InfoPath Dev

 Hiya,

i've got a form with many controls.
Background - approval form for expenses. 6 approvers, WF not started yet, but will tuff it out soon. I'm about 1/2 way through completing the form. Before i get too far, i want to verify that i'm on track with the general design of the form. 200 potential users.

My questions are:

1) Do too many DCs slow down the form? i have 10 now, where 7 of them come from getting names & email addresses for 7 approvers. Rationale is that each approver gets their own list, as each approver needs a delegate, and each approver's delegate will differ and the list will need to be maintained by an approver's executive admin staff.

2) Would it be better to combine the approver lists? Does it matter?

3) Are 4 attachment controls too many? Rationale is that requestors need to attach supporting documents. Sometimes 4, but mostly 3 or less. Sometimes they're heavy attachments. Any issues with this?

Welcome your thoughts. Thanks!!

1 & 2.  As long as they're not being executed, having extra data connections should not slow down your form too much.  It will increase the size of the XSN and make accessing the XSN a little slower.  You may want to consider having just one list with a column to indicate which approver each row belongs to.  This could make maintaining the list (instead of multplie lists) and the data connection easier.  Qdabra's qRules provides a FilterOwssvr command for filtering the data from a SharePoint list to get just the data you need.

3.  The number of attachment controls itself should not be an issue, but having large attachments (even if it's just one) will slow down form access, submit, saving, etc.  Here again, qRules provides the SaveToSharepoint command, which will allow you to save out your attachments to your SharePoint server and replace them with links in your XML form.  This should speed up the performance of your forms.

Thank you!! A few more questions.

Background - In an effort to keep the approvers touch points to a minimum, it'd be ideal for them to approve or reject a form while looking at it, i'm considering putting a matrix within the form showing the approve and reject radio buttons for the approvers to check and a space to type comments about their actions.

Rationale -
1) keeps the approvers into 2 apps only: Outlook, and Windows Explorer (it's a dumb IP form);
2) let's all approvers see what other approvers have done thus far
3) we can lock the buttons once checked thereby preventing others from changing them (an audit concern)

Questions:
A. If i do this, does anyone foresee any complications (IP or WF related)
B. Are there better ways to do the above? If there are, just point me in that direction plz.

Welcome your thoughts.