InfoPath Dev

Hello,

I was hoping that someone out there can help shed some light on the issue I'm currently experiencing.  I have a sharepoint site that is set up with external access through an ISA server.  We have outside clients that are hitting this site, logging in with an AD account, and pulling up browser enabled infopath forms for review.  On our forms, we are using the GetUserProfilebyName data connection (http://blogs.microsoft.co.il/blogs/itaysk/archive/2007/04/05/InfoPath-_2D00_-Get-the-current-user-without-writing-code.aspx) to pull in AD information.  This connection seems to work fine when I set it up using the internal web service address - http://ServerName/_vti_bin/UserProfileService.asmx - but when I replace the internal with our external address - http://extranet.ourcompany.com it cannot find the server/source. 

Has anyone had any experience setting up this data connection on an extranet site?

Thanks for any help,
Matt

Hi Matt,

We've dealth with this before. I don't recall what the solution is or if there is an inherent limitation, but I've asked Jim to respond tomorrow. More soon.

Patrick

Do you have alternate access mappings configured correctly for the extranet site?

We do have alternate access mappings set up on the ISA server for the extranet site.  Is there a best practices doc or a specific setting that we need to address in order to correct this issue?

SharePoint Central Administration must be configured correctly for alternate access mappings or server-side communication can break when accessed from the external url.  Alternate access mappings let SharePoint know that a url, say extranet.yourdomain.com, is known internally as http://servername and it will make the calls using the internally known address when internally accessing resources.  This is especially the case when the IP resolved by extranet.yourdomain.com is not the IP of actual server replying to the request.

The following link is to the Microsoft SharePoint team blog on configurting AAMs: http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2007/03/06/what-every-sharepoint-administrator-needs-to-know-about-alternate-access-mappings-part-1.aspx

We have AAM set up almost exactly like the link above, with one exception - In Central Admin - Operations - AAM, we don't have any addresses set up under the "Internet" zone.  We only have mappings set for the following zones - default (internal url = public url for zone), and Intranet (internal url/Public url = extranet.servername.com & internal url/Public url = extranet.isa.extranet.com).  Would this be the cause of the issue with the form not opening correctly?

If you remote desktop to the SharePoint server and open IE, are you able to browse to these SharePoint sites?

I can browse out to the internal URL (http://extranet) but not https://extranet.servername.com.

Anyone have any more insight on this?  We still haven't been able to correct this.