InfoPath Dev

Hello

I am in need for some help with migrating my administrator-approved infopath forms from one server to another. I need help to change the data connections.

At first I used to just go to the forms and change all the data connections to that of the new location. The application is starting to grow now, and for the 100 infopath forms that need to move this is becoming way to much work.

My data connections link to a web service that is located on the sharepoint site collection.
The location of this is: http://oldserver/sites/oldsitecollection/_layoutsetc.asmx?WSDL
The new location is: http://newserver/sites/newsitecollection/layoutsetc.asmx?WSDL

The problem that I am having is that I can’t manage to change the data connections automatically.

I have searched around and found this method: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff607606.aspx which uses Update-SPInfoPathAdminFileUrl

I filled in the following in the sharepoint 2010 management shell it didn’t seem to change anything. And the forms still don’t work:
Update-SPInfoPathAdminFileUrl -Find http://oldserver/sites/oldsitecollection/_layoutsetc.asmx?WSDL -Replace http://newserver/sites/newsitecollection/_layoutsetc.asmx?WSDL
But after using that nothing is different

Is there perhaps something that I am missing for this method or am I doing this wrong?

Another method that I tried was to publish the form again using the new server sharepoint location. And there I had the option to change the data connection links automatically. This did change the data connections, but not to what I need them to be.

The data connections changed from

http://oldserver/sites/oldsitecollection/_layoutsetc.asmx?WSDL
to
http://newserver/newsitecollection/_layoutsetc.asmx?WSDL

but it didn’t add the part /sites/ and without that the data connections don’t work either.

So is there perhaps another way to correctly change all the data connections for each form in one go. I would prefer to be able to do it for all forms at the same time, but I can settle for one form at a time also.

As long as I don’t have to change it for every data connection would be a lot less work.

I also had the thought of using http://localhost for the servername in the data connections. And this will help at times, but then the issue still lies when the site collection name is different (which it tends to be for my case) and at times I also need http://localhost:8080 and then the connection would also be different.

So is there anyone that could help me out with my migration issue. I would really love to be able to change all the data connections in one go.

Kind regards,

Tim

If you're on InfoPath 2010, the Publishing Wizard (in the final screen) should ask you if you want the data connections to be modified to point to the new location.

One very painful option might be to change the URLs by hacking the manifest files, but any small mistake could break the form.

I tried to use the wizzard, it asked me nicely if I wanted to change the data connections to the new location. The problem was that it didnt take the whole link, it went from oldserver/sites/oldsitecollection to newserver/newsitecollection, it forgot the /sites/ part. Also the hacking of the manifest files doesnt sound like a viable solution to use regularly.

Sorry, I don't understand.

Let's say the form's data connections point to http://oldserver/sites/oldsitecollection and that's also the location where the form is published. In the publishing wizard, one is asked for the new publish URL, and let's say we enter http://newserver/sites/newsitecollection. The publishing wizard should change all of the data connections pointing to http://oldserver/sites/oldsitecollection to the new publishing URL  http://newserver/sites/newsitecollection. If it's "forgetting" the "sites" part, that's not expected behavior. I assume http://newserver/newsitecollection doesn't exist, and your template would end up broken: published to http://newserver/sites/newsitecollection but with data connections to http://newserver/newsitecollection.

Sadly, sometimes hacking the manifest is the only solution, especially in the case of troublesome templates.

I'm not sure what else to recommend. If it were just one template, then walking thru the data connections one by one might not be such a problem. But if you have multiple templates, then this is not an easy task. I don't know of a Microsoft tool to automatically repoint the URLs in the XSN, but perhaps such a tool could be developed.