InfoPath Dev

 Hi,

 I want to be able to submit forms into one xml file. The reason why is because we want our customers to be able to submit forms off line. But we dont want them to save every 'order/form' in a new xml file. We just want them to be able to hit submit and the xml file will be filled with new data. When connected to the internet or intranet the XML file will automaticly be imported into our system by using software.

Extra detail is that we have another xml file filled with data to help make a new order/form. With other words we use that xml file to search standard company data and we want to store that data with the additional data into one xml file wich will be later implemented into the database.

Can this be done without extra coding or do we have to make our own script to store the data in one xml file?

 
This is my first post and i used search but couldnt find anything usefull so i hope someone can help me.
 

Welcome to the forum.  Interesting question.

I understand the concept, offline capability, and being able to upload and merge the data later.

There is not a way to submit back into an existing XML.  You could possible have a "packaging" routine, that ran on the computer, that would perform the merging as a new form was added you could trigger a merge of two xml files.

Typically if you want to add more XML you would just create one form that would take multiple orders, etc and they would open it and save it each time.  That would make the most sense.

Other methods I have seen is to run a local database that collects form data and then upload this when online.   You may want to check out the Database Accelerator package, which is an installable set of web services to query and submit form data to SQL or SQL Express.

Qdabra Database Accelerator Suite Version 2.1 - Developer

Hi HallBlazer and welcome!

In general, you will have to write code to do multiple submits. If your form supports a repeating section and you are saving to a database, you might be able to do it, but unless you are using a Web service, you run the risk of overwriting previous submits and synchronizing (locks) with others writing data. We have a tool that we built on top of our Web service suite that allows for bulk edits and saves of multiple forms. The forms are defined separately. However, you'd have to get our web service to use that.

The decision of how to slice your data is always very important. You want to slice it up into indvisible units. In other words, if it's a sales order, it would be everything related to a sales order. If you don't slice it up you have problems with locking data and editing large amounts of data. This is the problem of using Excel to manage your database. It creates a bottleneck because only one person can edit it at any one time. InfoPath is a solution here because it allows you to create one form for every row and decentralize input. Each row gets submitted back to a database and reporting can still be done to Excel so managers can still pivot on the data using the rich features within Excel. If you want people to batch submit their all of the forms initially, it's not a problem, but editing a large number of forms offline using a single tool creates problems because it basically creates bottlenecks because only one person can edit one form at a single time.

Good luck!