InfoPath Dev

I wrote you guys the other day to inquire about Office 365 compatibility on qRules and the Signature Tool.

As it happens, my client wanted to also reveal the form I am working on to random users through his public facing Sharepoint Online web page, but I do not think it can be done???  I think all Infopath users have to be logged in with a seat in the "cloud" - right???

Is there any way to do this that you know of?  This may be a deal breaker...

Hi Donna,

There would be a problem with the Electronic Signature XTP, yes. Assuming this is anonymous user access via the internet, how is an anonymous user going to have a  PIN to sign with? A signature associated to their log in - when they're not logged in?

I think that would be my main concern here. A user who is not signed in doesn't have a user alias, cannot be verified against the signature list - as you say, any random public user can fill out the form.

 OK, so here is the answer, I think...

 User comes in through public facing Sharepoint Online site.  They are allowed to sign in with a generic user name and password (a purchased user seat) to fill out the initial registration form.

The form now saves to the internal team site and the back office sets up a user name (by linking their e mail address to an MS Lync account) for the new customer.  They e mail inviting them to join the site as a external user.

The next time the customer visits, they use the e mail link and sign in... Now they are actually logging in to do future business.  This is when they would be signing forms - as external users in the actual team site.

With Sharepoint Online external users are generally not full fledged daily user seats, but they still have to be set up with a user name and password.  The guy at MS said the user list resembles AD on a network and the permissions can then be set similarly to permissions on the network version of sharepoint.

What do you think of this.  Do you think it would work?  One more question...  Does the Infopath to Sharepoint List mapping tool come with qRules?

Hi Donna,

We have several customers using claims-based authentication on ShP2010 to authenticate external users - in fact, that's how Office 365 does it. You can use the UserProfileService to get the name and alias of these users, but you have to do it with qRules in the sandbox. Without qRules, you can set up a UDCX file with special credentials that can access the UserProfileService (to get the user's info) but unfortunately it impersonates the account used in the UDCX's credentials section. So, qRules GetUserProfile is the only way to do this as far as we currently know, but this is a new and evolving area.

Yes, qRules comes with the SharePoint List mapping tool. Hilary and Ernesto are putting the final touches on v4.2 which has much improved support for mapping to SharePoint lists. We hope to have it out the door in a week or two.

Thanks for being here.

P