Newbie Questions

Re: how to develop views simultaneously

Hilary Stoupa — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 22:38:33 GMT

I really didn't think about this one enough -- there is a lot of information about the view in the manifest.xsf, and that means you'd need to make a lot of manual modifications. Really, the easiest route would be to have different designers work on entirely different forms -- maybe someone could create a base template to start from that has the look and feel you want to provide more uniformity.

Re: how to develop views simultaneously

lestomos — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 07:38:47 GMT

Hi Hilary,

thank you for your reply. I have tried your solution, but it doesn't seem to work. I may also be doing something wrong, I don't know. I have been trying to change the manifest.xsf and added some file nodes like <xsf:file name="view222.xsl"> or <xsf:views default="View222">. After some trials I have managed to save one form with additional views from another form. However, they do not work properly. We may eventually repeat the views from our forms and merge them in a final form. I cannot manage to mix them.

Thanks a lot, anyway,

Lestomos

Re: how to develop views simultaneously

Hilary Stoupa — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 15:19:29 GMT

Well, if you already have a single template with the two views on it, why not try this -- each keep a copy of the form and work on your own views, then, when you are done, both save the form as source files (under the File menu), and replace the .xsl in the source files with the .xsl the other person worked on. Now, you'd want to make sure that the .xsl wasn't referencing any data connections that weren't already in the form, so you'd need to coordinate on that. And please note that you should test this first, after making only a few quick changes, to make sure it works. You should also make sure you've got a good copy of your form as a backup before mucking about with source files.

To repack you form up as a template after saving as source files, you right click on the manifest.xsf file, and select "Design". Once your template successfully opens in design mode, you can go to the File menu and use "Save As" to pack the files back up.

I suppose you could try copy / paste, since the form would have the same data source, and see if the controls stayed correctly bound to their data nodes -- but I've not had much luck with copying / pasting views between forms, so again, you'd want to test that. Also, you'd want to still stay aware to making sure neither of you were adding data sources the other didn't have.

how to develop views simultaneously

lestomos — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 14:41:48 GMT

Hi,

I am completely new to InfoPath. My boss has assigned my department (2 people) to develop a new infopath form with many views, with an SQL-Server as data source. We are testing and reading a quite basic tutorial on how to use Infopath. However, we cannot figure out how we can develop ip views with more than one form. So far my colleague and I have been developing together many views for one form, which is very slow and tedious. Is there any way to create views in 2 different forms and subsequently merge them into a final form without losing any information, so that both my colleage and I can simultaneously develop IP Views?

Thanks in advance,

Lestomos