InfoPath Dev

Hi Guys,  I need your expertise in setting and retrieving cookies.  Staff in my company they often use my forms.  To make things easy I want to remember/load some of the fields, so that it would save them time.  I do understand that I can use Access DB to store all the information, but it would not work for my company.  We're spread out throughout the country and sitting on different server.  

I have no clue where to start with cookies or another option.   Do you have any recommendation?

Thanks

Hi Dave and welcome!

First off, if you set AutoComplete on in Internet Explorer, InfoPath will show users the last items they typed into the fields. That's easy money for you and is the simplest way to get "cookies" to show up on a per field basis. AutoCorrect is another feature that can be used with custom dictionaries to replace values with larger values. Doctors use this to accelerate dictation of drug names when filling out prescription forms. They type in a 2 character key and hit tab and it automatically replaces it with a much longer word. While AutoComplete does not require any setup, AutoCorrect does require adding the replace entries to a dictionary and making sure all users have this dictionary locally. Doesn't work with browser based forms either.

If you have sets of fields (default data) that you want to inject into a form based on some parameter, you could use a secondary XML file in your form that contains that data and use rules to set the values on load or on a button press to get it to copy in. Copying tables and other large data sets will require code, or you can just use qRules which lets you access copy table commands and many others via rules. The main disadvantage of storing data in a secondary XML file is that you have to update that file when something changes (it's not dynamic) and that will involve republishing the XSN or resaving the XML (if they are online).

You can also use a Web Service to pre-populate data but that requires people be online. Qdabra Software pays for this free forum and provides ultra cheap Web Services that you can trial if this is an option. The Web Services can be exposed on the net so that people do not have to VPN in.

Qdabra Software also provides a FormsBoard service that lets you share forms on the Internet. This feature comes with "template" support that allows users to specify an instance of a filled out form as a "template" to use to save time next time a form is filled out. Multiple templates can exist and they can be per user or loaded dynamically based on some data in the form.

You can also add logic to your form that caches data locally, but that would require a Full Trust form (to write out the data).

These are some of the options I can think of. Obviously, the simplest approach is to make sure AutoComplete is turned on for your users.

Happy trails!