InfoPath Dev

I have been doing research to try and get this to work for 2 weeks and it just won't work no matter what I do, even recreating the same form that the example is showing.  I am doing a data connection with a drop down box and need that to populate the names depending on the active date from today and forward.  Also from the person that is created the rate needs to automatically populate, which neither does this.  Also I need to have three signatures that need to be added as they get approved.  I am not sure how this is done.  I will  be doing a workflow in Sharepoint, which is another task in itself, but that as the managers approve it gets moved to the next step.  Is it easier to have the approval through the workflow?  I need it to show the dates that it was approved on the sharepoint list so I can do a trend.  Not sure how I can send you the sheet. HELP!!!

Well, it may be a good plan to just start with one issue at a time. It sounds like you are having a problem with XPath filters. What example are you referring to? You can attach a form under the Options tab if you'd lke someone to help with the filters.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Sure, but I could use more info on what you are trying to do. What does this mean:

 I am doing a data connection with a drop down box and need that to populate the names depending on the active date from today and forward.

I see you have a contractor name drop down. Are you trying to filter the names shown in that drop down based on the Current_Contract_Start_Date? Is that the "active date"?

Then, once a contractor is selected, you want to populate the Rate field with the correct rate for that contractor?

There is a Sharepoint list with names and the dates they started and their end dates along with the rates.  I need to have the dropdown box pull from that list on the name and autopopulate the end date and rate.

I am trying to filter from their end date today and future.  That would be the active date I am trying to pull, but it's called Contract End Date. 

Rules run when a field changes. It appears you were trying to set the rule to set the rate on the rate field, not on the contractor name field.

I put a rule on contractorname1 to set Rate1.

I temporarily put the Contract End Date from your secondary datat source on the bottom of your form - could you preview it and attach a screenshot so I can see what the data looks like? That may be why your filter is failing - the data may not look like a date to IP.

To look at this template I'm attaching, save it locally. Right click on the saved file and select Design to open in design mode.

So I grabbed a contractor, and it did not fill in the rate, but the contract end date populated all the dates in the SP list.  Attached is the screen shot in two pages.  It keeps going. 

I was setting "Rate1" instead of RATE. Try this one for the rate setting. The rule is on contractorname1, so you can edit it if you need to. You'll want to tidy up your form schema before you ever put this into production, get rid of unused fields.

The issue with your filter is probably because of the date format. "1/1/2000" won't be seen as a date, and won't compare correctly with today(), which would have the format of 2000-01-01. Is the column a date data type in SharePoint?

Thank you for your help, I think I am giving up on this.  Now it won't allow me to open once I changed my data.  That was one of the issues is that they took an excel sheet and exported it into SP and it was a text field, and entered in DD/MM/YY only sometimes.  So I exported the data, fixed the dates and imported it back into another SP site but now that I have changed it, It will not allow me to open the form.  Too big of a task for me I think... it's over my head unfortunately.  Thank you for all your help, going to slam my head in a wall! :)

Okay Finished my tantrum, and I just can't let this go.  I have cleaned up my fields and put them in the order required.  Did not know I could do that.  Let's start over with the first issue. 

My Contractor Name is a pull down from a secondary source field Name (Secondary Source Name: Info1)

From the 2ndary Source I need to pull the end date related to the contractor's name and their rate.  I am pretty close, but not there I am not sure what it is that I am missing.  I have looked at other sheets to see if I am missing anything and they have the same data I do. 

One more shot.... can you help? :)

We all need a good tantrum now and again. Try this one....

You ROCK!! Thank you so much!  Can you tell me where I went wrong?  Also can I format the date and rate fields?

So I tried to do Department and did everything (I think) you did, which is add a rule to set a field's value on the contractor name field.  Is there an issue that my field I am referring to, in this case, department, is a . ? I see you do not have that in your fields, maybe that is my issue all along.

Well, and I mean this in the kindest way possible, your filters were a mess.

Here's what helped me figure filters out - your brain work differently from mine, so it may not be as helpful to you. The secondary data source has many rows - one to n. You are trying to set the value of a field to a value in one of those rows. InfoPath has no way to know which one. The filter you add when you select the data source field is how you tell InfoPath "I want this row".

In your case, you want the rate from the row in Info1 where the Name1 field is the same as the ContractorName in your main data source. That's because your main data source ContractorName is getting its possible values from one of the Name1 instances in Info1.

Hope that helps.

Now, to format the controls on the form, as long as they are the correct data type (Date, Double) you can right click the control and select the properties. On the first tab (Data) there is a format button....

If the rule is on the ContractorName field, then "." is going to refer to ContractorName.

So, your rule on the ContractorName field should be an action rule that set's a field's value. You will set the value of the Department field in your main data source. You'll click fx for the value to open the formula editor. From there, from Info1, you'll select Department. Click on the button to add a filter. The filter will be that Name1 from Info1 is equal to ContractorName from the main data source.