Basic Presentation of InfoPath 2007 and Common Aggravation

1. Tricks to ease the Infopath Drudgery
Stephan Onisick

2. Dirty Dog or Heroine: Gin Gin

3. Presenter
Stephan Onisick, MCSD,MCDBA,MCTS, CTT+
SharePoint Developer for Phacil
(Contractor for Missile Defense Agency)
InfoPath Developer for last 18 months
blog: www.infopathpainmanagement.com
email: sonisick@gmail.com
Projects include
Meeting Scheduling Application for Management
 Include Creating Outlook Meeting Requests
 Digital Signatures
 Visual Studio Workflow Backend
Announcement Approval System
 InfoPath Managed Code to manage view for SharePoint Groups
 Secondary Connections to handle Email to Recipients
 Extensive use of Data Form Web Parts to Manage Permissions and Views

4. Audience Experience with Infopath
 Notice any headaches, nausea when working on
certain InfoPath Forms?

5. Audience Experience with InfoPath
(more seriously—show of hands please)
 How many have developed forms in InfoPath?
 How many are using predominantly Client-Side InfoPath?
(Meaning from an InfoPath Office Application verses from a
browser on a SharePoint.)
 How many have worked with InfoPath in conjunction with
Workflows or Event Receivers?
 How many have worked with InfoPath Managed Code?
**Essentially InfoPath Managed Code is an InfoPath Form
associated with a Visual Studio Program Project.

6. Presentation Overview
1. What is InfoPath?
2. Why InfoPath Anyway?
3. InfoQuirks
4. Techniques to Ease the Pain

8. What is InfoPath?
 InfoPath is a Microsoft Product used to develop data-
entry forms based on XML. It encompasses both
Client and Server-Side technology to create and
process forms.
(kind of a forms processor and form-processing venue)
**InfoPath is a valuable component in integrated SharePoint Workflow systems.
**As InfoPath integrates more into SharePoint Lists in SharePoint 2010 I believe
mining XML data will become less important—more emphasis will be on
promoted variables.
**InfoPath is not a four-letter word—Ok sometimes it is.

10. Why InfoPath Anyway?
 Built into the core of SharePoint
 Examples
 Document Information Panels
 Workflow Association or Initiation Forms
 Even More Prevalent in SharePoint 2010
 List Screens can be customized by InfoPath
 Almost the Only Game in Town
 Possible Alternatives

11. Why InfoPath Anyway?
Document Image Panel:

12. Why InfoPath Anyway?
Workflow Association or Initiation Forms:

13. Why InfoPath Anyway?
SharePoint 2010 Provides the ability to customize :
Customize list forms with InfoPath 2010: Friday Cool
Content
**Brings up an interesting point: How many have had to
choose between a List and a Form Library for a given
project. In SharePoint 2010 you can use a simpler to
use List and have the ability to customize the entry,
edit and delete screens. (best of both worlds)

14. Why InfoPath Anyway?
Alternatives: iTechnology Forms Accelerator

15. Why InfoPath Anyway?
Alternatives: Open Source Free Form

16. Why InfoPath Anyway?
Alternatives: Possibly Telerik Controls for SharePoint

18. InfoQuirks
1. Controls with Dissimilar Common Properties.
2. Different Behavior in Preview Mode from Published Templates.
3. Functionality Buried within the Menu Structure
4. NTLM Authentication Problems with Web Services.
5. Difficulty Debugging Managed Code for Browser-Enabled forms.
6. Digital Signature Woes.
7. Tribble Multiplication Effect on Column Mappings in Form
Libraries.
8. Natively, Limited Control over Parts of the Environment.
9. Inability without Managed Code to return a Sorted and Filtered View
of SharePoint List.
10. Continually Changing DataSources to Move from Different
Environments or Servers.

19. InfoQuirks
1. Controls with Dissimilar Common Properties

20. InfoQuirks
1. Controls with Dissimilar Common Properties
Why don’t we just use a Read-Only View and not
worry about the quirks?
Gotcha-- if an attachment is involved--it will not be
readable.

21. InfoQuirks
2. Different Behavior in Preview Mode from Published
Templates.
Demo
Demo

22. InfoQuirks
3. Functionality hidden deep in the Menu Structure
Try to access the Rules. They are in many places
depending on control or functionality desired:
 “Open and Save” under Tools=>Form Options=>Open
and Save
 Individual Controls
 Rules
 Conditional Rules
 Far Right Side Panel for performing many task
 Access to programming in Different Places
**This is greatly enhanced in InfoPath 2010 with new ribbon
functionality

23. InfoQuirks
4. Problems with Web Services with NTLM
Authentication.
Double-Hop Issue:
An authentication issue where credentials that are
needed for access to resources on a third computer,
or third tier, cannot be used in the request for those
resources from the second tier.
In our environment, web-services were not a viable
option until the authentication method changed to
Kerberos.

24. InfoQuirks
5. Difficulty Debugging Managed Code for Browser-Enabled forms.
 Find harder to debug than other Visual Studio Projects like
Workflows or Event Receivers
 Had to use the physical debug statement as opposed to setting
a manual breakpoint in code:
System.Diagnostics.Debugger.Break() to actually get it to work.
How to: Debug Browser-Enabled Forms Deployed on InfoPath Form Services
**A limited amount of debugging can be done in Visual Studio in
Client-side Preview Mode.

25. InfoQuirks
6. Digital Signature Woes
 Do you really need Digital Signatures or would some
kind of E-Sign functionality work (like Qdabra
Electronic Signature).
 Do you really need a digest that can be tampered with
or are you just trying to reasonably verify the signer?
 InfoPath Active X Digital Signature Controls are
targeted to Power Users.
 Difficult to download in less Privileged Environments
(We actually had to repackage the controls so that they
could be pushed via SMS to our environment.)
 Dependent on Certificate Revocation Server to handle
Certificate Revocation List (we used Tumbleweed)

26. InfoQuirks
7. Tribble Multiplication Effect on Column Mapping
Mapping InfoPath Promoted Columns to Site Columns
Column mappings to form columns can be arbitrarily changed when
new InfoPath fields are inserted or deleted. This can even happen
when a field name or data type is changed within a previously
published form.
For example, a form field named 'EventDate' might be initially
mapped to the internal name 'EventDate' in a form library. This
column might be subsequently be remapped by InfoPath to
'EventDate1' on re-publication. This wreaks havoc when a workflow
or event receiver attached to the form is expecting specific column
names. A workflow might blow up with a mysterious error or enter a
section of code not dictated by your understanding of the logic.

27. InfoQuirks
8. Natively, Limited Control over part of the environment.
 Trying programmatically resizing your Screen
 Allowing given controls to stay in focus
 Controlling the functioning of the back button
 Try Exiting or Redirecting within Managed Code
** Through use of XMLFormView control more functionality
can be achieved—but it’s not easy coding communicating
with the Host.

28. InfoQuirks
8. Natively, Limited Control over part of the environment.
 Trying programmatically resizing your InfoPath Screen
 Allowing given controls to stay in focus
 Controlling the functioning of the browser back button
 Try Exiting or Redirecting within Managed Code
** Through use of XMLFormView control with or without a web
part more functionality can be achieved—but it’s not easy
coding communicating with the Host.

29. InfoQuirks
9. Inability without Managed Code to return a Sorted
and Filtered View of SharePoint List.
Natively, the list comes back the way it way originally
input. (No filtering)

30. InfoQuirks
10. Continually Changing DataSources to Move from
Different Environments or Servers.
 Changing SharePoint ServerNames and Form Library
Names
 Sometimes InfoPath would change column mappings when
DataSources changed—causing problems for workflows
and event receivers.

32. Techniques to Ease the Pain
1. Creating Conditional Display of Debugging in the
Form.
2. Saving the Form to Different Locations without
Changing the Data Source. (Managed Code)
3. Getting a Sorted List. (Managed Code)
4. Getting a Functional Reset Button. (Managed Code)
5. Utilizing A Batch Script to Upload Managed Forms.

33. Techniques to Ease the Pain
1. Creating Conditional Display of Debugging in the
Form.

34. Techniques to Ease the Pain
1. Creating Conditional Display of Debugging in the
Form.

35. Techniques to Ease the Pain
2. Saving the Form to Different Locations without
Changing the Data Source. (Managed Code)

36. Techniques to Ease the Pain
3. Getting a Sorted List. (Managed Code)

37. Techniques to Ease the Pain
4. Getting a Functional Reset Button. (Managed Code)

38. Techniques to Ease the Pain
5. Utilizing A Batch Script to Upload Managed Forms
prompt $D $T$_$P$G
set pathxsn="C:UsersstephanoDesktopInfoPain and BeyondTravelRequestDemoXSNTravelRequestv03.xsn"
set urlpath="http://saovaio-pc"
cd "C:Program FilesCommon FilesMicrosoft SharedWeb Server Extensions12bin"
@echo Removing Form Template...
stsadm -o deactivateformtemplate -url %urlpath% -filename %pathxsn%
stsadm -o execadmsvcjobs
stsadm -o removeformtemplate -filename %pathxsn%
stsadm -o execadmsvcjobs
@echo Adding back Form Template...
stsadm -o uploadformtemplate -filename %pathxsn%
stsadm -o execadmsvcjobs
stsadm -o activateformtemplate -url %urlpath% -filename %pathxsn%
stsadm -o execadmsvcjobs
@pause