InfoPath Dev

Edit - my original post is moot, since anonymous access breaks one of my other forms. 

It appears if anonymous access is turned on in Central Admin, SubmitToSharePoint list no longer works.  Has anyone else experienced this?

Hi,

I can open a request to investigate this, but I don't have an answer at the moment.

How does the qRules command fail in anonymous access? Does it return an error?

Great, thanks.

The error is pretty general -

 Failed to submit to SharePoint. URL = 'http://*myurl*/_vti_bin/lists.asmx'.

Hi Matt,

We're going to investigate this, but quick question for you: can anonymous users add list items using the stock SharePoint UI? In other words, can they navigate to the list in question and add items using the list UI?

Is this a browser form?

Do other SharePoint web services work in the same form? My suspicion is that the UpdateListItems method data connection is what is failing - the qRules command uses that data connection. Can you add a rule to simply execute that data connection and see if it succeeds?

Patrick Halstead:

Hi Matt,

We're going to investigate this, but quick question for you: can anonymous users add list items using the stock SharePoint UI? In other words, can they navigate to the list in question and add items using the list UI?

It's hard for me to test this, since when I turn anonymous access on, all my forms fail to submit to lists. 

Hilary Stoupa:

Is this a browser form?

Yes

Do other SharePoint web services work in the same form? My suspicion is that the UpdateListItems method data connection is what is failing - the qRules command uses that data connection. Can you add a rule to simply execute that data connection and see if it succeeds?

I will have to try that later tonight (after hours), so that I don't break my forms my users will be working with today.  I know that SaveToSharePoint was still working when I had anonymous access turned on. 

Save To SharePoint uses an HTTP request, not an InfoPath data connection to a SharePoint web service.

Right.  I see that now, looking at the command. 

The only data connections I have that connect to a web service are the SubmitToSharePointList data connections. 

And what I want to find out is if the command is having an issue - or if the data connection the command uses is having an issue. I believe it will be the latter case - that for some reason, when you enable anonymous access, the data connection fails. But we can verify that if you add a simple test to your form - a button or rule that has as an action "Submit using a data connection" that uses your submit connection to the UpdateListItems method. Without using qRules, you can anticipate that if the data connection is able to execute there will be a new, blank item added to the target list. If there is a failure to execute the data connection, with any luck you'll have an error message from IPFS and you'll be able to check the SharePoint logs and get more detail about why the data connection is failing.

Hilary Stoupa:

And what I want to find out is if the command is having an issue - or if the data connection the command uses is having an issue. I believe it will be the latter case - that for some reason, when you enable anonymous access, the data connection fails. But we can verify that if you add a simple test to your form - a button or rule that has as an action "Submit using a data connection" that uses your submit connection to the UpdateListItems method. Without using qRules, you can anticipate that if the data connection is able to execute there will be a new, blank item added to the target list. If there is a failure to execute the data connection, with any luck you'll have an error message from IPFS and you'll be able to check the SharePoint logs and get more detail about why the data connection is failing.

OK, I tried this and it didn't create a new item whether anonymous access was on or off.  I'm confused, just submitting to the web service won't create an item in any list right?  How would it know which list to submit to? 

I just created a button that submits to the UpdateListItems data connection I set up to use in tandem with the mapping xml.  But without the mapping, where or what does it update?

Well, your submit data connection is still set to use the mapping.xml, just the mapping won't have any data to submit (that's the bit the qRules code does). So the data connection will submit the blank CAML Batch info to the list specified in the mapping.

Another way to check whether data connections that use SharePoint Web Services work in your environment is to create a query data connection to the CheckOutFile method - this one is pretty simple to use. For the parameters, set pageUrl to the URL of a SharePoint library item. Set checkoutToLocal to false and leave lastmodified blank. Make sure your query connection works in your test form in preview or client and then test as a browser form. Again, if the issue is the data connection, we'd anticipate that IPFS will give you an error when you try to execute the data connection.

Well, I tried adding a button to update list items in mulitple forms, and none of them submitted a blank item to the list.  This is with anonymous access turned off. 

I might try your other idea if I get some time.  Looking forward to see what you guys find out.

This is an environment specific issue if it is the data connection. Something that fails in your environment may not necessarily fail in my environment. Have you checked your SharePoint logs?

Yeah, haven't seen anything there that would indicate anything related to my problem.

I guess I am curious if anyone else has the same issue.