InfoPath Dev

I think this might be a stretch, but I am building a form for a manufacturing location. They do have a people directory and for the full-time employees the people picker works fine. No issue there.

Here is my question though: they occasionally have temporary contract employees performing some of the functions, and of course they are not in the directory. If I flip sections (hide one with PP in it, un-hide one with text box in it) can I bind a plain text box to the group?

I did an earlier version of this tool and swapped from a group to a text box field, which worked OK but there were names in two different areas (for each function). They've asked if all names can reside in one field/column, regardless of full-time or temp.

People pickers always name check, and my thinking is a plain text will not, but I don't think it'll write to a Group field...will it?

So - is this a list form? Or a regular InfoPath form that submits to a library? You are right that you won't be able to put random text into a person/group column type. But you could have a third field that you display in your list library views and that could have either the display name from the people picker OR the user entered text in it - you could just add some submit rules to determine which to use when the form is submitted.