SharePoint Integration

Re: Publishing to SharePoint

Patrick Halstead — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 08:32:59 GMT

Hi KristyKay and welcome to our forum!

You can treat SharePoint as a file share and just publish the XSN out there. The benefit is that your users will get autoupdate when you update the form template. You should create a button (not a link) to open the form. See Shiraz's post here: http://www.infopathdev.com/blogs/shiraz/archive/2007/08/16/best-way-to-launch-forms-from-web-pages.aspx.

Using an InfoPath form to programmatically write to a SharePoint list isn't the best best practice, but it's ok I suppose. Ideally, you save your XML to SQL and use a Web part to show the data (as opposed to a ShP list). This allows relational data to be stored with it. But, who cares what I say. Do what makes sense.

Re: Publishing to SharePoint

KristyKay — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 23:02:28 GMT

Is it really that easy? I feel dumb. :-)

It's working fine for me so I'll have to have someone else give it a try to see if it works for them. I'll let you know how I make out.

Thanks for your help!

Re: Publishing to SharePoint

Clay Fox — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 22:44:51 GMT

Ok.

I have done this same thing and published to a library and just had it sit out in SharePoint but use a link on another site for users to access it.

You can link to a template in sharepoint use the URL to the site http://server/site/library/forms/template.xsn

The template is always in the form library /forms/ template.xsn.

Otherwise you could publish to a file share somewhere and have alink to that maybe. It is nicer to have it on a web server but it has to have a central publishing location so that everyone can use it.

Re: Publishing to SharePoint

KristyKay — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 22:29:20 GMT

I guess I didn't phrase my question properly. I have the form template locally. How do I put it out there in SharePoint so people can start using it? If I use the wizard to publish it to a SharePoint library, it creates a Form Library that will never have any forms (because I'm not saving the forms) so it seems kind of pointless.

And then in order to fill out the form, the user has to go to the Form Library and select New Document from the New menu. I'd like to put a "Fill Out Form" link in the main navigation that has the same effect of selecting New Document from the New menu.

Am I making sense?

And currently, the form closes when the user clicks a "Done" button. Kind of related to this, do you know if there's a way to take the user directly to the SharePoint list (in the web browser) so they can see the list with the updates they just made?

Thanks for your help!

Oh and I forgot to mention....I'm using InfoPath 2003 & SharePoint 2007 (in case it makes a difference)

Re: Publishing to SharePoint

Clay Fox — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 22:16:13 GMT

If your submit is just the webservice update of the list then you do not need to create a submit to a document library.

Oten I would add a close form action to the submit or retrun them to the top from a user process perspective. You can also remove the save ability in form options so the user cannot save it if they wanted to.

Publishing to SharePoint

KristyKay — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 22:09:17 GMT

I finally got my form working the way I want it to. The user fills it out, clicks the submit button and voila, a SharePoint list is updated with the information.

Now my question is how do I publish it?

Let me explain how I would like it to work from the user's perspective. On the SharePoint site, there's a "Fill Out Form" link that opens the newly created form. The user fills out the form, clicks Submit and the SharePoint list is updated. I do NOT need to save the form to SharePoint.

Is this possible? If so, how?