InfoPath Dev

Hi,

I have been creating forms which need to go through an authorisation process.  I submit the form via emails to the appropriate approvers and it works ok.  I am regularly asked "I have submitted the form for approval to the approver - but I want to send a "for information" to my colleagues - but not the form". 

The requirements of the for information are generally very adhoc - the people that it is to go to are different - the text they want including is all different - they don't always want to send information.  Several times I have fulfilled this requirement by having a button which, uses code to launch an Outlook New email, with selected fixed information in it - then the user can add to/edit that information- select as many addressees as they want - it has their normal signature etc.

I have been developing a form using qrules - and half way through the development the "I may want to send ....." requirement has again cropped up.  Is there any way I can achieve this without resorting to code - I don't want to lose all the stuff I have already done with qrules.

I know I can have a view which allows the user to enter free text, and select email addresses from a contact selector etc - but it doesn't look as professional as dropping them into a tool they are already familiar with - with key information (eg urls) already displayed.

What would your advice be ?

Catharine

Hi Catharine,

Can you add a separate email data connection that doesn't include the attachment? You can use concat and eval to build a list of recipients in an ad hoc manner. You can also switch to a separate view that you use for the email.

Unfortunately, InfoPath only allows email data connections to either send the form as an attachment or to send the current view. It would be nice to be able to choose to send neither.

But with that in mind, it sounds like your best choice is to send the view. Here you could have a separate view that gets sent, but you must know that it you click a Send Email button in one view that switches to the other view for sending, you will be out of luck as InfoPath will send your current view, not the one you are switching to. Because of this, there's a trick you can use that lets you (in the same view) have 2 different views: one for editing and one for emailing. It involves having 2 sections which alternate visibility based on a boolean value. The one section holds the edit portion of the view, the other hold the email portion. When the boolean value is switched, the section visibility toggles. The button simply sets the boolean value to toggle the section visibility.

Using this technique, you can allow users to enter their email list and rich text content, and then when they push a button switch to a professional looking email that gets sent.