InfoPath Dev

Is it possible to promote a field in Infopath 2007 to Sharepoint 2007 as a people and groups datatype?  I have a contact selector on my form and need that data to go into SP as a people and groups so I can run [me] filters on the views.

Any thoughts?

Thanks!

Karen.

I don't think you can do it directly, because the data types don't match.  However, you can use a workflow to update that field, but know that you have to send an EMAIL ADDRESS to that type of field in SharePoint for it to resolve.  You can do this with SPD.

emails not the only info is acceptable. string of user names separated with semicolon will also work.

Thanks for the help!!  I've promoted the AccountId, copying it with a workflow to a Person and Groups field, and it's working like a charm. 

 Karen.

I'll have to figure out why mine will not accept any form of the username (account name, domain name, etc).  I can only pass email address as an acceptable value.  Not sure if it's related to being a browser-enabled form, but it shouldn't matter...

Mine is browser-enabled so I don't think that's your problem.  At which point is it requiring the email address?  On the copy from the promoted string into your person field in Sharepoint?

It could just be my memory.  I just know that some regular attributes fail, and I know that I currently use email address, but I think it may be because of the fact that copying contacts from the GAL to outlook doesn't bring over username, so I have to use email address (I'm referring to something complete different that I do for user roles for which I have to leverage email address).  If it accepts the username, which is the AccountName attribute in the profile database, then that's great.

I have the similar problem as warrtalon . We have a Q/A where the workflow thing works but it doesn't work on my PROD. The people picker accepts only the email address when fetched through the work flow and it accepts anything when i input manually.. Where u guys able to come out with a solution or do u have any idea why this happens.

I'm having issues trying to promote the AccountID field to a people/group datatype. What action do you use in SPD workflow to accomplish this?

You can use the

1.Update List item or 2.Set field in item. Both this should work.

If, this fails the reason would be the version of MOSS Update you have.

If you have SharePoint (MOSS) with January Cummulative update on your server, this wont work. This however works before the January update and after June or August Cumm Update or SP2. 

First, promote the AccountId field to the form library as itself, but hide that column from your view.  Then, upon submission, the workflow should kick off and should use Set Field in Current Item. All you do is set your people picker field to the value of AccountId.  For me, I've always had to use the email address for this to work, but someone above said it works with domain name, so we'll see.

I just want to give a background on what I did. I created a new field on my SharePoint list called Employee Name. This field is a people/group data type. I also promoted my AccountID value from my InfioPath People Picker to the SharePoint list. Within SPD I want to update the list item and set my Employee Name field equal to my AccountID field. I chose Current Item as my source but the problem is my AccountID field is not appearing in the list of options. If I change my Employee Name to a string data type then I'm able to see the AccountID under the Current Item listing and assign it. I don't want this, I want to promote my AccountID to the people/group data type not the strign data type. Am I possibly on the wrong track here?

warrtalon, you repsonded while I was typing. You basically outlined what I was trying to accomplish. I'll try this again from scratch.

The behavior you're seeing here is the same reason why we can't promote a text field straight into a People field - different data types.  With SPD, I've always been able to push a string into the People field as long as it was the right string, which was an email address.

If you end up having to try for email address, then you'll need to use my blog on getting the current user's information without code, which you can do by using the current user's info (userName()) or another user's info by leveraging the AccountId value of a person chosen in a Contact Selector (just have to strip off the domain\ piece using a substring-after):

InfoPath - Get user information without writing code (extended)

As i said with the January Cumm Update, It works just for the email.

But if you use someother update or with SP2 or Aug Update you will be able to populate Domain\user name or just UserName or email address.

If you are using MOSS SP1 with January Update and have trouble populating the People field you can achieve that by Managed Code or a code-less method would be add the User Information List from the RootWeb or the CurrentWeb as a Data Source and use the rules to get the email of the selected user (AccountID)

Rule:

Create a datafield called Email with string in the Main data source and set the rule on the AccountID as

Condition:

When Accound is not blank

Email=@email(@login=AccountID) where email and login are fields from the Secondary data source and the follow the usual workflow procedure.