@Princevis:
I'll try to explain what I want to do and how.
We want to automate the current manual flow of documents in our company. At the moment we have identified around 30 document types that still have to be filled out manually, go to a number of approvers or people who have to add more information and finally end up in a department that may take a final action and/or files the document. In my opinion an ideal project for being automated with Sharepoint in conjuction with Infopath made forms.
At the moment we are working with a testform: it is designed in Infopath 2003 and fairly simple. There are 3 input fields: Initiator, Approver and Flowstatus (with a predefined start value). Then this form is being published from within Infopath on a Sharepoint Document Library. During the publishing I also promote the 3 fields I just mentioned. After doing this, I can see that this Document Library (called TestForm) has been created on the Sharepoint site and that the columns include the 3 fields. In the TestForm Library I can go to Settings>Form Library Settings. In the Colums Section I can see all the fields (also the 3 promoted fields) but I can't edit them (the standard fields are editable - they appear in blue; the promoted fields stay black).
As a next step I want to make a workflow using Sharepoint Designer 2007. In a first step, I want the workflow to send out emails to the initiator and the approver (for the test it will simply be a line of text). This works fine: It is the first step of the workflow and it is done with the Workflowdesigner. There's no condition set, only an action "send an email". So far so good.
The second step of the flow needs to change the value of the field "Flowstatus": it needs to become something like "Flow started". I don't need a condition for this, so I use the action "Set field in current item". This is the place where my problem comes: when I click on the blue "field" I only get the fields "Name" and "Title". None of the promoted fields appear. But when I add an additional column directly in the Sharepoint library, it does appear in the workflow designer (and is also editable in the Columns section of the Library settings page).
If this would work, my flow would be ready (as a first test, there's much more involved than that of course).
How would the business users use this system? They will be directed to the sharepoint site, go to the library with the form they need, click on "New", the infopath form would open (with IP 2003 they need Infopath on their PC - IP 2007 seems to have the possibility to open with a browser). They would fill out the form, click a button on the form to save and close the form. The form appears in the Sharepoint Library and the workflow starts. Mails are being sent: the next approver receives the mail, gets a link to the form, gets a different view of the form, (maybe based on the value of the Flowstatus field). He can approve or send back, etc.
Parts of the last section already work, but I cannot continue testing until I'm able to update a column/field (there will be many other reasons why I would like to be able to do this apart from udating the Flowstatus field).
I hope this extensive explanation has not bored you but I think it makes clear what I want to do and how. Can you help me out with this?