Data Connections

Re: Data connection to Person or Group field causes InfoPath to crash.

ErnestoM — Wed, 15 May 2013 12:29:57 GMT

Then I agree with your suspicion. Our servers get Microsoft updates applied and unfortunately sometimes this breaks things. Sorry that I don't have more info. Hope you can figure it out.

Re: Data connection to Person or Group field causes InfoPath to crash.

Hollyanne — Tue, 14 May 2013 17:33:45 GMT

I wouldn't have a problem if it was just a matter of testing before I deployed the forms. But I thoroughly tested the forms and they worked for 6 months. The problem with the data connections just started happening lately on forms that I have not made any changes to. I am thinking an update maybe? I have a plan for getting rid of data connections to Person and Group fields completely. I am just really curious as to what changed. I will let you know if I find anything out. Thanks

Re: Data connection to Person or Group field causes InfoPath to crash.

ErnestoM — Tue, 14 May 2013 12:24:02 GMT

This is tricky. Microsoft changes things between versions and we're not always informed of what exactly changed. So in the case of server upgrades (SharePoint 2007 to 2010) and client upgrades (InfoPath 2010 to 2013) the form designer will most likely need to go thru a brief test phase to ensure the forms still work after upgrade.

There was another question on this web service posted today, but unfortunately it's hard to know what exactly broke in the Microsoft upgrade.

One troubleshooting tip I can provide is to design a test form in the new environment (IP 2013, ShP 2013) and recreate the troublesome data connections. Look for differences and hopefully identifying these will warn you of potential issues in the main form(s). Even a small change in the formatting of the Account can cause issues. Sometimes something as simple as walking through the data connection wizard fixes the connection, but sometimes a new data connection is needed. Sorry, it's hard to tell.

Let us know what you discover in your troubleshooting. Thanks.

Data connection to Person or Group field causes InfoPath to crash.

Hollyanne — Mon, 13 May 2013 20:07:28 GMT

I created several InfoPath forms that we used in SharePoint 2007 that use a data connection to a SharePoint list with Person or Group fields containing information about the form users. I have a drop-down list in the form with Name as the Display Name and Account as the Value. This allows the user to select a supervisor which is then promoted to the form list and used in a workflow. This worked fine in 2007.
We moved to SharePoint 2010. Initially the forms worked fine in InfoPath 2010 but InfoPath 2013 crashed when trying to open the form templates. I had to remove the connection to the Work e-mail, Office, Title and Work phone fields in order to load the form without crashing. Last week this also started happening in InfoPath 2010. I still have connections to Account and Name that work fine but I am afraid that those too will stop working. I am using GetUserProfileService to get current user and created by information and so far that is working fine. I don't find anything when I Google this issue.