InfoPath Dev

Microsoft has acknowledged the issue but their workaround is less than ideal:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/support/infopath/click-infopath-form-mobile-view

A few months back we encountered this "Something went wrong" error on any newly published InfoPath form when attempting to use the new form link from the form library or a direct item url sent via workflow on a mobile device.  Requesting desktop site does work, but has anyone found a cleaner workaround?  Is anyone else even experiencing this?  I am shocked that there isn't any fanfare occurring even though it was seemingly a silent update that broke our forms.  Back when this issue came about I had tested republishing forms that had no issues prior and they started throwing the same error.

We ended up embedding all of our forms in pages which has worked fine but that doesn't fix the issue when approval steps are involved with direct item links, we basically tell them in each approval step email that it shouldn't be done from mobile.

How awful. I'm glad you posted about this - I'd not run into it before. https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/ie/en-US/40e450dc-27c8-4ed1-a217-861a97fc020b/sharepoint-online-switches-to-mobile-view-in-a-desktop-browser?forum=sharepointgeneral indicates that you might be able to add a URL param to the link to force it to open in desktop, I'm not sure if that would be an acceptable work around? The url param is mobile=0 - I've not tested this tho.

 Hi Hilary!

 Unfortunately the mobile tag did not work, however, it appears by sheer fools luck I have found a fix for this!  &DefaultItemOpen=1 appears to fix this issue when appended to both the direct link provided by the "new form" button and also when appended to list items when using the following method via workflow:

[%Workflow Context:Current Site URL%]/_layouts/15/formserver.aspx?XmlLocation=[%Current Item:Encoded Absolute URL%]&DefaultItemOpen=1

 Incredible!  I wish I'd posted about this sooner as mobile support is huge for us when dealing with field employee approval workflows!

Hey, that's great news, I'm glad a URL param solves the problem! Great job figuring it out, and thanks again for posting - I'm not the only who didn't know about this, I think. :)

Glad to hear you figured it out.

Qdabra Software, creator and maintainer of InfoPathDev, has a quick and easy top install FormsViewer App that replaces InfoPath (but let's you continue using the form's you created using it). You can find the app in the SharePoint App Store.  In addition, mobile views will look beautiful if you add a CSS resource. That literally takes 10-15 minutes. Best of all, cost is lowest by two orders of magnitude - you don't have to recreate your forms in Power Apps, and FormsViewer will always be usage-based and tenant-wide. Plus, InfoPathDev posters are eligible for special discounts! :)

Here's a link if you're interested: https://www.qdabra.com/en/products/FormsViewer.aspx. The second short video shows how to add the CSS to make your form's responsive for mobile devices.

I'm happy to show a quick demo.

We're working on the form designer replacement for InfoPath Designer now and hope to have an initial version ready by early next year.

Cheers!

 

Patrick Halstead:

Glad to hear you figured it out.

Qdabra Software, creator and maintainer of InfoPathDev, has a quick and easy top install FormsViewer App that replaces InfoPath (but let's you continue using the form's you created using it). You can find the app in the SharePoint App Store.  In addition, mobile views will look beautiful if you add a CSS resource. That literally takes 10-15 minutes. Best of all, cost is lowest by two orders of magnitude - you don't have to recreate your forms in Power Apps, and FormsViewer will always be usage-based and tenant-wide. Plus, InfoPathDev posters are eligible for special discounts! :)

Here's a link if you're interested: https://www.qdabra.com/en/products/FormsViewer.aspx. The second short video shows how to add the CSS to make your form's responsive for mobile devices.

I'm happy to show a quick demo.

We're working on the form designer replacement for InfoPath Designer now and hope to have an initial version ready by early next year.

Cheers!

 Thanks Patrick, we will certainly be considering Qdabra solutions not just limited to the formsviewer as needed.  For the time being we're sticking with out of the box solutions as much as we can as our department doesn't have a huge budget although that may change as we continue pushing the platform to the limit/MSFT keeps breaking things with updates.