InfoPath Dev

Hey all, Here is what we are doing: We are all new at SP and will be developing a site for our company using SharePoint Server Enterprise 2010 and MS Office 2010. We have created a web browser form template in InfoPath 2010. It contains custom code for accessing a database. Because of this, it must be published as an "administrator-approved form" which is fine. There are three of us trying to accomplish this task as a test for our future SP 2010 implementation and as such, we have all made our "own" SP sites and are using these as test sites to train ourselves. The Problem: We are not trying to go through the publish/verify/upload/activate process for the administrator-approval forms and it all seems to work until we go to the site, create a new form and attempt to submit it from the browser. When we click submit, we get an error screen that says "Data Connection File Cannot Be Found". Our Setup: The form template .xsn file is saved in a local folder. The form uses a .udcx file to connect to SP. Because of how many times we have tried it and because we don't fully understand how the process works, there are several copies of the .xsn file in various locations. What we have done so far: We have a SharePoint 2010 for Dummies book and it outlines how to upload a form but it's very vague on the process for the administrator-approval forms. As well, I have looked at the technet guide to doing it, ran through all the steps and it still doesn't work. We have made sure that we have Full Trust with a signed certificate I read some one else's thread here that they moved the .udcx to a different location and it worked for them so I will try that as my next option. Until then, I hope someone here can help or provide any thing at all...

Hi azandbergen,

Sorry to hear about your issue. When you click submit while previewing the form as an application, does it work? And did you already approve the UDC file in SharePoint?

 I can't remember exactly what happens when I click submit but it gives some form of error.

 How do I approve the UDC file? Same way I do the template?

I'd sugggest that you check the Rules in the properties of the submit button, make sure its data sources/connections are working.

To approve the UDC file, go to your data connection library and find the UDC. The UDC name should display a down arrow, click on that and select Approve/Reject. The Approve/Reject window will show, so click Approve and OK.

Okay so we just tried 3 things: -Tested the submit button in Preview mode and it worked fine, no errors. In hindsight this might have been because we had set a new data connection for it, but this new connection had no effect on the submitting form the browser, same error. -The UDC file is indeed approved in All Site Content > Data Connection Library. There was a copy of the Form Template there that was not approved, so we approved it but it still didn't fix the error. -Tried to see if the UDC file could be found in Manage Data Connection Files so we tried to navigate to: Central Administration > Application Management > Manage Data Connection Files but there was no option for Manage data connections under Application Management or anywhere else that we could see in Central Administration. I saw a technet guide that listed a way to upload verify and approve templates through PowerShell so I think that will be our next step. Until then I am still hopeful someone here can help :) or that I can find a solution online! Maybe if you could outline the exact steps we should be doing to upload a form template with custom code. That would tell us if we missed a step or did something differently.

Also, now the database connections don't seem to work in the form. We had a field that lets you enter a job number and it searches that job number in a database and it autopopulates two fields with the project number and project manager. When we try to do this anywhere (Preview mode, Browser form, IP Filler) we get an error.

Okay so we've done a few more things and here is an update:

 We started a brand new test server and copied the devilish form onto that machine, published it and got it approved and activated (seemingly) and all that but it still doesn't seem to be working properly. The form is in the Form Templates library, and is activated and properly connected to the form library we made for it (although it did NOT properly set up the columns in the library we told it to in the publishing steps in InfoPath). Furthermore, when you're in the form library and you click add document to start a new form, it opens IP Filler and wants you to open a local copy of the template instead of just opening the form in the browser. We have tried this on both IE 9 and Firefox. The only way that it seems to open in the SharePoint site is if you go to the Form Template library and click on the template itself, which to my knowledge will not be accessible to regular users. Then it opens in the browser and you can submit it and it goes to the other Form library we created. It also added an unsightly red link to the library at the top of the form though, and the custom code still gets an error when it tries to pull information from the database.

So here's a recap of our problems:

-We cannot create a new form directly from the form library, instead we must click on the form template itself in the Form Templates library. When I click on Add Document in the Form library, it opens IP Filler and wants me to open copy of the template. We want it to open in the browser.

-We have custom code that activates when you enter in a field a job number and it autopopulates two other fields with data from a SQL database. This functionality is NOT working anymore for whatever reason. Instead we get an error Log ID:5337.

We want to be able to have users fill out the form from the library and not have to go through any other links or open IP to fill out the form.

We're also not sure if this is a certification error. We have given the form Full Trust with a self-signed certificate, however our Dummies for SharePoint 2010 book says that we need a "trusted root certificate" from Verisign or similar company.

Help!

Is your document library set to use content types? Is the newly admin approved form a content type you've made available in this document library? Is it the default content type? Your first bullet point makes me think that your form library is NOT set to use content types. If your form is admin approved, you'll need to set the library to use content types (Library --> Settings --> Advanced) and then you'll see on the settings page a new section for adding and setting the default content type.

That error with the Log Id? You'll want someone to go look in the SharePoint logs on the server for that.

Why is your form full trust? What is your custom code doing? Could it be doing it with domain trust instead? All that being said, if your form is admin approved and is going to be used in IPFS, you do not actually have to sign the form - to the best of my knowledge (and experience) you can just set it to full trust, publish and admin approve / upload.

 

Okay that fixed the issue of not being able to add a new form in the browser. THANK YOU SO MUCH :D Where is the Event log on the server?

Okay I found it, it seems that I get the error because I don't have proper credentials to access that database which is fine, I can fix that

Perfect, sounds like you are making progress!

I am and it feels good haha. If I make changes to the actual form in InfoPath, to have those changes reflected on the site is it enough to do a Quick Publish? Or do I have to go into Manage Site Templates and upgrade the form?

If your form is full trust and admin approved, you'll have to upload the form as an admin. You can use your Quick Publish settings from the last publish - it will prep your form to be uploaded to the same site, and put the published form in the same network location - Quick Publish is a real time and click saver that way.

If your form does not have to be full trust, and if you have sandbox enabled (and if you only want to use this form in a single form library) you can publish as an IPFS form with managed code directly to a library. But that's a lot of "ifs".

Okay I have made some progress. The switching content types fixed the problem with it not being in the right library and it not showing up in the browser. I changed the way that the code was geting the current user and now I want to upgrade the template. So I went to Central Admin > Manage Form Templates and chose to upgrade the form, but now it's stuck at the Upgrade status.. I have searched and this seems to be a common problem however I haven't found a solution that works for me yet.

Alright! Finally made some very decent progress with this project :) What you said about the content types fixed it as I mentioned earlier, and I changed the way that the VB was getting the current user. For some reason even though we were logged in as authenticated users the code was getting us as anonymous users. So we changed the code, upgraded the form, and that's where we encountered the next problem. The upgrade process was "stuck" because the timer service wasn't turned on so we fixed that by navigating to the BIN folder of Web Server Extensions of your Microsoft Shared folder and then running: stsadm.exe -o execadmsvcjobs THEN this forum helped us with the rest: http://consultingblogs.emc.com/pawangulati/archive/2010/10/01/unable-to-remove-infopath-form-template-from-central-admin.aspx Now the form works the way it should :) We still have some work to do with the formatting and such but those should be relatively simpler tasks. Thank you very much for your help!