoPath Design mode.
In the Fields pane, locate the base64Binary field from which you would like to save out files to SharePoint.
Add a qRulesLink attribute to the field:
1. Right-click the field
2. Click Add…
3. Enter the name qRulesLink (use this exact spelling and capitalization)
4. Click OK
Repeat step 4, but with the name qRulesFilename instead of qRulesLink.

Note: Your data source may or may not be repeating depending on your needs. In this example, we are allowing users to attach more than one photo in the form so we’re showing a repeating group.
Make sure that the Rules taskpane is open.
Add a formatting rule to hide the control when the file has been saved out:
1. Locate the Picture or File Attachment Control that is bound to your field and click it.
2. In the Rules pane, click New à Formatting
3. Give the rule the name “Hide when file saved”
4. Under Condition: click the blue None text.
5. Using the condition builder:
  1. Use the left dropdown to select the qRulesLink
  2. Use the middle dropdown to select is not blank.
  3. Click OK
6. Check the Hide this control box.
Add a section control and hyperlink for the link to the file:
1. Use your mouse to drag your picture or attachment field from the Fields pane to a location right next to your Picture or Attachment control.
2. When prompted for a control type, click Section.
3. Click to place your cursor inside the newly created Section Control.
4. Select the Insert tab and click Hyperlink.
5. When prompted for the hyperlink’s properties:
  1. For Link to, select the qRulesLink
  2. For Display, select the qRulesFilename
6. Click OK.
7. Click and drag the right edge of the Hyperlink so it fills most of its container.
8. If you wish to display a thumbnail of the linked image aside from the link itself, drag the qRulesLink field inside the section as a Picture control – right-click on the field on the Fields taskpane, select More and then select Picture
9. Set the control as read-only and also adjust the qRulesLink photo control with a fixed width or height of your choice so that it appears like a thumbnail on your form.
Add a formatting rule to hide the section control when the file has not been saved out:
1. Repeat the sub-steps from step 7, with these differences:
2. Instead of clicking the Picture or File attachment, click the Section control you created in step 8-b.
3. Instead of selecting is not blank in the condition builder, select is blank.
Add a button to your view and give it meaningful text like “Upload Photo”
Add a rule to the button to save out the image:
1. Click the button.
2. In the Rules taskpane, click New à Action
3. Click Add à Set a field’s value
4. In the Set a field’s value dialog:
  1. For the Field, select the Command field in the QdabraRules secondary data source.
  2. For the Value, paste the following command text, and replace the highlighted parts as indicated: SaveToSharePoint /url=[full URL to SharePoint library, up to the library’s name] /xpath=[full XPath to your picture or file field]
  3. Click OK
Save the template and upload it to FormsViewer.
Open the form in FormsViewer, add a file to your Picture or File Attachment Control.
Click the button to upload the file.
If it worked correctly, you should see the Picture or File Attachment Control disappear and it should be replaced with a thumbnail and a link to the saved out file. Clicking the link should take you to the uploaded image into the SharePoint library, showing full resolution.

Notes:

If you are saving out pictures, replace the hyperlink with a Picture control that is bound to the qRulesLink This control should display the picture by loading it from its location in the library.
Try the above steps on a picture or attachment field in a repeating group/repeating section. The SaveToSharePoint command should work without any additional changes.
Add the rule from your Save Files button to your form’s Submit button. Place this rule before the rule that actually submits the form. This should cause files to save out before your form is saved, reducing the size of your documents and the speed of your submits.

How To: Capture Camera Images

Mel Clemente — Tue, 05 Sep 2017 12:32:00 GMT

Prerequisites:

You should already have FormsViewer installed and understand how to upload and open forms.

Steps.

Create a new form template or open a form template that you already have in InfoPath Design mode.
Locate or create a group in your form’s main that would be suitable for storing the image you want to add.
Right-click the group in the Fields taskpane and click Add…
Enter any valid field name for the field. For Data Type, select “Picture or File Attachment (base64)”. Click OK.
Drag the newly added field into the location in your view where you would like to add it. When prompted for a control type, select Picture.
Save your form template.
Upload the template to FormsViewer and open it.
Click the image control that you added.
You should see a popup dialog with a file attachment control. Click the file attachment control to select a file.
Select a picture file to use.
1. If you are viewing the form on a mobile device, you may have the option to take a picture using your device app as an alternative to selecting a file, like so:
Click OK.
The picture should now be shown in your form.

Optional:

Modify the picture control’s properties to give it either a fixed width or fixed height. You can use this to prevent it from becoming too large.
Use the same field to create additional Picture Controls in different areas of your form’s view, or in other views. This will allow your users to attach pictures in one part and view them in other parts of the form.
- You can also modify some of the Picture Controls’ properties as described above, to show a smaller version of the pictures in certain parts of the form.

How To: Add Signature Capture to your Form

Mel Clemente — Tue, 05 Sep 2017 11:19:00 GMT

Prerequisites:

You should already have FormsViewer installed and understand how to upload and open forms.
You should have an XSN form template that has been injected with qRules.
You should have the Signature Prototype form included with this document (Download the package here)

Steps:

Export all resource files except QdabraRules.xml from the Signature Prototype XSN.
Add the .js and .css files to your own XSN as resource files.
Add a Section control to your form. This will serve as a placeholder for the signature control.
1. Place some placeholder text in this section control, like “Find me”. You will use this in step 7 to locate the section in the form’s source in step 7.
Add a Picture control to your form along with a corresponding base64 (Picture or File Attachment) field.
1. When you select Picture from the Controls pane, select the option to include it in the form.
2. Place this inside the Section control from step 3.
3. Click the control to select it and add a formatting rule to hide it when it is blank.
Add a button to the view for the purposes of showing the signature control. Give this button some text like “Sign this form” and a meaningful ID. Make note of this ID for use in step 8.
Save the form as an XSN file and extract its source.
1. If you are unsure how to extract the form’s source, you can do this:
  1. Click the File tab
  2. Click Publish
  3. Click Export Source Files
  4. Locate or create a folder where the source files will be extracted. This will create several files in the destination folder, so it is usually best to select an empty folder or create a new folder for this.
  5. Click OK
Locate the source files you extracted, and use a text editor to open the view XSL file corresponding to the view where you are adding the signature control. Locate the Section control you created in step 3. It will most likely be in the format CTRL[number] make note of this ID for use in the next step.
1. If you are not sure how to locate the Section control, you can do the following:
  1. Within the text editor, search for the placeholder text you added in step 3 (e.g. “Find me”). When you’re done with all the steps in this document, you may delete this placeholder text.
  2. This should take you to roughly the location of the Section control. Look in the near vicinity of the located placeholder text for a <div> tag with an xd:xctname="Section" attribute.
  3. Make a note of the xd:CtrlId attribute on this tag. (e.g. CTRL3)
Edit the SignatureConfig.xml from the exported resource files of the Signature Prototype XSN and add the needed config settings.
1. Open the XML in a text editor such as Notepad.
2. ButtonId is the button ID from step 5.
3. PlaceholderId is the ID of the Section control that you determined in step 7.
4. DestPath is the full XPath of the picture field from step 4.
Back in the InfoPath Designer, go to Data > Data Connections and add a receive XML data connection for your modified SignatureConfig.xml – name it SignatureConfig.
On the finishedLoading field in the QdabraRules data source, add a rule to load the .js and .css files using LoadResource. (You can imitate the rule in the same location in the sample form. It should involve three LoadResource commands:
- LoadResource /name=jquery.signaturepad.min.js
- LoadResource /name=Signature.js
- LoadResource /name=Signature.css
Save, upload the form to FormsViewer, and try it out.
1. Click the button you added in step 5 to reveal the signature control.
2. Add a signature by clicking and dragging your mouse across the gray area.
3. Click Capture Signature to capture an image of the signature. This will store an image of the signature in your image field and hide the signature control.
(As needed) To add more signature controls to the same form, repeat steps 3-9. In step 8, add one <Signature> element to the SignatureConfig file for each signature control and update the SignatureConfig data source instead of creating a new one.

Why Isn't My Rule Firing?

Hilary Stoupa — Fri, 21 Apr 2017 17:33:00 GMT

This is a question I see in the forums occasionally, and is something that can be confusing for beginners - so I wanted to do a quick rule review.

Action rules in InfoPath fire when the field they are on changes. So let's look at the following scenario:

You have a field called "Location"
You want to set a field called "Phone" based on the selected Location

There are several ways you could do this, depending on the structure of your form and your secondary data sources. For example, if Location is a dropdown that is populated from a secondary data source, and you can associate Location to Phone with that data source, you may want to use a default value for the Phone field.

But you could also use a rule on the Location field to set the value of the Phone field. That rule will fire every time the Location field changes (as long as any conditions are met, of course!)

So - let's say the location changes from My Office to Your Office. If we have a rule on the Location field to set the Phone field, the rule will fire.

If the location changes from Your Office to blank, the rule will fire.

If the location doesn't change, the rule won't fire. (I know, you think I'm stating the obvious - but if you are using helper fields for some logic, and have some rule that sets the field to "true" and then never set it back.... you may be continually setting the field to the same value and not seeing why your rule isn't firing!)

If the rule is on the phone field, and you change the location, the rule won't fire. I think the confusion here often stems from the rule conditions - novice form designers may think that because a field in the condition changes, the rule will fire. This is not the case - the rule must go on the field that will be changing.

You can also use default values when you have secondary data sources with the information you need to populate - but be careful! Defaults can auto update, which doesn't always make sense - take the following scenario:

You have an Order form. When the user selects the item, the price field is populated.
If you set the price with a rule (using a value from a secondary data source) that value will be stable - unless the item is changed the price won't change.
If you set the price with a default, and the secondary data source changes, the price could change when the form is re-opened. That's no good, right? When the item was selected, the price was $20. Now, three months later, the order has shipped, accounting re-opens the form and the price changes to $25. Accounting will hunt you down and shout at you.

I've got a simple sample form here that might help with the general concepts. Download the file, right click from the downloaded location, select Design to open in Design mode. From there you can preview and try it out!

PowerApps User Research Panel

Hilary Stoupa — Fri, 14 Apr 2017 23:59:00 GMT

Have you tried PowerApps yet? Microsoft is looking for InfoPath form designers for their research panel on this exciting new product.

You can take a survey here to join - learn more about the panel here.

Query Forms from within other Forms

Mel Clemente — Thu, 23 Mar 2017 12:11:00 GMT

You may download the files used in this blog post from this link.

Overview

Sometimes you have a form and you want to show another form's data, without actually copying it into your form.

In other words, you don't want to include the queried form into your form. You just want to link the forms together and show the related form as a reference.

How do you add this "satellite" form to your main form without impacting the design of your main form?

In this blog, we'll show you how to query and display data from a separate satellite form without ruining the integrity of your main form.

Requirements

You are a site collection admin.
Your site has the FormsViewer App installed, or your SharePoint admin can install it.
You have an InfoPath form or access to InfoPath Designer to create one.

Sample Scenario = Policies

Every business process needs a policy. The policy may change throughout the year. For example, an expense report may require receipts for expenses exceeding $100 this year, but this limit may be raised to $150 next year. The business process admin should be able to update the policies by going in to the Policy library and adding/updating forms.

Usage Scenario

View Policy

1. User opens up your form

2. Clicks on Show Policy

3. If no matching policy exists, Main form shows "No policy document"

4. If policy form exists, Main form queries the policies form

5. Main form displays the policy

Add or Edit Policy

1. Business Process Admin adds a new policy with the name for the main form which it will target

Components

To implement, you will need the following:

Policies Form - required
Policies XTP - generic XTP that can be configured
Your Main Form - where you insert the XTP

Technique

Query the Policy form library using the URL for the Main form (as if it is a unique ID to search for a policy).

Here’s how the Policy Form looks like – simple and straightforward.

Publish your Policy form into your SharePoint library. Submit your business process policies using that form, specifying the Target Form Name, e.g. Expense Report, Leave Request, etc. and entering your Policy text in the rich text field which allows formatting, paragraph breaks, etc.

Here’s an example of a filled-out Policy form:

There’s also the Policy XTP (template part) that allows easily adding policies into your forms. Here’s how it looks like in the Designer:

Add the XTP into your InfoPath Designer Custom Controls:

We will add the Policy XTP into the Expense Report form that ships with InfoPath 2007.

Follow the steps provided in the XTP – we made it very simple and user-friendly for you! J

Key notes:

Make sure to enter the same form name you specified when you submitted the Policy Form. Recall that we submitted policy and gave it a Target Form Name of “Expense Report”

The same name should be specified as the default value in the Policy XTP section’s TargetFormName field:

In the PolicyLibraryUrl field, enter the URL to the library where you published the Policy Form to. Make sure to include the trailing slash, like so:

The XTP appended the “_Policy” text in the data connection names so you’ll need to rename the data connection for QdabraRules (only) so that FormsViewer recognizes the commands.

Those are all the changes needed – super easy! J

How the Magic Happens

All the rules are placed in the Show Policy button:

We use the following commands/technique:

ChangeConnectionUrl – to change the URL of the BusinessProcess_Policy XML data connection

We are basically telling our form to get the policy text from the Policy Form library to the form where we added the XTP to, in this case, the Expense Report form.

CopyRichText – if a policy has been submitted for our form, we then copy the value from that Policy form into our Expense Report form.

Since we’re copying to and from a rich text field, we use the command CopyRichText in order to keep any rich text formatting.

That’s all there is to it! When you’re done setting it up, publish your form into FormsViewer and test out your changes.

Have fun! J

Emailing Links to InfoPath Forms

jscookster — Thu, 23 Mar 2017 00:23:00 GMT

Sometimes you want your users to be able to open forms without having to navigate to SharePoint and open up the associated form library. Sometimes you want them to do it without even having to log into the SharePoint site: maybe your end users don’t even have SharePoint accounts! Today’s blog post will give you a few tips on how to accomplish these and other goals.

To give your end users the ability to open a form from outside the SharePoint library, you need to know the syntax of an InfoPath form link. Let’s look at a sample link in detail. Suppose you have SharePoint site called http://www.MyShPSite.com, with a sub-site called MySubsite, and an InfoPath form library called MyLibrary. There are many different query parameters for an InfoPath form link, most of them are optional so we’ll only cover the necessary ones--- XsnLocation and XmlLocation---in this post. (You can read more about the other query parameters here.)

New Form Link:

http://www.MyShPSite.com/MySubsite/_layouts/FormServer.aspx?XsnLocation=https://MyShPSite.com/MySubsite/MyLibrary/Forms/template.xsn

Existing Form Link:

http://www.MyShPSite.com/MySubsite/_layouts/FormServer.aspx?XmlLocation=/MySubsite/MyLibrary/MyFormName.xml

(Note: to open existing forms, you’re going to need to make sure you are using a unique naming convention for your forms! Otherwise if you have three forms all named 2016-12-25.xml, how will InfoPath know which form to open?)

Ok, now that you have your link, how do you get it to your users? Well, the easiest way is to send them an email with the link. To do this, you’ll need to download a nifty tool called SharePoint Designer – it exists in both 2010 and 2013 varieties, download the one for whichever flavor of SharePoint your site is running on.

Now that you have downloaded your designer tool, switch back to InfoPath. Whatever naming convention you’re using for your forms, store that value in a text field in your schema. I’d suggest calling this field FormName or something similar.

(Note: if you only want to send links to new forms, you can skip this FormName stuff and go straight to the FormLink part down below.)

Now add another text field called FormLink, and set the default value of that field to the following hardcoded value for a new form:
http://www.MyShPSite.com/MySubsite/_layouts/FormServer.aspx?XsnLocation=https://MyShPSite.com/MySubsite/MyLibrary/Forms/template.xsn

…or this formula for an existing form:

Now promote that FormLink field by going to File à Form Options à Property Promotion and adding FormLink to the list:

Republish your form to your form library, then open up your site in SharePoint Designer. (If you don’t have SharePoint Designer, you can download it for free here.) Navigate to the Workflows page then add a new List Workflow. Select the name of your form library, then name your workflow (mine is called Send Email).

Now you need to create the email template. In the WORKFLOW ribbon at the top of SharePoint Designer, select Action à Send an Email. Open up the Email Designer, select a recipient, type a subject heading and body text, then type the text you want to describe your form link. Highlight this text, then click the Hyperlink icon to bring up the Edit Hyperlink popup menu. Click the fx button on the Address line, then select the Form Link promoted property from the source field dropdown in the String Lookup popup window. Click OK to close out all of these windows.

We’re almost done: go back to the Workflow Settings page (Workflows à click the name of your workflow) and edit the Start Options. Select the checkboxes that correspond to your particular use case. In mine, I want the email workflow to run when a new form is submitted and when an existing form is resubmitted, so I have both of the bottom boxes checked.

And finally, make sure to Publish your workflow to your SharePoint site by clicking the Publish icon at the top left of SharePoint Designer.

That’s it! Now each time your workflow runs, and email will be sent with a link to your form (or to open a new form, if that’s the option you selected way back at the beginning of this tutorial).

Emailing Links to FormsViewer Forms

FormsViewer is a great alternative to InfoPath. Links can be opened on mobile devices and you have the option for anonymous opens. You can also send links to FormsViewer forms, but because those links are slightly longer you’ll need to make a few adjustments to the above process.

If you have FormsViewer installed on your SharePoint site, you can copy the link to open a new form by right-clicking on either the Open Form button or the Open Form (anonymous) button.

Once you have your link copied down somewhere, you will go through the same process described above to promote your Form Link field, with one special modification: you need to first create a Site Column on SharePoint, and then promote the Form Link field to that specific column.

Here is a tutorial on how to create a SharePoint site column (make sure the one you create allows multiple lines of text).

Once your site column is created, you will need to associate the FormLink field with that site column by re-publishing your form the long way (do NOT edit the Promoted Properties menu in InfoPath – that way won’t work!). Go to File à Publish à SharePoint Server to bring up the Publishing Wizard, then Next-click your way through the wizard without changing anything until you get to the promoted columns list. Click the Add button, select your FormsViewer FormLink field from the list of schema fields in the popup window, then select the Custom Columns site column group, and select the name of the site column you created in the previous step (I named mine FormsViewer Link). Click OK, Next and then Publish.

The steps to create an email workflow are the same for FormsViewer, so that’s it for configuring an email workflow to send a link to open a FormsViewer form!

Creating a Bulk Editing Dashboard for Office 365

donstephen — Fri, 17 Mar 2017 12:32:00 GMT

A business intelligence dashboard is a data visualization tool that displays the current status of metrics and key performance indicators for a business, department, or specific process at a quick glance. Using InfoPath as a Dashboard gives us more control or customizability over the design, layout, filters, and may even perform complex type of queries.

Since InfoPath forms provides us with such customizability, why not push the limit further by adding a bulk editing feature to your InfoPath Dashboard.

Bulk Edit Dashboard Requirements

This guide assumes we are working on a SharePoint Online environment with Office 365 and requires the following elements:

qRules
InfoPath
FormsViewer

The Bulk Edit Dashboard also works for SharePoint 2016 or lower, where Code-Based Sandbox is enabled – FormsViewer is not required and can be optional.

The Target Library (Optional)

This section is optional if you already have a target library which you intend to query for your Bulk Editing Dashboard tool, but for instructional purposes, a re-usable Form Template Library (STP) file is provided for Office 365.

Deploy the site template (STP) file.

Download the STP file here.
Go to the Site Settings (make sure you are on the top level site settings)
Under Web Designer Galleries, click List templates.
Upload the Invoice_Request_Library STP file.
- Click Upload Document under Files tab
- Browse for downloaded STP file and click OK

Refer to the link below for a more detailed steps on the web on how to upload an STP template

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Manage-list-templates-c3884ad1-bc49-44b8-b3d6-3bc6a01eb393

Create the Library using the STP file

Proceed to the target site/subsite.
Go to Site Contents
Add an app.
Search for the Invoice_Request_Library STP file.
Click the App to create the library.
Enter a library name such as Invoice_Request_Library

When done, proceed to the library and check out the contents:

We will be performing a bulk edit operation on the items above at the end of this guide.

At the Library tab, create a new column called select.

Leave the rest of the configuration as is and click OK.
Repeat the same procedure for creating two more columns called submit and success.

The 3 newly added columns will be used later on for the Dashboard’s Bulk Edit logic.

When done, you may choose to submit new items by clicking on the New button.

FormsViewer

This guide assumes that you already have FormsViewer installed on your SharePoint O365 Environment. Kindly skip this section if you already have the FormsViewer app installed.

If you plan to create this Bulk Edit Dashboard on SharePoint 2016 or lower without FormsViewer, be sure to have Sandbox enabled in order for qRules to run.

To install FormsViewer, download the App along with the guide from the link provided below:

http://www.infopathdev.com/files/folders/formsviewer_v11/entry104513.aspx

Creating the Dashboard

In order to fully understand the fundamental elements of the Bulk Edit Dashboard, you will be creating the dashboard from scratch.

Before we proceed, here’s a list of data connections needed:

Retrieve library data connection to query target library – for displaying items intended for bulk editing
Retrieve XML document data connection – for retrieving the XML document to be updated
Submit to Library – for submitting retrieved document along with modified content/s

Steps:

Open a Blank InfoPath Designer form.
Under the Data Tab, click Data Connections and Add a data connection which receives data from the target SharePoint library, in this case the Invoice_Reques_Library created earlier.
At the next page, select the following columns from the SharePoint library:

Click Next twice until you reach the last page of the data connection wizard.
At the last page, untick the Automatically retrieve data checkbox and click Finish to exit the wizard.

Disabling the Automatically retrieve checkbox is optional but highly recommended since it enables you to filter out unwanted data on your on load query by specifying a filter at the data connection’s query fields before triggering the query action – As far as performance is concerned, we would not want to return all the data when the form loads.

Add another data connection which receives data from an XML document.

Click Next.
Enter the URL to the library.
After the URL, add a slash and enter an existing File Name (XML) from the library and add the prefix .xml.

https://qdabra.sharepoint.com/Website/Invoice_Request_Library/~~don.lambatin_20170303142035.xml~~

Open up the link in the browser to verify if you have the correct link to your form. Be sure you got the File Name correct otherwise an error will appear if you do not have a correct link and it will not properly open up the form in the browser.

Click Next.
At the next page, select Access to the data from the specified location.
Click Next.
Provide a meaningful data connection name such as GET_Invoice_XML.
Click finish.

Notice that you now have a new secondary data connection source with fields matching the columns from the target library.

Add a submit data connection that submits data to the target SharePoint Library:

Be sure to specify the correct link to the library.

Tick the Allow overwrite checkbox – IMPORTANT!
For the File Name, click the fx
Click Insert Field or Group.
Select the FormName field from the GET XML data connection:

Note that this field should match the target library’s XSN template’s selected File Name field declared at the Submit to SharePoint Library data connection wizard.

Click Next.
Leave the name as is and click Finish.

Your list of data connections should look similar to this:

Save the form and inject with qRules.
- Go to File tab > Save As > select desired save location.
- Close form
- Launch the Qdabra Rules Injector tool by clicking on Start > Programs > Qdabra > Tools > qRules > qRules Injector.
- Specify the template by browsing for the Dashboard XSN saved.
- Click Inject!

Re-open the injected form (right click on the XSN and select design).
Design your layout – Header and Footer
At the Invoice_Request_Library secondary data connection, layout your repeating table onto the canvas. – Right click on the repeating section, drag it onto the canvas, and select Repeating Table
Select columns you would like to display.
Replace all text boxes with a Calculated Field Box (Right click on the field > Change Control > select Calculated Value).
At the left most section of the table, insert a narrow column for the select check box
Change the select text field control to a checkbox (right click > properties > change control > select check box).
At the header of the select check box column, add a button.
Under the Home tab click on Manage Rules.
Add a rule that sets the value of the select field to the value Name this rule Select All.

At the left most section of the table, insert a column for the success
Click on the success field and change this control to a calculated field.
Still at the success field, Add two formatting rules:
1. Set the name of the first formatting rule to Green if success
2. Add a condition where success is equal to the word “success”
  - For the first and second dropdown, leave the two selections as is
  - For the third dropdown, select Type text and manually enter the word “success” without the double quotes
  - At the Formatting section, change the shading to Green and set the text font to Bold.
  Your formatting rule should look similar to this:
3. Perform the same steps for the second formatting rule where:
  - Rule name: Red if failed
  - Condition: success is equal to “false”
  - Set shading to Red, text font to White and set it to Bold.

This field will later on display the result of the SubmitToSharePoint qRules command

At the Main Data Source, change the section’s name myFields to a more meaningful name such as Dashboard.
Add a new section named FormLogic.
Inside this section, add the fields below and follow the corresponding data type:

Your schema should look similar to this:

Insert a 2 x 1 Custom Table right above the repeating table – this section will hold the buttons and dropdown control for the bulk edit Status selection.
Inside the right section of the custom table, display Status field from the FormLogic section as a dropdown.
Right click on the dropdown control, select properties, and manually enter the following choices:

Beside the dropdown control, add a button and rename the button label to Update.
Add an action rule named Update.
- On this rule, Add an action that sets a field’s value.
- Set the target field to the submit field of the Invoice_Request_Library data connection.
- Set this field to the value “1” without the double quotes.
Add a new rule to set the Status field of the FormLogic section to a blank value – we would like to reset the dropdown field after the bulk edit operation has succeeded.
Add a formatting rule that disable the Update button if the value of the Status field is blank – this will prevent users from clicking the Update button if there is no new Status selected.
At the Left section of the Custom table, add a new button and re-name the button label to Refresh.
At the Refresh button, add an action rule that queries the Invoice_Request_Library data connection.

We are now down to the last major component of this guide which will use the following qRules commands:

ChangeConnectionUrl
- This command will update the XML location specified at the Get_Invoice_XML data connection created earlier, to the corresponding FileName selected from the displayed items at the Invoice_Request_Library repeating table.
InsertPi
- This command is used to manipulate the InfoPath form’s Processing Instructions
- Since we are only getting the XML content from the Get_Invoice_XML data connection, we will insert Processing Instructions that will conform to the target Library’s requirements in order for the forms to open up properly in the browser.
SubmitToSharePoint
- This is a bit self-explanatory – this command will be used for submitting the each row separately as XMLs to the target Invoice_Request_Library.

At the submit node of the Invoice_Request_Library, add the following rules:

Stop if not 1 and not selected
- Rule name: Stop if not 1
- Condition: submit is not equal to “1”
  - Click the condition link and leave the first dropdown as is
  - Change the second dropdown to not equals to
  - Select Type text for the third dropdown and manually enter the value 1
  - Click the And button beside the third dropdown to add a new condition below, and replace this with an OR
  - Set the first dropdown to the select node.
  - Change the second dropdown to not equals to
  - Select Type text for the third dropdown and manually enter the value yes
- Action target field: stop attribute field of the FormLogic section located at the main data source.
- Value: none (blank)
- Tick the checkbox to stop all other actions if the condition is met.

Your rule should look similar to this:

The objective of this rule to prevent other rules if the submit action is not triggered and if the current row is not selected.

Reset self

Rule name: Reset self
Condition: none
Action target field: submit (self)
Value: none (blank)

ChangeConnectionUrl and query XML
- Rule name: ChangeConnectionUrl and query XML
- Condition: none (blank)
- Action target field: Command node of qRules located at the QdabraRules data source.
- Value: click the fx button to insert the formula:
concat("ChangeConnectionUrl /dsname=GET_Invoice_XML /url=https://qdabra.sharepoint.com/Website/Invoice_Request_Library/", Title)
- Highlight Title and select the Title field from the Invoice_Request_Library

In this formula we are calling the qRules command ChangeConnectionUrl which will update the XML location specified for the GET XML query.

The parameter dsname identifies which data connection will be updated. For this guide we have used the GET XML data connection named GET_Invoice_XML.

The parameter url should point to the location of the XML in SharePoint. Since the target library is the Invoice_Request_Library, we will use the link to that library and concatenate that url to the Title field which contains the File Name (or FormName) that was specified in step 19.

Concatenating the syntax to the Title field allows us to filter out the query data connection dynamically – each row will have a different URL.

The result of this formula should be similar to the URL specified in step 9.

Add a data connection to query the Get_Invoice_XML data connection

Your rule should look similar to this:

Update current Status
- Rule name: Update current Status
- Condition: none
- Action target field: Status field of the Get_Invoice_XML data connection
- Value: Status field of the FormLogic section from the Main data source

Your rule should look similar to this:

Before proceeding to the next rule, we must first understand what the parts of the Processing Instructions are.

Download a sample XML from the Invoice_Request_Library and open the file using a text editor such as notepad. Here’s how the first Processing instruction should look like:

<?mso-infoPathSolution solutionVersion="1.0.0.33" productVersion="16.0.0" PIVersion="1.0.0.0" href="https://qdabra.sharepoint.com/Website/Invoice_Request_Library/Forms/template.xsn" name="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:infopath:Invoice-Request-Library:-myXSD-2017-02-15T12-49-08"?>

In the sample above, we have the Processing Instruction name located at the beginning of the string: mso-infoPathSolution. The succeeding data are the contents for this particular Processing Instruction.

Let’s build the InsertPi command.

InsertPi /name=mso-infoPathSolution /data=solutionVersion="1.0.0.33" productVersion="16.0.0" PIVersion="1.0.0.0" href="https://qdabra.sharepoint.com/Website/Invoice_Request_Library/Forms/template.xsn" name="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:infopath:Invoice-Request-Library:-myXSD-2017-02-15T12-49-08 /dsname=GET_Invoice_XML /update=true

Here we have declared the name of the Processing Instruction along with the data content. We have also declared the parameter dsname so that qRules identifies where we would like to add the processing instructions to, and that we are updating the data that is already existing.

For the first action for this command, we will

Insert PI
- Rule name: Insert PI
- Condition: none
- First Action:
  - Target field: Command node of qRules
  - Value:

InsertPi /name=mso-infoPathSolution /data=solutionVersion="1.0.0.33" productVersion="16.0.0" PIVersion="1.0.0.0" href="https://qdabra.sharepoint.com/Website/Invoice_Request_Library/Forms/template.xsn" name="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:infopath:Invoice-Request-Library:-myXSD-2017-02-15T12-49-08 /dsname=GET_Invoice_XML /update=true

Note that this is a hardcoded value and not a formula

Second Action:
- Target field: Command node of qRules
- Value:

InsertPi /name=mso-application /data=progid="InfoPath.Document" versionProgid="InfoPath.Document.4" /dsname=GET_Invoice_XML /update=true

Submit
- Rule name: Submit
- Condition: none
- Action target field: Command node of qRules
- Value:

SubmitToSharePoint /dssubmit=SharePoint Library Submit /dsname=GET_Invoice_XML

In this command, we are using the SharePoint Library Submit data connection for the submit operation, and we declared that the GET_Invoice_XML is the data source that which will be submitted.

Set Success
- Rule name: Set Success
- Condition:
  - Click the condition link and set the first dropdown to the Result node of of qRules
  - Leave the second dropdown to equals to
  - Select TRUE for the third dropdown
- First Action
  - Target field: success node of the current data connection
  - Value: Type in the word “success” without the double quotes
- Second Action
  - Target field: Status node of the current data connection
  - Value: Status field of the FormLogic section from the Main data source

Your action should look similar to this:

Set Failed
- Rule name: Set Failed
- Condition:
  - Click the condition link and set the first dropdown to the Result node of of qRules
  - Leave the second dropdown to equals to
  - Select FALSE for the third dropdown
- Action target field: success node of the current data connection
- Value: Type in the word “failed” without the double quotes

When done, upload your form to FormsViewer.

At the FormsViewer site, click on Upload a New Template.

Provide a meaningful name, drag the XSN template, and click on the Upload button.

When done, click Open Form to view and test your Dashboard:

Create a Child Form from within a Parent

Mel Clemente — Tue, 14 Mar 2017 08:50:00 GMT

(Click here to download the files used in this blog post.)

Overview

When you're designing a form, you don't need to include "everything but the kitchen sink”. I confess abusing this idiom in the past. It means "almost anything one can imagine". I have used "kitchen sink" as a metaphor for an InfoPath form from hell that has everything thrown into it. Visually, I imagine a kitchen sink so full that it is impossible to wash the dishes.

It's easy for a form to become bloated and unwieldy.

For example, imagine that you have a simple Expense Report form that submits to a SharePoint library. Good job! You publish and people start using it and they are happy for a month or so. Then, you get a feature request to add a simple approve-request workflow. So, you add a "Change History" section to your form (we have an XTP for this) and promote properties for the last modified user and date-time fields to integrate with a new SharePoint workflow. This makes sense because you can now measure the time between submit and approval or rejection and resubmit, etc. You can't do that with SharePoint workflows, so it makes sense to add this repeating block to your form. Fine. Another month goes by and somebody wants you to add a Expense Policy to the form. Now, you know that there are many business policies in your org and during a slow Tuesday afternoon you daydream of creating a general form for policies and linking them together but then when Wednesday rolls around, you're slammed with other work and you just don't have time to do that so you hard-code the policy into the form and that gets the job done, but you know you'll have to republish with every update. Let's hope the policy doesn’t change often. After another month and yet more feature requests and suggestions, you finally put your hand to your head and in a flash of insight realize that whack-a-mole is the wrong game for you. Instead, you will design a place in your form where users can submit suggestions. You will automate the task of improving your form and in the process get control of your work week back. You will schedule one time every two weeks to review form feedback and schedule changes. Life will be orderly. Only one problem: how to extract suggestions saved in the Expense Report form…

Here's where it makes sense to have two dishwashers. You've got one for glass stemware and another for pots and pans. Different cycles for different dirtiness. Your Expense Report form and Suggestions will be in different libraries. The Expense Reports need to be processed quickly. The suggestions, not so much. OK, that's the idea, but how to extract the latter suggestion from the former expense report and yet still give people a "ticket #" so that they feel like their suggestion didn't end up in the black hole of SharePoint?

With Qdabra's easy-to-inject Suggestions XTP, you can add a Suggestions section to your form and have it saved to a separate library.

Requirements

You are a site collection admin.
Your site has the FormsViewer App installed, or your SharePoint admin can install it.
You have an InfoPath form or access to InfoPath Designer to create one.

Sample Scenario = Add a Suggestion Box to your form

Adding a Suggestion Box to your form is a great way to capture feedback, and defuse negativity of a new process. If someone calls to say there's a bug, you can have them enter it into the suggestion box right away and promise them some turnaround. They're happy you listened.

qRules has a command called SubmitToSharePoint which users to create a different XML document and submit to a SharePoint form library. It supports “create” and “update” actions for XML fragments based on an XML mapping.

How it Works

This lab provides a Suggestion form and a Suggestion template part (XTP). If you open both in InfoPath Designer and compare the Suggestion form’s main schema against the XTP’s Suggestion secondary data source schema side-by-side, you’ll see that the XTP contains the schema of the Suggestion form.

Suggestion Form:

Suggestion XTP:

When you add the Suggestion XTP into your form, the XTP will add the schema as an XML to the secondary data source.

Design the Form that Submits Suggestions

For your convenience, we are providing a sample form template that you can start with. You will continue designing this form as if it’s one of your company’s solutions.

In InfoPath Designer, open the template named xsn.
Add your fields and controls – you can add any field you want; but for the purpose of this exercise, we’ll add fields for Suggestion, Project, Submitter, and FormName; and use text box controls on the canvas.

Publish the form to a Library.
1. Click File → Publish → SharePoint Server.
2. Enter the training site URL (https://training2013.formsboard.com/MastersCourse/). Click Next.
3. Select Form Library and click Next.
4. Select Create a new form library and click Next.
5. Enter a unique name for your form library. For example, <YourName>_Part12_Lab1.
6. Click Next twice and Publish.
Add your Submit and Close buttons

Create a Submit to Library data connection
1. Under the Data tab, click Data Connections.
2. Add a Submit data connection that submits To a Document Library on a SharePoint site.
3. Enter the URL for the library created in step 3.
4. For the File name, click the fx button and select the FormName
5. Click Next until you reach the last page of the data connection wizard.
6. Leave the SharePoint Library Submit name as is, and click Finish to exit the data connection wizard.
Double click the Submitter field, click the fx button, and enter the formula userName().
Click on the Submit button.
Under the Home tab, click Manage Rules.
Add an action rule named Generate FormName.
Click the Condition
For the first dropdown, select the FormName
Select “is blank” from the second dropdown.

Add an action that sets the FormName field

Click the fx button and enter the formula: translate(concat(Project, "-", Submitter, "-", now()), ' ~#%&*{}<>:,?\/|"+.…', "_____________________")
Highlight Project and click the button Insert Field or Group
Select the corresponding Project field and perform the same step for the Submitter
Click OK
Add another action rule that Submits Data using the SharePoint Library Submit data connection, and name the rule accordingly.
Save the form and click the quick publish icon located at the upper left section of your screen to perform a quick republish.
Perform a test submit to verify the submit works – the XML generated will be used for identifying the Processing Instructions of the XML.
Download the generated XML and save it on your desktop or downloads folder.

Add the Suggestion XTP

You will then add the Suggestion XTP that will allow suggestions to be submitted into the target Library we created earlier.

In this section, you may use any form you wish to use but for purposes of training, a QdExpenseReport-Sample pre-injected with qRules form has been provided.

Note that qRules is required. You may need to inject your form with qRules if you are using a different form.

Add the XTP in InfoPath Custom Controls.

Drag the Suggestion XTP on your form canvas.

This is how the XTP looks like on the design canvas:

In your Fields task pane, notice that the XTP added groups and fields into your main data source.

If you go to Data > Data Connections, you will see that the XTP also added data connections:

And if you select the Submit Suggestion button then display the Rules task pane via Home > Manage Rules, you’ll see the pre-configured rules:

These are just some of the benefits of using XML Template parts (XTPs) – it adds almost everything for you; in short, you let the XTP do the hard work. Another huge plus is that you can use XTPs in as many forms as you want.

Modify the XTP

We will make a few modifications to the Suggestion section so that it meets our form’s needs.

Move the light bulb icon (drag-and-drop) where you want it to appear on your form.

Add data connection that submits to the Suggestion Form library.
1. Under the Data tab, click Data Connections.
2. Add a Submit data connection that submits To a Document Library on a SharePoint site.
3. Enter the URL for the Suggestion Form library.
4. For the File name, click the fx button and select the node /ns1:SuggestionForm/ns1:FormName from the Suggestion_ Suggestion secondary data connection.
5. Click Next until you reach the last page of the data connection wizard.
6. Provide a meaningful name such as SubmitSuggestion, and click Finish to exit the data connection wizard.
Click Submit Suggestion button
1. Modify Action rule named Insert PIs - set target field to qRules Command node for both actions.
2. Modify Action rule named Submit to Suggestion Library - set target field to qRules Command node
At the Xtp_Logic_Suggestion secondary data connection, click the node /XtpLogic/Action/SetXMLValues
1. Modify Action rule name Set Library Name* - set Value to the Library name of the Suggestion Form (not the Expense report form)
2. Modify Action rule name Set URN* - set Value to the URN of the Suggestion Form
  1. Open Suggestion Form in deign mode
  2. Go to File > Info > Form template Properties
  3. Copy the URN from the ID section
  4. Exit form
Back at the Submit Suggestion
1. Click the first rule named Set Values.
  1. Modify the value of the action that sets the Project field to a value you desire – this should correspond to the current form you are adding the submit suggestion xtp to.
2. Modify the second rule named Insert PIs.
  1. Open the XML saved in step 21 using a text editor such as notepad.
  2. On the first action, update the corresponding values for the following Processing Instruction attributes:
    - solutionVersion
    - productVersion
    - PIVersion
  3. On the second action, verify if the values for the /data parameter are the same. If not, update the attribute values accordingly
    - InsertPi /dsname=Suggestion_Suggestion /name=mso-application /update=true /data=progid="InfoPath.Document" versionProgid="InfoPath.Document.3"
  4. Double check the /dssubmit parameter value – make sure that the value is the same as the Submit to Library data connection name create in step 25 g. By default this should be: SubmitSuggestion
Save your final template.

See it In Action!

Now that we have set it all up, we are ready to test our solution.

Publish your form template to SharePoint by creating a new Library (see step 5 for reference).
After Publishing the form, Open a new document.
Submit a suggestion.
1. Click on the light bulb icon where you placed it.
2. The Suggestion box should appear – fill in the fields.
3. Click on the Submit Suggestion

You should see a link to the submitted suggestion.

Click on the link to open the Suggestion form that you just submitted.

Send a Form Link via Workflow

Mel Clemente — Sun, 12 Mar 2017 07:09:00 GMT

Overview

How about approving workflow requests via email with one click?

With Qdabra's easy-to-install FormsViewer app, you can do this and more.

Wouldn't it make even more sense to approve workflows from a phone without having to login to SharePoint?

Well, now with FormsViewer, even external users can approve requests. One click. No log in required.

Faster, better, easier - that's FormsViewer!

Important: please don't attempt this while driving.

Requirements

You are a site collection admin.

Your site has the FormsViewer App installed, or your SharePoint admin can install it.

You have an InfoPath form or access to InfoPath Designer to create one.

Sample Scenario = Leave Requests

A Leave Request form is a common scenario where approvals are required.

Steps

Employee requests personal time off (PTO)

Employee navigates to HR site
Employee clicks on Submit Leave Request
Employee fills out form and submits

Manager is notified

Manager receives an email summarizing the PTO request
Manager clicks on link to approve or reject request

Components

To implement, you will need the following:

One Leave Request form (InfoPath)
One Manage Leave Request form (InfoPath)
One SharePoint 2010/2013 workflow

Note: You can download and install our Leave Request solution from the Qdabra web store here:
http://www.qdabra.com/webstore/p/1152/leave-requests-form

Technique

To approve or reject a request with one click, you need to tell the form whether you are "approving" or "rejecting" when you click. So, there are two links. One link has "&Approval=Approved" and the other has "&Approval=Rejected".

To create these links and send an email we will use SharePoint Designer…

Here's the workflow:

Here's the email:

Here's the link for "Approved":

To create a link for rejecting, you just change the "&Approval=Approved" to "&Approval=Rejected".

Now, let's take a look at the form.

Qdabra's Leave Requests solution has a form for submitting requests (Leave Requests form) and a form for managing the leave requests. Both are included in the package.

The workflow that sends emails with the approve-reject links is associated with the former Leave Requests form.

But, the links themselves point to the latter Manage Leave Requests form.

The Manage Leave Requests form opens when the manager clicks the link and there is logic after form load that sets the approval status based on the command that was passed.

Here's how the form canvas looks like in InfoPath Designer:

Here are the rules that get the approval status:

Notice that we are using the qRules command "GetInputParameter" to query the link for the Approval key. This key indicates whether the manager has "approved" or "rejected" the request.

After obtaining the approval status, we next need to get the ID of the form:

Once again, we are using the qRules GetInputParameter command to query the form's ID from the link.

After getting the link, we can query the form:

Notice that the rule queries the form from the Leave Requests library - that is where it was submitted.

Next, the form updates the library based on the approval.

That's all there is to it.

Just create a workflow link that appends the form's ID and the Approval command. Then, in the form use qRules GetInputParameter to query these values from the link and perform some actions based on what they are.

To do this even if the user is not logged in, just add one more parameter:

Of course, you'll want to look at the samples. :)

Formatting Issue Upon Opening of Form

peter.alfafara — Mon, 12 Sep 2016 15:17:00 GMT

I recently encountered a formatting issue when I open a form. In the screenshot below, the formatting looks unattractive and the size of the objects are smaller in length. When I download the template and open it in InfoPath, I get the same ugly format.

I was able to identify another possible cause: screen resolution

Solution:

Right click on your desktop and click Display Settings

Adjust option "Change the size of text, apps and other items" to 100%

Sign out of your account in Windows

After logging in, open your form. You will see the correct format

Take note that this solution is applicable with Windows 10 with a 3200 x 1800 recommended resolution.

Form cannot be opened because it requires the domain permission level and it currently has restricted permission

peter.alfafara — Mon, 12 Sep 2016 14:31:00 GMT

I recently encountered problems opening form in the InfoPath 2013 filler after installing 2016 from Office 365. Here's the error message I received:

While I performed prerequisites to install InfoPath 2013 with Offie2016, I was still unsuccessful. Here are some actions I attempted to resolve the issue:

Add /">https://<server>/ to your local intranet zone in Internet Explorer
Delete temporary internet files
Delete local InfoPath cache
Repair/Reinstall Office 2016 and InfoPath 2013

One action I did as a workaround is to open the form in template Design --> Choose File --> Choose Form Options --> Choose Security and Trust --> Choose Full Trust radio button

Once this is applied, I was redirected to InfoPath asking credentials and after login I was able to view the form. But if I open any InfoPath file that should connect directly to our site/server it would automatically fail and deny permission

Solution: It sees that Internet Explorer doesn't register my credentials when I open a form which is why InfoPath denies access

Deleted Temporary Internet Files in Internet Explorer

Deleted InfoPath Cached Files in y local machine (in my case it's under C:\Users\Peter Russy Alfafara\AppData\Local\Microsoft\InfoPath

Before login, I ticked "Remember me next time" check box

By doing these steps, I am now able to open any form from our website.

Repeating Table Conditional Formatting Issue

Hilary Stoupa — Fri, 03 Jun 2016 22:23:00 GMT

Just a quick post to let you know about an issue I ran across recently.

I had a repeating table in a form where some of the columns had shading. We decided to remove the column shading and go to an alternate row shading using conditional formatting. I selected the table and selected "No Fill" for the shading, then added a rule for the conditional formatting. Easy, right?

Wrong.

My conditional formatting never appeared to be applied.

I reproduced this in a simple form (attached here - save the file locally, right click and select design, then preview and add rows to see the tables).

If a table has had its shading set, even to no fill, conditional formatting that should shade the rows won't apply.

Here is my table where I have not set the shading:

And a table with the exact same condition on it where I set the shading to no fill:

You can recreate your table, or you can fix this in the view files. I had a lot of time already invested in my form design and had a number of tables affected, so there was NO WAY I was recreating them. Save your form as source files, and remove the background color attribute from the table cells:

I know I don't have to tell you to back up your form prior to working with form source files....

Office 365 & InfoPath Browser Form Limitations

Hilary Stoupa — Mon, 26 Oct 2015 14:57:00 GMT

Since we never know what will or won't work on Office 365 on a given day, I thought I'd outline a few things that we know at this time.

SharePoint Web Services (this includes REST [OData]) are blocked.

There are some exceptions - this KB outlines those:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2674193

Sandboxed forms (forms with code) are slow to load.

This includes forms with qRules - I ran some test with only a line or two of code in a form, and found that load times were inconsistent and surprisingly slow even with only a little code

At this time, we don't recommend using qRules with Office 365. It seems that with the deprecation of the Sandbox (http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sharepointdev/archive/2014/01/14/deprecation-of-custom-code-in-sandboxed-solutions.aspx), Office 365 is already providing fewer resources to these solutions

Cannot Access a Closed Stream

Hilary Stoupa — Wed, 26 Aug 2015 17:23:00 GMT

I had an error on qRules SubmitToSharePointList today that succeeded creating a new item, but failed to update an existing item. The failure error was:

Exception: Exception from HRESULT: 0x8004304D. Full error node text: Cannot access a closed Stream.

Since the first thing I did was search online, I want to make sure I blog the resolution in this instance - we were trying to submit data to a column that did not exist. It existed when the mapping was originally created, but then was deleted and replaced with a different column. The error was hard to find because this was a large mapping to a list with a large number of columns, and because the initial submit succeeded, but the update failed.

So - if using CAML and the UpdateListService to update an existing list item is returning "Cannot access a closed Stream", verify that all the columns you are submitting to actually exist.

Report Builder - Filtering data from a repeating table in DBXL

donstephen — Mon, 03 Aug 2015 04:06:00 GMT

Have you ever encountered querying data from a repeating table on your form uploaded in DBXL, and adding a filter to your query returns all the data in that document including the ones you don’t need?

This happens because the Report builder’s filters are per document filters - if a document that matches the filter has multiples rows, the service will return all the data queried from that document.

Filters can manually be added to the base path if more complex XPath filtering is desired - for example, if you are returning high level form data, but only want forms that meet a particular criteria based on data in a repeating node, you can add the filter manually to the base path:

/my:myFields[my:group1/my:childField = 'Important']

Here’s an example of a form's schema where the data about to be filtered is repeating data:

Using the schema sample above, the Report Builder’s Fields to Retrieve section should look like this:

In most cases, filtering the query will simply need a filter similar to this:

However, this will return all the data from all documents in DBXL that will match the filter above when you click on the Perform Query button – including rows from the table being filtered that does not match the filter description:

To remedy this, you can remove the filter and do the filtering in the Base Path:

This should now get you the data you need:

In the sample used, sorting the phone number doesn't really make any sense. In case you would need to sort the data you are querying, you should add the filter at the repeating group of the node you intend to sort (in the image below my:Product is the repeating group):

Let's Build Something New - Excel Surveys

Hilary Stoupa — Thu, 23 Jul 2015 19:44:00 GMT

While we wait for Microsoft to announce what's ahead (more here) I think it would be fun to start taking a look at some other tools for capturing data.

To start with - I'd like to do a quick intro to Excel Surveys. If you aren't familiar, you can find the basics here.

Excel Surveys are created in OneDrive. If you are using Office 365, you already have OneDrive storage available. If not, the free plan includes 15 GB of storage - plenty for a spreadsheet or two.

Once you have your OneDrive account all squared away, sign into https://onedrive.live.com/ and select Excel survey under the "New" menu:

A window will open with an area for a title, description, and an initial question:

It is pretty and clean - pleasant to use.

You can easily enter a title and description:

The questions have a little settings icon you can click to edit the question, select a response type, indicate whether a question is required and even add a default answer:

Available answer types are Text, Paragraph Text, Number, Date, Time, Yes/No, and Choice:

Yes/No and Choice will present the user with a dropdown control when they fill out the survey. For a Choice questions you can enter the available choices in the question's settings, like you can in SharePoint List Choice columns:

The Question Subtitle will show up under the question - you could use that as hint or tooltip text:

When you are done creating your survey, you can click the Save and View button to preview it:

Clicking Share Survey will bring up a page that allows you to create a link to your survey:

Clicking Create Link unsurprisingly does just that:

Clicking "Shorten link" creates a short link (which again, should not be an earthshattering surprise):

Anyone you provide the link to can take the survey. Here's what mine looks like:

You'll see I added hint text around the date field - I'd thought that the survey might have a date picker. It did not - but it certainly let me know when I entered an invalid date:

I'm all XML-y, so I typed in a date in my preferred format:

It was still invalid. I finally entered it as mm/dd/yyyy and my Excel Survey settled down.

You can't submit with invalid data. If a field marked required is blank, for example, you'll get a warning and the same pink highlighting:

Once all data is correctly entered, clicking submit returns a message (which, like so much of what I've shown you thus far, cannot be customized):

Back at the OneDrive site, you can open the spreadsheet to see the data collected:

You can open it in the browser or in Excel. If you want to modify your survey, after opening the spreadsheet in the browser, you can select a number of options under the Survey button in the ribbon:

Generally, I can only see this being useful in very limited scenarios. We can't get any data from external sources. There is some level of data validation, but no rules, no formatting, no real customization. I don't see any way to prevent someone from skewing the data by replying multiple times. However - if you need to collect simple data and need a survey that anyone can access, this may be a tool worth trying.

If you'd like to fill out my silly survey, just to get a sense of how the various controls behave and overall user experience, feel free to take it out for a spin:http://1drv.ms/1JBtYhr

DBXL - Tips for Reshredding documents

PrachiSingh07 — Thu, 28 May 2015 00:09:00 GMT

You can reshred DBXL forms using the DBXL Admin Tool but for large document sets you'll want to use the DBXL Migration Tool. And, for specific document sets, you can use our handy Powershell script.

Do you need to reshred documents in DBXL? How many?

Here are a couple of tips for you:

Tip 1: Use DBXL Migration Tool instead of DBXL Admin Tool for reshredding> 100 documents

If you are reshredding a large number of documents (>100), use DBXL Migration Tool instead of DBXL Admin Tool. This is because DAT will timeout before the reshredding is complete.

Download the DBXL Migration Tool here: http://www.infopathdev.com/files/folders/document_deployer/entry95103.aspx

Tip 2: Use SharePoint Powershell script for reshredding a range of DocIDs

SharePoint Powershell script is a third alternative for reshredding DBXL forms. The main benefit of the Powershell script is that it allows reshredding a range of DocIDs, instead of reshredding one document or ALL documents.

The Powershell script can be run from any desktop or server with Powershell installed.

Here is a usage example -

Execute the command as below:

.\ReshredDocs.ps1 http://yourservername/QdabraWebService YourDocTypename startDocID endDocID

Example output:

PS C:\data\DBXL Powershell> .\ReshredDocs.ps1 http://shp2010-dev1/QdabraWebService Case37479 1259 5000

2.8.2013.0906 (Debug)

DocID 1259 reshredded

DocID 1260 reshredded

DocID 1261 reshredded

DocID 1263 reshredded

DocID 1264 reshredded

DocID 1265 reshredded

DocID 1267 reshredded

DocID 1268 reshredded

DocID 1269 reshredded

…

If you have any questions or run into issues using this Powershell script, please contact Qdabra support (support@qdabra.com).

DBXL: Retrieving individual component files of a document type's XSN

PrachiSingh07 — Wed, 11 Mar 2015 03:50:00 GMT

DBXL does provide a way to retrieve the individual component files of a document type’s XSN, so it is possible to use this to get at a form’s XSD. The individual files can be accessed via this URL format:

http(s)://<servername>/QdabraWebService/Forms/<doctypename>/<filename>

So for example:

http://dbxl.myserver.net/QdabraWebService/Forms/ExpenseReport/myschema.xsd

By default, an InfoPath form’s main schema is in a file called myschema.xsd, but if the form uses a custom schema, it could have a different file name. If there’s a need to determine this dynamically, one can use the same URL format as above to retrieve the form’s manifest.xsf file, which will indicate what the main schema file is named:

<xsf:documentSchemas>

<xsf:documentSchema location="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/infopath/2003/myXSD/2009-05-02T06:22:50 myschema.xsd"

rootSchema="yes"/>

</xsf:documentSchemas>

By default, DBXL only allows access to certain types of template files, but additional ones can be enabled by adding entries to the list of httpHandlers in web.config. New entries could be added for */*.xsd and */*.xsf to enable retrieving the manifest and XSD:

< location path="Forms">

<system.web>
<httpHandlers>
< add verb="*" path="*/*.xsn" type="Qdabra.Dbxl.Implementation.DocumentRetrieval.TemplateHandler,Qdabra.Dbxl.Implementation" />
< add verb="GET,HEAD" path="*/*.xsl" type="Qdabra.Dbxl.Implementation.DocumentRetrieval.TemplateHandler,Qdabra.Dbxl.Implementation" />
< add verb="GET,HEAD" path="*/*.xml" type="Qdabra.Dbxl.Implementation.DocumentRetrieval.TemplateHandler,Qdabra.Dbxl.Implementation" />
< add verb="GET,HEAD" path="*/*.jpg" type="Qdabra.Dbxl.Implementation.DocumentRetrieval.TemplateHandler,Qdabra.Dbxl.Implementation" />
< add verb="GET,HEAD" path="*/*.gif" type="Qdabra.Dbxl.Implementation.DocumentRetrieval.TemplateHandler,Qdabra.Dbxl.Implementation" />
< add verb="GET,HEAD" path="*/*.png" type="Qdabra.Dbxl.Implementation.DocumentRetrieval.TemplateHandler,Qdabra.Dbxl.Implementation" />
< add verb="GET,HEAD" path="*/*.jpg" type="Qdabra.Dbxl.Implementation.DocumentRetrieval.TemplateHandler,Qdabra.Dbxl.Implementation" />
< add verb="GET,HEAD" path="*/*.htm" type="Qdabra.Dbxl.Implementation.DocumentRetrieval.TemplateHandler,Qdabra.Dbxl.Implementation" />
< add verb="GET,HEAD" path="*/*.css" type="Qdabra.Dbxl.Implementation.DocumentRetrieval.TemplateHandler,Qdabra.Dbxl.Implementation" />

</httpHandlers>

</system.web>

< /location>