InfoPath Dev

I'm designing a form for an organization working with many external constituents. We want to ultimately upload their responses to our internal SharePoint list, but unfortunately, the IT headquarters won't alllow external access to SharePoint. I've designed the form with a Submit button that emails the completed forms back to my Outlook Inbox, thinking I could verify the data and then upload to SharePoint since I'm an internal user. But of course, when I click Submit, the form simply re-emails to me. So I'm wondering whether there's a way for me to include a "Validate Data" control that only I have permission to check. That could subsequently show a hidden second "Submit" button, which could direct the form into our SharePoint site. Is that feasible? Totally crazy? Advice appreciated.

You are not crazy and this will work and it's a best practice.

Mel created a detailed blog describing how to set this up over a year ago:

http://www.infopathdev.com/blogs/mel_balsamo/archive/2009/05/18/using-e-mail-forms-to-communicate-with-external-users.aspx

Thanks so much for that incredibly helpful link. A couple of quick (I hope) follow-ups: the link suggests that forms you email to external users will be in the .xsn format. Is that required, or would it also be possible to publish the public version of the form to a list of email recipients, thereby transmitting it as a .xml? If it is necessary to use .xsn, that means external users must have InfoPath installed in order to fill out the form, correct?

Well, if you are running IPFS (InfoPath Form Services) on your extranet, you could publish your XSN there and have them use it but then it wouldn't be an URN-based form and Mel's blog wouldn't be relevant. You can certainly create two forms published to SharePoint (one external and one internal) and have them connected via email and re-submit. Same idea but more work to set up the extranet. If you already have the extranet, it should be easy money - just hard code the second submit to an internal site and condition it on some state in the form.