Newbie Questions

Re: Opening a second form to fill out

Hilary Stoupa — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 20:02:14 GMT

Check out this page. About halfway down is a section titled "Labs" -- trying some of these, step by step, will help you get started.

Re: Opening a second form to fill out

Ashley — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 19:57:53 GMT

Hey again.

1) Unfortunately, the electronic signature thing doesn't work for everybody. I work for a school system. We have about 4500 employees but many of them are custodians, cafeteria assistants, bus drivers and they don't have internet access and may not know how to use a computer. Also, The forms I'm talking about are for people who are on leave of absence so they can't necesarily come into our office. Hey. I'm all for the "paperless" office but unfortunately, we're not to that point yet.

2) I did read about the different views but haven't messed with them too much yet. Like I said earlier. I've never used this software before and don't really know anybody who has so I'm just digging my way through it on my own. It really does sound like that will work perfectly though. I'll keep plugging at it but I may have to ask more questions.

Thanks again for all your help.

Re: Opening a second form to fill out

warrtalon — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 19:34:28 GMT

Ok, this is a great example as to why it's better to just give your entire scenario with all your requirements instead of asking how to do one thing, in my opinion. I've gleaned from your 2nd post that we don't need separate forms necessarily, but you do need separate views while maintaining some of the same data. It's better to let us help you find the best approach based on your requirements as opposed to going down a path you come up with on your own without knowing all the capabilities of InfoPath. It's a very powerful tool that can do many things to streamline your needs. Here are my suggestions.

1) Do the users REALLY have to sign it physically? Isn't it better to have electronic or even digital signatures? Infopath gives you this option, and it's far better than printing, mailing, signing, and mailing again. That is terribly inefficient, and people have far better things to do than waste a lot of time with that old, manual process. I would think a large company has invested in technology that helps streamline such things. Hand-written signatures are a thing of the past. If your company hasn't invested in such technology, then show them they have it by working it in InfoPath. You can choose the Submit to Email option so that when you're done with filling out the form, you can click submit, and it will automatically go to people you pre-define as well as the person who the form is for. That way, everyone sees it, and either the person can sign it electronically (or digitally) in the email, or the person can print it, sign it, and mail/scan/email it back. That's still way better than you printing and mailing.

2) If you have 3 different forms that share a lot of the same data, then perhaps try creating 3 separate views with different formatting, layout, design, etc., but use the same data fields. That way, when the first view is filled out, you can print it, but you keep the form open. You then switch to the next view using the view selector (or by adding a button with a rule that switches views), and then all the data that you've already filled out is still available for the next view, which represents your next form. This form can look completely different, but it shares the same form template and data fields. Likewise for your 3rd form/view.

Re: Opening a second form to fill out

Ashley — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 19:23:08 GMT

I forgot to answer your question about what I wanted the first form to do after I open the second form. It doesn't matter. It can remain open until we've printed everything. Thanks.

Re: Opening a second form to fill out

Ashley — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 19:21:18 GMT

Thanks for responding so quickly.

There's no real reason that I don't want the data to be saved but that's basically way past my realm of understanding. I work for a big company. We have a huge tech department and a programmer that writes all kinds of custom programs that pull from our AS400 server and writes to it as well.

The forms I'm working with have to be printed and mailed to our employees for signatures, etc. (I work in H.R.) The thing is that there are three different forms and we always have to start from scratch completing each form. It's just time consuming.

I'm going to try what you wrote in the last paragraph. It does sound more like what I want.

Thanks again.

Re: Opening a second form to fill out

warrtalon — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 18:57:22 GMT

They can't open anything on your desktop. It needs to be published somewhere, such as a Network Location or SharePoint form library. Once published to a location everyone can get to, you point people to it, they click it, it opens an XML file based off the XSN template, and then they can submit. The submit can do several things:

Submit to SharePoint
Submit to a database
Submit to email
Submit to a web service

It doesn't make sense to "submit" to opening a new form. Submitting means you are committing the data to somewhere. Is there a reason you don't want to save the data and would rather print? That is sort of contrary to the purpose of InfoPath. It's best to keep it all electronic and avoid paper so that it's not wasteful, there's a recorded history, and you can route with automated workflows.

What you may be able to do is not actually "submit," but you can drag a button to your canvas, change the label to "submit," and place a rule under it that fills out a new form. The question is...what is this 2nd form you want them to open, and what happens to the form they already have open? You left a gap there in the explanation, so please clarify.

Opening a second form to fill out

Ashley — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 18:18:01 GMT

O.K. I'd never even heard of InfoPath until a couple of weeks ago but I'm impressed so far. I'm creating a form for my staff to use just to print and send. I don't want to save it to any server anywhere, pull data from any database or email it. All I want to do is... complete the form that I've already created and press the submit button and a second form open up. (Both forms are just saved on my desktop). Is it possible?

Thanks

Ash