InfoPath Dev

Hi,

Is there a way to update user roles for submitted forms? For example, the current workflow allows the Chairman role to edit all sections of the form. This works fine until the day the chairman changes to a different person. My user roles are based on form values and thus this change in chairman will only allow the new chairman to edit all sections of the forms that are newly submitted.

Is there a way to update the chairman role for my submitted forms via a backend operation?

Thanks,

Zhen Yuan

Hi ZhenYuan,

User Roles are determined on load. If you are using values from your form that data is hardcoded and can't change when the actual people change. Why not use Active Directory Web Service instead to check to see if the user is a member of a group on load. If they are, set a value called Role to be equal to Chairman. Now, you can change the user's role in Active Directory and voila - the forms will all migrate correctly.

Hi Patrick,

That is possible also, but we have other roles like approval manager in the form which changes according to certain field selections. If we use AD to determine some roles and form values to determine others, should a person belong to both roles, we found that the roles derived from form values will overwrite those from the AD. This unfortunately is not what we want.

But nonetheless, perhaps we will use the AD path afterall. Just have to explain to the user that certain flexibilities will have "side-effects".

Thanks for your suggestion!

Zhen Yuan

Just do both but take care to have your rules set up on load so that one doesn't overwrite the other if you don't want it to.

Hi Patrick,

 I am back and stuck at this same problem again. Found out that we can't use AD groups (our address book is shared globally and thus the need to restrict the number of AD groups is very real).

 Therefore, we have a "solution" but we are not sure how to make it work.

1) The form design we have now has a repeating table (field name: Admin_role) that holds all the Admins of the form. These Admins, lets call them A, B and C, are added into the form in the loading event.

2) The very first time the form is loaded, Admin_role is populated and the form is subsequently submitted.

3) After the first submit, A, B or C can open the form from DBXL and have Admin rights to the form.

4) Problem arise when a new Admin, D, joins the team. D is not able to open old forms and enjoy Admin rights even if the loading event now has his ID included. This is because the old forms still recognize the form Admin as A, B and C only. D will only be recognized after another submit is done on the form. (Apparently, user roles are detected before the form loading event and thus new updates via the loading event cannot be recognized. If the old forms are submitted again, D's ID is now in the form and D is recognized as Admin from then on.)

5) Our "solution" is to include a reload button for the form such that when D opens the old forms, he is initially unable to access as Admin because the form had loaded with the old Admin roles. When D clicks the reload button, the form simply "reloads" but this time reads the updated Admin_role field (which has been updated by the loading event).

Is there such a reload code for Visual Basic programming?

Many thanks for any help once again!

Zhen Yuan 

Hi,

 Does anyone has any advise on reloading a form such that the latest loading event can populate a repeating table which is used to determine user roles?

Thanks,

Zhen Yuan