A working cascading pulldown but to hard for future users. I need a better solution - InfoPath Dev
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A working cascading pulldown but to hard for future users. I need a better solution

Last post 09-14-2008 02:35 AM by Marcel 2586. 2 replies.
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  • 09-10-2008 08:47 AM

    A working cascading pulldown but to hard for future users. I need a better solution

    Reply Contact

    I have made a working form with infopath 2003.

    It is a self audit form.
    I have made a xml datbase looking like this;

    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
    <Departments>
                <Department Afdeling="Plasma Welding 1">
                           <Name Achternaam="a name here">
                            <EmployeeNumber Persnr="klm12345">
                            <Title Titel="a title here">
    </Title>
    </EmployeeNumber>
    </Name>
    </Department>
                <Department Afdeling="Plasma Welding 2">
                            <Name Achternaam="a name here">
                            <EmployeeNumber Persnr="klm12345">
                            <Title Titel="a title here
    </Title>
    </EmployeeNumber>
    </Name>
    </Department>

    And so on (1500 employees and 12 departments. I work for the Royal Dutch Airlines, engineering and maintenance.)

    My form works cascading with this xml file.
    department dropdown
    employee name dropdown
    employee number textbox
    employee title textbox
    It filters really nice. But my problem is that in the near future department managers need to edit the xml file.And i see a lot of problems with it. Let’s say that a department gets a new employee, it has to be filled into the xml.

    And there it go's wrong. The risc that the structure will be damaged.
    I have tried to do it with access, and then save it to xml, but than my xml structure is gone.
    So how can I do this with an access database? And how do I build this with access.
    I need a little push in the right direction. We do not have a SharePoint and the sql database is strictly for SAP.

     

    Thanks in advance.

  • 09-13-2008 04:55 PM In reply to

    Re: A working cascading pulldown but to hard for future users. I need a better solution

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    Reply Contact

    Hi and welcome to the forum.

    I would recommend SQL Express but Access will work.

    Create a table that has an ID field, Department, Title, Number, Name.

    Add some sample data, you can also import a spreadsheet if you have it.

    Then create a new InfoPath form of a data base type and use the table as the source.

    Then you can query and edit this list with the support form.

    Then on your current form add a secondary connection to the table and use it for your drop downs.

     

    This is very common where you create secondary forms for users to maintain their own data. Its a nice solution.

    Clay Fox / Microsoft InfoPath MVP

  • 09-14-2008 02:35 AM In reply to

    Re: A working cascading pulldown but to hard for future users. I need a better solution

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    Reply Contact

    Thank you very much, It works great.
    It is much easier for end users to use access than changing XML in notepad.
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