InfoPath Dev

Hello,

I'm developing a few forms that need to present the items within the form as unique entries/items in a SharePoint list. Two examples are an employee time off request form and a purchase requisition form. An employee may submit one form, but with multiple items/requests in each form. I've been using a repeating table, as I can add/remove items.

How can I present each item from within a single InfoPath form? Am I taking the wrong approach?

Thanks,

Brian

 

This can be done within one InfoPath form.

As far as approach is the intent that each employee will update there form each time? This could be difficult in practice.

Have you considered using a database as the data repository?  I have done similar projects with the Database Accelerator. Qdabra Database Accelerator Suite Version 2.1 - Developer

I have found that for enterprise solutions that you can run into constraints otherwise. The tools in DBXL make things a lot easier in the long run.

Hello Clay,

An employee will NOT update there form each time. Each time they want to make a new request, they will have submit a new form.

If the employee wants to take a week-long vacation, I want the form to have five lines for each day individually. We may or may not need coverage for that employee on each of the days the employee will be on vacation.

How would I bring a database into the equation? InfoPath form running on InfoPath Services in SharePoint, talking back to a SQL database? 

Still toying around with this,

Brian 

Hi Brian,

A database is probably the *ultimate* solution down the road if you need reporting, better performance, finer-grained security, etc., but for now you probably don't need it. We have some logic that converts repeating items in InfoPath forms to SharePoint list items. We haven't released this as a general tool yet but let me know if you are interested in a private copy. You can also do this yourself by reading Matt's blog: http://www.infopathdev.com/blogs/matt/archive/2006/02/02/Add-SharePoint-List-Items-with-InfoPath.aspx.

After you read that, if you still can't get it working, take a look at http://www.infopathdev.com/forums/p/6735/24860.aspx#24860 which has some ideas of how to do this with code.

Finally, if you still can't get it working, we'd be happy to do some work for you. Just purchase a support credit from the Support page at Qdabra.com. 

Cheers!

 I discovered what I was missing - since the form may have multiple dates, I need to specify an aggregation attribute for the field. (Read about this and saw a picture in the February 2008 TechNet Magazine - page 27. The associated figure (figure 6) in the article shows exactly what I'm trying to accomplish.

Thanks,

Brian 

Brian,

I am trying to accomplish the exact same thing as you mentioned, a way to have one form for employees to submit vacation requests.  The idea is to potentially have one form that may have one to many dates requested off and that each one of the dates on this form is then an item in a list.

I have created a form which will add one item to a list at a time but can't seem to figure out how to add multiples through one form.  Can you give a bit more explanation of what you did to make this work for you?  Thanks.

Abe