InfoPath Dev

I have a library that uses the People/Group picker in a repeating table to list "Authors and Contributors" of tracked documents.  We need to have those individuals selected by People/Group picker displayed as both delimited AND individual for search, filter and sorting purposes.

I have the multiple display done all nice and neatly separated with ; via the double eval.  However I'm torn on how to approach being able to sort on an individual basis as I've tried many different methods and failed.

After trial and error my thoughts were to create a separate sharepoint custom list with identical metadata as my infopath form and copy each entry made in the repeating table to this list and set the rest of the metadata as it would normally be displayed in the library views for that record.  We are using Webpart pages with dataviews so it wouldn't be hard to just pull the "Author" view from the list instead of the library. 

My question is:  How would I copy or set the field of a basic text box (hidden) to each of the Authors in the repeating table?  I can't seem to find anything help me accomplish referencing the line 2, line 3, line 4...etc. 

I can handle the workflow that creates the items in the list if the text fields are populated... I just can't figure out how to do that!

any assistance would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

Pam

Hi Pam and welcome,

Thanks for working so hard to figure this out. If you have your People/Group pickers in a repeating table already, you could just use xsl:sort or qRules to sort the table in InfoPath.

That will save you a bunch of time and you don't have to worry about promoting repeating values.

To answer your question, though, you need to set the value based on a filter. Assuming your "basic text box (hidden)" is also repeating, you could just have a default value on that guy that copies from your other repeating table. Use filtering to do it and the xpath command "count(../preceding-sibling::my:group)+1" , where my:group is the repeating parent group node of your "basic text box (hidden)". The filter will have to be specified manually using square brackets. You set the value to the other node in your main data source. See attached sample.

I don't think solution will help with what I need or I'm not grasping how that will work for me.  I need the sorting action in a sharepoint library.  I need to be able to have all the data in an infopath form that has multiple authors to be published to a separate list per each selection of a new author so we can display them individually. 

So if I have a form completed for a technical report with title, date created, project name and a list of 5 authors and document link.

I then need 5 copies of this data (title, date, project name, and link) to be created in this form library (or anywhere I can recall it in a view for that matter) with link to original document so that users can sort by individual authors. 

It may be my lack of understanding of xsl:sort or qRules to sort that is causing my misinterpretation or I may have not explained the situation clearly. 

Any additional advice is appreciated, thank you for your help!

Pam

Hi Pam,

I'm not sure why you are using a ShP list here. It doesn't make sense. You should be able to do what you want all in InfoPath, but I am confused.

Are you trying to sort a list of users or are you trying to copy user data from one field to another?

BTW: I recently recorded a webinar on several techniques for separating users:  http://youtu.be/vQTkRBTSIos

The SP list is what I need the infopath form to pass this information to.  There is a library used to display all records of program related documentation by author.  The infopath group picker can display them delimited nicely when promoted to the form library, however the user needs to be able to search, sort and filter by individual author. 

I need to have all these authors (some have 5+) on each record, to be separated... then create a workflow to spawn a copy of the infopath form for every individual author so they can be searched by as needed.

so the end result will allow a record to be pulled up when sorted by Author 1 or Author 5 rather than a group of authors only sortable by the first person listed and displayed as a group. 

If there is a way to promote these fields and have them displayed in a sharepoint view (which is the requirement) then whoo hoo, but I don't believe the separation solutions will translate to what I need to happen in SP