InfoPath Dev

Hello,

Environment: Windows Server2003 / Moss 2007 / Infopath 2007 /

Client: Outlook 2007 / IE7 / some w/Infopath

I have browser enabled InfoPath 2007 form, residing in a Form library, hooked to a standard MOSS approval workflow.

(the form library is set to open with browser/infopath was set browser enabled also)

The workflow is triggered on new form creation (using the save or save as button), email is sent to the first person on the task list for approval. however the link provided in the email opens infopath instead of IE, also when opened in infopath, it is readonly and the Approve / Reject option, or edit this task button is missing from the info path form.

also when requesting a new form in Sharepoint, the form opens in the browser to be filled originally. its the links taht are sent out via email that are the having problems.

I would appreciate any suggestions.

In short, this is what I ma trying to do:

I would like to make a form with a few fields that can be filled initially, and then sent to different people via workflow for approval in sequence (these people can modify values).

Thank you 

 

Yeah, it's a limitation of Forms Server.  If you notice, the built-in workflow is sending the URL to the XML file.  However, this is not the URL of the browser-version of that file.  Go open one of your forms and notice the URL.  This is the URL you must send via email in order for users to open it directly in the browser.  To do this, I have to always use custom workflows (SPD) and am unable to use built-in workflows unless using rich client forms only.

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This seems to be a known issue since the built-in workflow sending the URL to the XML file which  is not the URL of the browser-version. Try the following steps:

a. Re-publish your InfoPath form template as an Administrator-approved form template

1. Open the InfoPath form template in design mode.
2. On the “File” menu, click “Publish”.
3. Choose “To a SharePoint server with or without InfoPath Forms Services” and click “Next”.
4. Enter the URL to your SharePoint site and click “Next”.
5. Choose “Adminstrator-approved form template (advanced)” and click “Next”.
6. Enter the path to your desktop or another convenient local location and click “Next”.
7. Complete the publishing wizard.

b. Upload the Administrator-approved form template to SharePoint and activate it.

1. On the MOSS 2007 server, open the “SharePoint Central Administration” site.
2. On the “Application Management” tab, choose “Upload Form Template” from the “InfoPath Forms Services” section.
3. Upload the form template that you published in step 1.
4. On the “Application Management” tab, choose “Manage Form Templates” from the “infoPath Forms Services section.
5. Select the form template you just uploaded, and choose “Activate to a Site Collection”.
6. Select the SharePoint site collection where you want to use the form, and click “OK”.

c. Set the SharePoint Form library to use the administrator-approved form template.

1. Browse to the SharePoint form library where you want to use the newly uploaded form template.
2. On the “Settings” menu, click “Form Library Settings”.
3. Click “Advanced Settings”.
4. Set “Allow management of content types” to “Yes”.
5. Back on the settings page, click “Add from existing site content types”.
6. Select the form template from the list of available site content types and click “Add”. Then click “OK”.
7. Click “Change new button order and default content type”.
8. Make the new content type the default by moving it to position 1. Click “OK”.
9. If the library has existing forms in it, use the “Relink documents to this Library” command on the “Settings” page to bind them to the administrator-approved form template.

d. Grant users “View Only” permissions to the site collection’s “Form Templates” library.

1. Browse to the SharePoint site collection where you activated the form template in Step 2.
2. Click ‘View All Site Content” and then click the “Form Templates” library from the list of “Document Libraries”.
3. On the “Settings” menu, click “Document Library Settings”.
4. Click “Permissions for this document library”.
5. On the “Actions” menu, click “Edit Permissions”. This will cause this document library to have unique permissions that are not inherited from the parent site.
6. Select all the users and groups in the list of permissions and then click “Edit User Permissions” on the “Actions” menu.
7. Give all users “View Only” permissions and remove all other permission levels. Click “OK”.

Once you have performed these steps, the InfoPath form should open in the browser when opened from a workflow hyperlink or link in email sent by workflow. Note that
users who have Administrator permissions on the SharePoint server will still see the form open in the rich client. This is because their machine permissions override the “View Only” permissions set in step d.

 

Manu, that seems like a bit much to accomplish this.  I don't think it makes sense to administrative approve EVERY form just for this purpose.  That's a ton of work and a ton of extra administrative overhead, imo.  My method mentioned above is very simple and works perfectly well for both scenarios you gave: workflow hyperlink or link in email sent by workflow.  No need to do all that when you can just dynamically generate the forms server URL using the form's metadata itself.

 Hi Clayton,

 I agree with you. I found this solution in a forum and I didn't have an option that time but to follow it. Later I found some other blog posts saying that this can be done by customizing the aspx forms. 

 Regards,

Manu

warrtalon:

Yeah, it's a limitation of Forms Server.  If you notice, the built-in workflow is sending the URL to the XML file.  However, this is not the URL of the browser-version of that file.  Go open one of your forms and notice the URL.  This is the URL you must send via email in order for users to open it directly in the browser.  To do this, I have to always use custom workflows (SPD) and am unable to use built-in workflows unless using rich client forms only.

How do I get the URL that appears when you open the form in the browser from within SharePoint Designer namely adding it to an e-mail message?  The best I was able to find was a link to the .xml version of the form.

You create it dynamically using the Build Dynamic String action in SPD.  In the BDS, you need to concatenate static URL text with one piece of metadata from your form.  I keep writing this up, so I need to just do a quick blog on it so that I can link to it from now on.  Here is how it will look:

http://www.YourDomain.com/YourSite/_layouts/FormServer.aspx?XmlLocation=[%FormLibrary:Encoded Absolute URL%]&Source=http://www.YourDomain.com/YourSite/FormLibrary/Forms/AllItems.aspx&DefaultItemOpen=1

The part in brackets gets there by clicking on Add Lookup, choosing Current Item, and finding the Encoded Absolute URL attribute.  The test before and after this part is static based on your library.  For the &Source attribute of the URL, you can put any URL you want depending on where you want to send users after they close the form.  When opening a form from the site, it defaults to the view where you are when you clicked New or clicked on the form.  When building it as a workflow to an existing form, you can set it to be whatever you want.

The Server Relative URL attribute should work, but I've found that if there is a space in your site name or form library name, then it will collapse the space instead of inserting %20, which then causes the link to fail.  Encoded Absolute URL gives you more than you need, but it accounts for spaces.

^Ah I see.  Excellent.  I found this blog right after you posted and it also describes the process, however it tells them to use the Server Relative URL which you warned about in your post:

http://www.bizsupportonline.net/browserforms/create-sharepoint-designer-workflow-send-email-link-infopath-browser-form.htm

Just remember that you need to use Encoded Absolute URL for the reason I gave instead of Server Relative.

Also, unless you want that whole URL in the body of the email, I suggest adding HTML like this:

<a href="http://full-URL-here">[%FormLibrary:FormName%]</a>

This way, your users see the name/title of the form hyperlinked and clickable instead of a messy Forms Services URL.  I also choose to build my dynamic string first and then reference the variable in the email in case I need to use this URL in more than one place (i.e. multiple conditional emails).

^Ah now you are reading my mind.  Thanks again.

I think this should work fine, atleast it worked for me..

[EncodedUrl] ?OpenIn=Browser

Create a Dynamic String concating Encoding Url and this OpenIn string and it might work.

Manu, that's not the full URL and doesn't have a Source attribute for pointing the browser to a return location.  It may "work," but it's not complete.  No reason to not use what I wrote above I don't think.

Hi Clayton,

Thank for sharing your idea here, very much appreciate it. I completely understand what I have posted will not give a return url. Actually I had used this in sending emails as an anchor tag with href attribute, the way you had explained earlier. In that case user would be opening the form to review it from within email and so does he need a return url? But you have a point there.

Anyways, I didn't think of providing it the way you have described with &Source parameter. That was a nice post, thank you. I'll apply it in my next project.

Regards,

Manu

Hi Clayton, thanks for the great thread here.

Is there a way to change the view of the form by appending text to the URL? I don't think there is, but I thought I'd ask you.

My scenario: After the user submits the form (view #1), an email is sent to the Department Head with a link to the form so that they can approve or reject it.

View #2 has a row added to the top of the form with radio buttons so the Dept Head can choose Approve or Reject. Of course I would like to have veiw #2 open up for the Dept. Head, otherwise I have to provide instructions to them to change the view manually, which won't be too bad.

Any experience with this? Is there an easier way to provide the Approve/Reject option?

David from College Station 

 

well,4 view 1,u need to add a hidden field that could be a check box,add a rule on a button click to change it's value from false to true.

design a SPD workflow to send an email when the value of check box changes to true.Then for adding a link,open any filled form that you've submitted to the form library,copy it's full url,it would be something like this  http://portal/teamnew/_layouts/FormServer.aspx?XmlLocation=/teamnew/TravelRequestLibrary/09-000003.xml&Source=http%3A%2F%2Fportal%2Fteamnew%2FTravelRequestLibrary%2FForms%2FAllItems%2Easpx&DefaultItemOpen=1, paste it to the email body,the email body that you are preparing to be send to approver through Sharepoint Designer workflow. now look at the form's XML location,select the xml location thing,and click on add lookup to body, and from there select server relative URL.finish the email designer thing,ur first view is prepared.

4 the second view,just place an option box at the top of the form and through conditional formatting keep it hidden,till the value of that same hidden field is false.

So once it wil be true your approver would be able to see the option box.

Let me know if it works 4 u..