InfoPath Dev

Hi,

I have developed & moved one infopath 2010 form to production. This form contains around 60 fields(from multiple lists) and implemented autocalculation, cascading dropdowns, hiding control based on sharepoint user( exported source files and done manually modification to achive this).

Question 1:  What is the best practice if want to do some modification on this info path form.

Question 2: can i do direct modification in the production server ? if yes, what kind of modifications can i do...for example: changing the non mandatory field to mandatory, adding new fields, deleting existing fields..etc.. How to do these activities without loosing existing data in the production.

Question 3: do i need to take the same copy of infopath form which is there at production. if yes, what is the best way to take copy?

Regards,

KV

Hi KV,

Since you said you had multiple lists, I'll assume you are using InfoPath form and not the list forms.

1. Best practice when you have to modify the form is to always add fields to the data source. That way, XMLs saved with previous versions will automatically open with the new one. If you have to make a data source modification that is more involved (where you have to delete or rename nodes), then the best practice is to use a content type and publish both v1 and v2 XSNs to the site. The form library would then include both v1 and v2 content types but only allow users to create new forms from v2.  There are several ways to migrate data from v1 to v2 formats using rules and/or XSLT transforms and Qdabra Software provides a training course which shows you these techniques and more.

2. You can but make sure you make backups. Like I said in #1. Deleting existing fields is not good since it will make old XML files not open (or lose data).

3. I don't recommend copying it because the promoted library columns could get reset. Best practice is to have Test and Production environments and test the changes first in the Test environment and then either make the same changes to Production or take the Test XSN and manually fix it up to publish to Production. We are talking about Test and Production deployment techniques in Qdabra's next Thursday's weekly webinar. It's free and the tool is too if you attend and fill out a simple survey.

Thanks!

Hi Patrick Halstead,

Thanks alot for your reply.

I am using sharepoint list forms but not library forms. First i created all the colomns in sharepoint custom list and clicked on customize form option then customised my form. Doing in this way is wrong.

I may get frequent modifications on the infopath form. in this case, which one is better to implement (list form/library form). Assume that i dont have requirement of repeating table & sections...etc.

Could you please give me the guidence how to achive frequent modifications of list forms without any data loss?

Have a nice day. 

Regards,

KV