Re: Dynamic form/controls

Clay Fox — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 06:13:08 GMT

Hey Todd.

Not sure how complicated you need this to be... I am assuming you are wanting to minimize any coding into the form itself and want it to be as dynamic as possible.

I am assuming you have a list of Customers that are coming in as a secondary data connection. Obviously if you had additional fields in this list that could flag whether they needed additional information or not or a group number or soimthing the form could respond to this.

Typically you would just have a section for additional information and then have it hidden by default and use conditional formatting to react to the selection and unhide or not.

You could have multiple styles and use a designation to have multiple configurations of the extra data.

Are you saving this data back to a database for further processing and reporting?

Dynamic form/controls

toddkitta — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 03:35:13 GMT

Here is the scenario I am trying to implement in (in a SharePoint forms library):

I have a standard form that is static for all "customers" (which is a drop down in my form). However, some customers require that custom data be collected if they are selected from the drop down. For example, if the user selected "Acme" from the drop down, they would be presented with some other controls that Acme requires. Fortunately, the experience can be flexible. Meaning I could either show them the controls right away or after they save the first form. However, there are a lot of customers therefore I could not just show/hide dynamic parts of the form. I need to have the static form be standalone and design a separate form (or template part) for each customer.

Does anyone have ideas about how this would be implemented?

I initially thought it sounded nice to dynamically load a template part based on the customer that is selected. However, it does not appear this is possible in any way, shape, or form.

Then I thought I could create a new ASP.NET page and host the XmlFormView control and manage the form lifecycle (saving, etc.) myself. Then after the users saves the first form, I could see which customer they selected and load the second form and then allow them to save that. I think this approach would work, but I'm wondering how I would save the data as one "entity" in the SharePoint forms library.

In addition, I will have a workflow running against the record in the forms library that needs to be kicked off after they save the first form plus the additional fields if requried by the customer.

Any thoughts are appreciated.

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Re: Dynamic form/controls

Dynamic form/controls