InfoPath Dev

Good morning all!!!

I have an existing form that I am making some changes to, pretty minor changes actually. I would like to make this form accessible remotely. I have people that need to access it from 3 different locations, including people here in my office. Now, the second resolution to this situation is that I have sections that are to be digitally signed and right now the form is just located in-house and all the digital signatures are assigned using there computer sign in referencing Outlooks mail domain for signature verification. Now since I want to use this remotely from multiple locations, I won't be able to, because the domain issues.

Now I am looking for everyone#%92s great knowledge in this application because i am so not as near advanced as a lot of people on here, but I am learning :-) So, I want to have the form accessed remotely, which I kind of know that it will have to be accessible through the internet somehow, and a signature system that everyone in-house or off site can sign the form and the signatures are always verifiable.

Thanks for reading my post and I look forward to all the information you all have to offer, no matter how big or small it is!!!!

Hi Nikihoi,
First some questions:
1. Does the form contain any code?
2. Is the form full trust?
3. Will your users be logged into your organization's domain with a VPN link?
4. Where are forms saved to? Internal or external location?
5. Does the form currently use e-mail?
6. How often will the form change?
7. Do the people accessing remotely need to sign the form? Or, is this just for in-house people?

I look forward to your reply.

quote:

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Originally posted by Patrick Halstead

Hi Nikihoi,
First some questions:
1. Does the form contain any code?
2. Is the form full trust?
3. Will your users be logged into your organization's domain with a VPN link?
4. Where are forms saved to? Internal or external location?
5. Does the form currently use e-mail?
6. How often will the form change?
7. Do the people accessing remotely need to sign the form? Or, is this just for in-house people?

I look forward to your reply.

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Hi Patrick,

I will be more than glad to answer all of your question. I can not believe I have not received more responses to this post... kind of makes me sad. But like I said, happy to answer all your questions!!!

1. I have used all built in features, have not entered any external code.

2. Full trust as in anybody can enter information throughout the from? Yes

3. Not really sure what that is, but that kind of is an area I am not sure what to do with.

4. I was thinking anywhere that would be the easiest for them to locate, use and reference. I am totally open to any suggestions you have.

5. No

6. Hopefully not often at all, I want this latest version to be around for a long time!!!

7. All personel need to be able to sign the form.... externally and internally.

Thanks you so much for your reply, and I cannot wait to see what kind of suggestions you have for me!!!!

Thanks again!!!

Bernie

Hi Bernie,

Don't be sad! Keep in mind that we host this forum for free (even though it costs us a lot of money) and sometimes we have to actually spend time trying to make money to cover some expenses and that means we can't respond as quickly to every post. It helps us if there are a lot of details so that we don't have to ask questions. Clearly stating your scenario will improve odds of a quick response.

1. InfoPath supports including code within the form, i.e. internally. I assume you have not written any .NET code though.
2. Full Trust is different from "anyone can enter info". It relates to the security level. See Tools->Form Options->Security.
3. VPN stands for Virtual Private Network. Your users will need to be logged into your domain to use digital signatures. If they are accessing over the Internet, they will need to be VPN'ed in or have locally cached credentials (in both cases, they will need to login to their machine with the DOMAIN\username credentials of your companies intranet).
4. Saving the forms externally (for example, on a local machine) means that they cannot access it easily from a different computer. We recommend saving internally, but that requires access to the internal domain via a extra-netted Web service or a VPN connection (domain authentication)
5. E-mail may provide a mechanism for submitting forms if you do not have VPN or extra-netted Web service. You send the forms to a person who receives them. That person is authenticated to your domain (and they are on the intranet). They open and submit the forms to the database on behalf of the external user. This doesn't support digital signatures though if the external users aren't domain authenticated.
6. In practice, forms change, and auto-update is a great feature, but it requires access to internal server where the form lives. Once again this requires either VPN access or some kind of extranetted Web service. However, if you ahve already opened the form, you can still open the form if you are offline as InfoPath caches it.
7. Digital certificates are issues from a Certificate Root Authority which runs on your internal domain. There may be a way to configure it to work with people across VPN. If the person receives the digital certificate while logged into your domain, they might be able to use it later from that account (even if they are not domain authenticated), but this is a scenario we haven't tested. Another option is to use a 3rd party certificate authority, like Verisign. This will cost you more money, though, since they charge per certificate. However, this might be the way to go if you need to support Internet certificates and you can't require people to be domain authenticated.

Of course, you could use personal certificates, but those wouldn't be trusted by your servers and anybody could spoof the system. That's why you need certificates issued by a certificate authority that you trust - either yours or a third party like Verisign.

Another option is to use AD\username and keep audit history. Using our Database Accelerator, you can setup an extranet site that users can submit to and because all versions of the form are saved, you can go back to the audit trail to check data later. This doesn't provide the proof that the person filling out the form is indeed who they say they are, but it does give you a level of audit tracking which may meet your needs.

To verify that the person filling out the form is who they say they are you have to a) make sure they are authenticated in your domain (or a domain you trust), and b) use digital signatures or some form startup logic and workflow to verify them.

Good luck! Let us know if we can help you with your project.