Newbie Questions

Re: Dynamic Data Connection?

parsonsm11111 — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 13:37:34 GMT

I have a similar problem. However, my issue is not in moving the form from a development environment to a production environment. My challenge is to automatically deploy a form library with my form template to a new site within the same site collection.

Because it is the same site collection, using a server-relative location for my UDC file will not work, since all sites will share the same UDC and point at the same library. I want the form template attached to a specific library in a specific site to have its submit target be the local library.

I do not want to have to manually change the contents of the UDC file since these sites may be provisioned by users.

Any suggestions? Could web services or HTTP submits help me?

At this point, I am contemplating writing .NET code to unpackage the xsn and manually change the target of the data connection. I would really hate to do this though...

Re: Dynamic Data Connection?

Patrick Halstead — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 09:57:13 GMT

Hi Jim!

As far as I know, UDC files are site collection, site or sub-site specific. You want to publish UDCs for each site (or sub-site) and then have your InfoPath form refer to them using a relative path. First, just try to publish your InfoPath form to a new site and specify the new UDC file. It should be easy to modify the data connection to point to the UDC file in the site specific data connection library. Once you get that working, go to the next level and try to change the master template to have a site specific relative path to the UDC. You'll have to modify the manifest.xsf of the InfoPath solution template to try this out, and I'm not 100% certain it will work (because of issues we have had), but it's worth a try since it means you can create a package that deploys both the UDC and the XSN to a new site and they will work. To get at the manifest.xsf, export the source files for the XSN and then open the manifest.xsf in notepad. Search for DataAdapters and the data connection that you want to be relative. Then, change the path to be relative instead of absolute. Save the file. Right click and design the XSF. Save and publish. Now take that saved XSN and UDC and try to upload to a new site.

Let us know if this doesn't make sense and thanks for your patience as we try to respond to all threads in the forum! :)

Re: Dynamic Data Connection?

JimOleson — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 20:03:33 GMT

Thanks Patrick for the response. I've been searching for a good way to do this but when I find information on the subject I just find "use a UDC connection". Can you point me in the right direction? I publish a form library as part of a site template. I need the InfoPath form to publish to it's respective library. I'm guessing that I would need to update the UDC file and publish it as part of my automated workflow?

Re: Dynamic Data Connection?

Patrick Halstead — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 01:01:09 GMT

Hi Jim,

I would convert your data connection into a UDC and modify that when you create your new site. Then, it should work without the need to republish your form. You could try to use relative paths too, but I think there are roundtrip issues in IP2010. Anyway, best practice is to use UDCs.

Dynamic Data Connection?

JimOleson — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 18:32:56 GMT

I have a form that I've created a Site Content Type from. In my form, I have a field that I would like to pre-populate field data when a user clicks on "New Form". I understand that I can create a data connection to accomplish this. However, how do I make this data connection dynamic? The data connection points to the site template level (Sub-site).When I provision a new site with a document library using this template with the form as the content type, it is not reading from the right location any longer.

Thanks!