InfoPath Dev

Hello there,

I have the challenge of trying to get user details without the aid of code in my forms.  Our environment only has WSS 3.0 not MOSS, so from the research I've done I have no options other than 3rd party tools.

My question though is surrounding the contact selector.  When I use that control on a form, it displays Name, Title, Department, Email in the search results.  Is there any way to leverage just that data elsewhere on the form?  If the contact selector can see it, shouldn't I be able to query it elsewhere?

Thank you

If you set up your contact selector control correctly, your schema should have Display Name, Account ID and Account Type for each person in the control. 

• DisplayName = Friendly name that is displayed to the user in WSS
• AccountID = Usually the alias of the contact.  Sometimes this can be a GUID.
• AccountType = An ID pointing to the account type in SharePoint.  Probably not very useful for your scenario.

You can use these fields in your form to perform queries, use conditional formatting, display additional data, etc.

 Hi, and thanks so much for the reply. 

I was hoping there was a way to query the same data myself, that the control sees.  When I search a name using the contact selector, and see the matches it also shows the Email Address, Title, and Department for the users.  My simple mind thought that if Infopath is able to get this information by using the control alone, maybe I could do the same thing to get this data elsewhere on my form.

Otherwise I have no way of getting the User details such as Department, and Title.

InfoPath doesn't provide any functions that will allow you to query a userlist in SharePoint for the same data.  I'm afraid you are limited to the functionality of the control and the values you have access to in the schema.

Actually I just remembered there is a User Profile Service you might be able to use to accomplish this.  I'm not familiar with how to use it myself, but there are some blog posts out there with folks that have tried it and been successful.

Here is a link to one post that can help you get started:

http://claytoncobb.wordpress.com/2009/06/21/userprofileservice-extended/