InfoPath Dev

Hello, I have a new request from my supervisor. He wants infopath to run a rule on form load that updates another list. Is this possible through data connections? For example, we have a list, Employees. When a ticket is opened in customer list, he wants the infopath form to update the list of employees with what customer record they are working on. Our sharepoint and infopath is 2010 and set up with no add-ons. we cannot add C# to the form... Thanks for any help or confirmation that its not possible.

You could do this with CAML and the lists web service, without code. You could also use workflow for this, which would be simpler - you'd need to submit the form to the library when the user opened it with a promoted field with the employee's user name, then you could have workflow on the library that runs and updates the employee list. Now - the problem with something like this is when people close the form using the close button (in InfoPath filler) or by closing the browser window (for browser forms) - you don't have any way to go update that list. But you can have rules on your submit button that set another promoted field letting you know to clear the employee list for the user and use workflow for that as well.

workflow would make this so easy. But workflow starts after the submit button is clicked our boss wants the employee list to be updated as soon as a ticket is opened so workflow would not work. If we had a button they had to use once the form was open it would kick off all of the other workflow that he doesn't want to run yet. My plan was to use workflow to show when the user closed the form via the submit button. does CAML work with the vanilla install of sharepoint?

Use workflow with some conditions and a helper field - so - for example, you could have a field that just indicates what workflow you want to run, and in your submit button, set the field to a value like "submitted" and check for that in your workflow. On open, do a submit via form load rules, and set that field to "opened" and run your workflow to update the employee list when that is the case. As to CAML - if you can access the lists.asmx web service, you can use CAML.

That is a great idea, I will do just that.