Data Connections

Re: Infopath connecting to sharepoint

warrtalon — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 03:07:44 GMT

Skylab, what exactly do you mean by "SharePoint website database." Do you just mean SharePoint itself? When you use InfoPath with SharePoint, it has to be published directly to a form library, and that is where the users go to fill out the form by clicking New. This is also where the form will be submitted upon completion and therefore where all your data will reside. Each form gets saved as a separate XML file, but the fields of the form are saved into the form library as columns as long as you promote them during the InfoPath publishing process...just as Ted stated. Don't think of it as submitting to a database. Everything in SharePoint goes into the content database, which is in SQL server, but it's not handled like a normal DB. Your data will just go to the form library, which is where you will see/review it.

Connect "both" what?
In the form library where the form is published and submitted

When you say "visitors," do you mean people who aren't users of your system? If so, then InfoPath doesn't work for this unless we're talking about SharePoint 2010 list forms. Anonymous users cannot submit documents to SharePoint, which includes InfoPath forms. The methods explained here will only work for authenticated users.

Re: Infopath connecting to sharepoint

Ted Fitch — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 23:47:20 GMT

Hi,

The easiest way to do this with the tools you have is to publish the form template to a SharePoint document library. You would then promote the fields you want shown in SharePoint to be "promoted" from InfoPath to SharePoint and they would then show in the columns in the document library when the users submit their forms. You can then export this data to Excel.

If you really want this data to get into a DB you will need to either connect your form directly to SQL or use a web service to get the data to SQL. However for the simple operation you are trying to turn into a form I think a SharePoint document library with promoted columns should be fine.

Ted

Infopath connecting to sharepoint

skylab — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 14:40:16 GMT

Hi everyone, I have infopath and I have sharepoint. I would like to create a subscribe form using infopath [with only two fields: name, email, and the Submit button], and want the data submitted on this form to go my sharepoint website database. Can you help me with the following:

1- What's the best way to connect both?
2- Where do I go and look for the data submitted by users who filled out the subscribe form?

The main idea is, to allow visitors to fill out a subscribe form (with their name and email) once they click submit, I want the data to go to a file somewhere on my sharepoint. Is that possible? Please note that I know it could be done in other ways like using SQL but I would like to use this method instead. Any help would be greatly appreciated.