InfoPath Dev

I recently became fairly stumped with a problem of linking a project list project on our sharepoint server to infopath forms related to that project.

 The Scenario is quite simple really.

We have sales guys who when they begin to work with a client will go into our sharepoint project list and create a new project for that particular client.  This allows them to make various estimates which our managers can use to sort of predict the months potential sales and production.  The problem I have is that once the project is created and the sales guys begin to work with the client they eventually fill out a Infopath Quote Form which is stored in our Forms Library, however what I need to happen is that when our managers go into the project lists and look up particular projects in sharepoint, I need the specific quote forms created for that project to be listed so that they know 'ok this project has 4 quotes and here they are (linkable) so they can look at them'.  Right now they have to look up the forms in the forms list which is kind of confusing because its not always 100% clear which forms go with which projects, especially now that our client list is growing.

 Is there a way to link a Infopath form to a specific project in a project list of a sharepoint server?

 I know that you can do 'file attachments' but that doesnt seem to be the correct way to do it since obviously we want to store our infopath forms in our forms library, not as attachments somewhere. 

Any help would be greatly appriciated and thank you in advance for any replys

 Chris

Hey Chris.

This is difficult since you are really talking about a Sharepoint interface, this list of Projects.

You could use InfoPath, which they would open instead of the SP list and then you could filter and link these two items, projects and related quotes.

Or you could put groupings or a filter on the Quote Document Library so that you could filter for a specific project and see the related qupte documents. i would assume project is a promoted property.

Best practice would be to look at SQL, for managing this Project Application. Qdabra actually has a whole solution called project tracker which is on Office live.  It has project lists, Scope of Work documents, but then the timecards and everything are all linked together and accounting can download the data for payroll and invoicing and management for analysis. That is another option.

Thank you Clay that was very helpful, I understand what you mean.  I think there is a limitation within Sharepoint really when it comes to the connection between Lists and Document libraries, at least out of the box.  I'm going to have to give it some more thought as to exactly how to resolve the procedurial issue before I start thinking about an IT solution.  I think there might be a way to simpler way that just hasn't come to me yet, I'll post it here when I come up with it.