InfoPath Dev

After a ton of research, and playing with infopath, I finally was able to populate some fields in an infopath form that is in a workflow using the ItemMetadata.xml file.

 Basically I have a list item, when you create it, a  task is made.  When you edit the task, my infopath form shows, and I can populate it with the task.  How can I populate the infopath form with data from the orig list instead of just the task?  Can I just use the xml file, or do I have to do some infopath code behind?

I suppose I could add columns to the task, but that seems like a hack.

Hello Welcome to the Forums,

You have to take one secondary receive connection as 'XML Document' with original list of values.

Thanks, but is this really a good solution?

If someone wanted different people to update the same infopath form, should they all be editing the same form?  If I create a task and import the data, I will have to write the data back to the original list.  If someone changes the original list, my task will not reflect the same data.  Basically the task and the list will each have a snapshot of the data.  This means I will have to worry about having two copies in different places.  Is it possible to somehow combine the infopath instance and workflow together?  Is there another option that I am not even considering?

 The reason I am asking is because I know that infopath can have different views depending on the step in the workflow.  I would think that means the infopath can be passed around vs. being copied.

Please let me know the proper approach to take.  (I am starting to think that SharePoint isn't the right solution for anything, but would love to be proved wrong.)

Hello,

If we use secondary data connection of xml document we can't do much if user modifies the xml document after submitting the form. If user try to create new form then new changes of xml document data is reflects in that form. But if user modified the values after submitting the form we have to open the form and try to deselect it or refresh those values then we will get updated values form xml document.

Here we can't do much if user deletes some nodes from xml document.

Hint: If you have any unique key for every value then if user modifies the value then we can get the modified value using unique key value. This will not work out for deleting of existing nodes from xml document.

Thanks, so what would someone typically do when they have a form that two people are supposed to edit?

 I find it hard to believe that if I make an expense form the supervisor can only approve or reject a task.  What happens if they want to make a simple edit?  What happens if they want to add some other data?