InfoPath Dev

This forum has been great and I want to thank all those that have helped.  Someday I hope to contribute back.

I have been tasked with designing a form for Human Resources dealing with employee Moves, Add's and Changes.

It gets initiated by one of many people and then the routing can go to up to 7 different departments.

I have a design in my head that says when the form is initiated, store the data in a SQL database.

As each of the 7 different departments do their thing, I want them to be able to open a form, update their fields and re-save it for all to see their entries.

In our current environment, the paper form gets routed in sequence to the 7 departments but that is not a necessary sequence of events.  C may be able to complete before A but B may need to wait for A.

If the initiator's form gets stored in a SP library, how can I alert the 7 departments that the form is there for them to review?  Also Department B may need to wait for Department A to finish. And when its all done, how do I flag it as complete?

I was thinking of SQL triggers send an email that something needs to be done but that doesn't provide a link to the form.

Plus I want to do this as much out-of-the-box as possible.

 Am I crazy to think this can be done out of the box?

Hello, The workflow is something you'll have to custom code in SP2003 so out-of-the box is not really an option. The rest is pretty straightforward. If you're writing custom SQL triggers and such then couldn't you embed the link in the email? You might be better of tieing into SharePoint notifications. For true out of the box workflow SharePoint 2007 has some base functionality that can be customized with SharePoint designer. Though I've found it hard to setup. In terms of your final flag for complete, it depends on your business rules. If someone has to set it then I'd just add a "complete" or "reviewed' checkbox to the form for each department, then set a rule that when all checkboxes are checked (everyone has reviewed) you set another flag which says that the form is now complete. None of that should require any coding.

I hope this helps. Thanks.