InfoPath Dev

Hi folks,

I am a co-developer of an open-source medical record system infrastructure called OpenMRS http://www.openmrs.org). I thought that developers and MS-type folk alike might want to see how we've integrated Infopath into our software, designed for HIV care in sub-Saharan Africa.

Interested?

As long as you have Infopath 2003 with SP2 installed on your machine, go to www.openmrs.org, and click on the "demo" tab at the top.

1) Login to the web client with user: admin and password: test.
2) Click on the "find patient" selection on the ribbon.
3) Type in a portion of a name in the selection box (these are all test patients), and select one.
4) Click over to the "forms" tab, and select one of the four forms.
5) Infopath should run once you've opened the infopathxml file.

Features you all might be interested in:
1) Extensive use of the task pane to enhance the user experience. we have a "concept dictionary" that codifies medical concepts, and we've built custom AJAX-capable widgets to create a nice user experience. Try adding or removing a diagnosis to see what I mean.
2) We build form schemas on the fly using our own hierarchy builder... to see this, click on "administration" from the top ribbon of the web client, and click on "manage forms". Click on design schema to see what I'm getting at. We generate .xsds and .xsns on the fly that pre-generate all of the appropriate metadata for a given field to ensure data integrity, etc.

If anyone has any interest in this project, I'd love to hear about it. We'd especially love to have an audience with MS folks, as we've pushed some of the technical boundaries of Infopath, and would love to have a forum to ask questions, etc.

As we all say while working on this project, "there's nothing like writing code that will save lives". Maybe you could join us?

Thanks!
-Paul

Hi Paul and welcome to our forum!

I really like the site. Did you guys do it with AJAX? The InfoPath form is well-done too. The schema is well structured. For the on the fly stuff, do you also build the views on the fly? If so, that's pretty impressive.

We have worked on many dynamically generated forms. Typically, we have a very generic schema and then a lot of conditional visibility in InfoPath with a more or less vertically scrolling view. Because of horizontal scroll limitations (screen real-estate), it's difficult to lay lists out in multiple columns. You guys look like you have solved this. If you are generating the XSL on the fly, I'd like to know how. Seems like a lot of work (formatting, ghosted text, getting the placement perfect, etc.).

The task pane is very cool. Keep in mind that this won't work for InfoPath Forms Server as it doesn't support the task pane. We are big users of the taskpane for searching dictionaries, etc.

Since this is OpenMRS, does that mean that your code is open too? Can we take a peak under the hood?

Thanks for sharing!

Heya Patrick.

Thanks.

Yes, there's a fair bit of AJAX on the web client application. It's all Tomcat-based.

We've to a large extent have "taken control" of the InfoPath form construction process. We generate our own .xsn files on the fly, based upon the concepts within our system, and leave it up to the form designer to build the underlying layout style sheets and business logic. We do not however, build the views on the fly. They are replicas of paper forms used in the clinic sites.

.XSNs edited in InfoPath are then uploaded back into the webapp and "served" up through our webapp. Hope that makes sense.

RE: looking under the hood. Please do! We'd love any sort of feedback.

Hi Paul and welcome to the forums!

Wow, this looks really cool! I wasn't able to look at this for very long, but it sounds awesome! I will definitely try to take some time to dig through this and see if I can make any contributions.

One thing that I am especially interested in is how you have source control setup for such large-scale contributions with InfoPath. This is one area where we have had some trouble in the past. About how many people would you say are working on this project concurrently and what is there global spread?