InfoPath Dev

Post 22142 is mine but I suspect the title isn't attractive.

How do we publish form templates to two places.  We have to provide electronic forms on a classified laptop and also allow the instance data taken off the laptop to be further edited on a controlled LAN. 

Cheers,

Rei
 

It shoudl probably be two seperate forms. Otherwise you are going to have trouble merging the online and offline back together, if that is the goal.

Have you looked at offline folders?

Map the network drive and then set it as off-line.  When on the network it would use the network copy. When off-line it would still think it was using the network copy. When back on-line it would sync them back to the network. 

However you would have to make sure your file names were unique if others were creating documents on the network share so that when it synced there was not duplicate names.

Hi Rei,

Let's say you have one form template on your controlled LAN called "MyFormLAN.xsn".

Create a URN-based solution from that using the RegForm tool that comes with InfoPath SDK (note: we also have a GUI form that helps do the same thing since the command line RegForm tool is a bit hard to figure out). Name this second form is MyFormLAPTOP.xsn and specify the options to create an MSI that users can install offline.

To fill out a form on the Laptop, user installs the MSI and then goes Start->InfoPath and selects the form from the list of forms. User saves forms locally on the laptop (I'm assuming you don't have e-mail options since the laptop is off the LAN; note: e-mail send to a person behind the firewall is also a cool solution).

When the forms need to be moved back to the LAN (and you can't e-mail them), the person that's copying the files to the LAN should either a) upload to SharePoint form library (if you have SharePoint) or b) upload to a file share.

(If you have SharePoint)
After uploading the forms, go to Modify Settings and choose Relink forms. Select all uploaded forms and click relink.Now people in the LAN can open them up using the MyFormLAN solution. This assumes that you didn't change the MyFormLAN.xsn after using it to create MyFormLAPTOP.

(If you don't have SharePoint)
Use our PI Edit tool (see the Qdabra.com Products store) to change the PI to point to the location of the MyFormLAN.xsn.Now people in the LAN can open the forms from the fileshare.

The e-mail option is slightly more automated but requires addition of some logic. Before running RegForm, you will have to add an Open rule that checks to see if you are opening via LAN form and whether you are on the network. If the answer to both is Yes, some code starts up the LAPTOP version of the form with the data from the LAN version. Some OnLoad code is required here. To confirm you are on the net you can try to connect to a LAN only Web service (install our Active Directory Web service for example) or try to download a value from a SharePoint list. If the value is downloaded, add a rule that it succeeds it fills in a field. Next, add another rule which checks for the existence of the downloaded data. If it exists it tries to start up the LAN version of the form and pass it the XML. If that succeeds, the form closes. The LAN person must resave the form to preserve the Processing Instruction for the LAN form. The LAN person must also install the MyFormLAPTOP.msi (both the MyFormLAN and MyFormLAPTOP will happily coexist). If you would like us to help you with the code for this e-mail option, please buy some support credits from the Qdabra store.

Hope this helps!