InfoPath Dev

Hi Everybody,

I have a form library in WSS 3 (not MOSS) that has multiple forms available when a user clicks the down arrow on New button.  This works fine, but if somebody creates a new form and saves it back as an XML, no other users can access the XML (populated) version until they click one time on the New button and open the blank form.

I currently have a potential for ~20 users, and it seems odd that each user would have to open a new blank form just to be able to see an existing XML.

In other words, Form Library has 7 XSN's.  If I click the new button dropdown arrow and click from #3 it opens a blank XSN.  I populate it in InfoPath and save it back to the site as form3.xml.  Now nobody can open the form3.xml to view what I saved until they open a new blank instance from the new button dropdown.  Once they do that, they can cancel out of InfoPath and click the form3.xml like normal.

I'm pretty new to InfoPath and WSS and would really appreciate any help here.

Definitely not normal behavior.  I've never encountered that.  What do you mean exactly when you say "now nobody can open the form3.xml'?  They don't see it in the library?  They see it, but they try to open it and get an error?  What exactly happens?

They see the one I saved, but until they manually launch a blank form from the new button they can't open the one I've already saved.  I think I fixed it though, I published the XSN's to a share and that seemd to fix it.  It was acting like Infopath needed to cache the XSN locally before users could open saved XML's.

But what do you mean by "they can't open it"?  That's what I'm asking.  What _exactly_ happens?

Publishing to a share is not a good solution if you're using SharePoint.  It should be published to SharePoint.

InfoPath errors saying it can't find the form at "I:\Sharepoint Templates\formName.xsn".

If the user clicks the down arrow next to New and selects the desired form, InfoPath opens a blank instance.  They close it and then can open the very fowm that just prior failed.

I think that's the key.  What exactly is I:\sharePoint Templates\formName.xsn?

How is that being associated with your form template in the SharePoint library?  Is that a remnant from your own desktop...like a personal drive on a shared server or something?

How did you associate multiple forms with one library?  Did you create them all as content types?  Where did you save or publish these content types?

It's the location of the XSN I created and its the source file I published from.

Yes I created a seperate content type for wach form.  I've tried publishing from InfoPath and also uploading the XSN directly into the content type advanced settings area.  The only way I can make it work is to save the XSN's to a shared (read only for everybody else) directory on the wss server and load them into the content type from there.

Ok, when you publish them as a content type, where are you choosing to save them as part of that publishing process (in the scenario when it doesn't work and points to your I: drive)?

Wait.  You're publishing each form as a content type, but then when asked to "Specify a location and file name for the form template," you are saving those templates directly into the form library where you later add them as content types?  Are you sure that's what you're doing?  You would typically create a separate doc lib to store you temlates for the IP content types you publish.  You would then allow for mgmt of content types and add from existing content types in the form library where the work is performed.

I'll run back through my steps and document them... i could be mistaken so i'll see.    thanks again!