Code Eater (Wael A. Kabli) : InfoPath

Too many postbacks in your InfoPath form?

Wael A. Kabli — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 23:55:46 GMT

if your form is suffering from too many postbacks and you want to know why or how to eliminate them,,,

here is a link that will help in this,,

http://blogs.msdn.com/infopath/archive/2008/06/19/designing-browser-enabled-forms-for-performance-in-infopath-forms-services-part-2.aspx

Business Process Automation, a story to tell

Wael A. Kabli — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 09:00:08 GMT

eFroms solution Components

The eForms solution is a result of collaborating the following components all together:

· Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Infrastructure.

· Form Site (Portal): a SharePoint Site that hosts the whole solution and enabling this kind of integration.

· Email: a mail services that will send notifications within the workflows.

· Forms Template: This is the from that contains the target process. This is were you usually take a paper form or a manual process analyze, break-down and make an e-form out of it. In this solution we use Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007 in implement eForms or you can use APS.NET forms.

· Workflow: a component that is installed in the SharePoint that will contain the actual business process.

· Workflow Tasks: This is a SharePoint list that contains the tasks created by the workflow. A Task simply replaces a stage of a human task in the process (like an approval, signatures or a configuration).

· Security: to provide non-repudiation, data integrity and origin.

· Workflow History: This is a SharePoint list that stores the workflow logs. This includes cancellations, rejections, approvals and other workflow state transitions.

· Web Services: are set of services that will aid the solution in performing certain tasks such as getting user profiles from Active Directory and get the workflow logs to show a workflow history and maybe getting integrated with other services like Primavera for example.

· Other Lists: some forms depend on few SharePoint List to do some lookups on them.

· Archive: This is where the submitted form get stored which is basically a document or form library.

The flow of a workflow!

The story begins when a user find a link on the portal saying ( click here to fill XYZ form ). The link is actually pointing to the form template (which has the extension xsn) if you are using InfoPath. When he clicks on it, he will be redirected to the InfoPath Forms Server 2007 that is in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server2007 and it will render the form template (xsn) to be displayed on the web browser.

As soon as the form opens, the form had few rules inside it that will communicate with a web service to get the current user credentials from AD.

The user now will fill the form and submit which will actually will save this form in (XML) format in a document library or a form library for archiving.

As soon as this form is submitted, a workflow will run to follow the business process creating tasks to the people who are suppose to process that form (like a manager task to approve that form) and sending emails to the corresponding people to perform their tasks. the workflow will leave its foot prints on the history, so any time the user (or any body) can open the history and look what happened to the process, which task has been completed and what tasks are still pending.

The security model in SharePoint is taking care of who should see what and who can do something. Once the workflow is finished, it will indicate its state such as (Approved or Rejected by Manager or just completed).

Attachments in InfoPath Form that is a Task Workflow

Wael A. Kabli — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 11:49:56 GMT

Woho, here is a nice one :), one of the small things that gets you sometimes bang your head for long long time till you find out what's the problem...

Symptoms:

So if you are having a workflow that uses InfoPath forms for tasks and you have attachment controls in it, then you probably faced this error: "The Selected file was not found"!!

Solution or Workaround:

Locate the ASPX page that your workflow form opens up in the _layouts directory on your server.

e.g., %Program Files%Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS\
most probably you want WrkTaskIP.aspx --> this page is the one that loads your InfoPath form to be as a task form.

in this aspx page, locate the reference to MasterPageFile. This will look something like

MasterPageFile="~/_layouts/application.master"

Go to the masterPage file you found

In this case go to the application.master in the folder "%Program Files%Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS\"

Look for the Form Tag

<form runat="server" onsubmit="return _spFormOnSubmitWrapper();">

Add the attribute enctype="multipart/form-data" to this tag and save.

<form runat="server" onsubmit="return _spFormOnSubmitWrapper();" enctype="multipart/form-data">

iisreset and try your workflow with file attachment again.

Few things to Note:

as you can see, this is a product issue and hopefully it might be fixed in the SP1. But don't get frustrated, that's why we are blogging so you can find such information.

Have fun,,, :)

[InfoPath] limiting a repeating field and setting Maximum Occurrence

Wael A. Kabli — Sun, 29 Apr 2007 16:22:00 GMT

Problem:

Sometimes in InfoPath 2007 you need a way to limit a repeating field and putting for it Max limit…

This is a usual scenario, for example you are designing a form that will allow the user to add family members,,,

Now there is nothing limiting the user from keeping adding members!!

So how can we do it?

(Optional Concepts) Before we start:

I want to make sure before we start, that the reader understand what is a repeating field…

When you insert a filed in your schema in InfoPath, you can double click on the field and choose properties…

Here go and make sure that the repeating checkbox is selected,, what does this mean?

It means that this field is repeatable inside the schema, and if you actually know about writing XML schemas which are called XSD files, you will find something like this:

<xsd:element ref="my:FamilyMember" minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="unbound"/>

This is an element with two attributes that specify how many time should this element appear in the list,

How can you limit maximum number of a repeating section?

This is actually very easy what you need to do is:

After building the form, save the template,,
Rename and open the template as a cab file.. (for more information on this read this article: http://blogs.msdn.com/wael/archive/2007/04/29/infopath-how-to-modify-the-xsn-file-and-the-inside-xml.aspx)
Now, go to the a file called myschema.xsd and edit it in notepad…
You will find something similar to this:

<xsd:element ref="my:RepeatingFieldName" minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="unbound"/>
Change the value of maxOccurs to any number you want in which you want to limit the user to for example here I want the user not to add more that 3 family members
After changing your xml should be something like this:

<xsd:element ref="my:RepeatingFieldName" minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="3"/>
Save your XSD file and close it,,,
Re-package your XSN,,,,
Go and double click on your XSN file,,,
Test it and try to add more that 3 family members, you will get something like this:

Note: if you don't know how to package and repackage you XSN you need to follow the link to get the complete understanding of the process: http://blogs.msdn.com/wael/archive/2007/04/29/infopath-how-to-modify-the-xsn-file-and-the-inside-xml.aspx

Conclusion:

By this you know now how to set and limit the user to fill a repeating field with a limited number of repetitions,,,

[InfoPath] How to modify the XSN file and the inside xml..

Wael A. Kabli — Sun, 29 Apr 2007 15:35:00 GMT

Introduction:

InfoPath is an XML based document that is saved in XSN format,,,,

The XSN is actually noting but a .Cab file (cabinet). Try renaming any XSN file to .Cab and click on it,,

You will find all files that actually consist an InfoPath file,,,

Problem:

Sometimes you need to modify the content of one of the files such as the schema file (.xsd)..

Process:

The process goes as follows:

Unpacking à Modifying à repacking

This article will guide you through all three steps

Unpacking:

As we said before an XSN is nothing but a bunch of xml documents zipped in a cabinet…

So unpacking it is fairly simple,, you just need to:

Rename your XSN file to .Cab
Click on the cab file
Select all files and right click on the selection…
Select "Extract Files".
Then choose a suitable place to extract the files in it,,,

Modifying:

Now what you need to do is to go the extracted folder and choose whatever file you want to modify in the XSN. Usually its notepad that you will use to modify these files..

After you finish save your work and close all editing applications.

Repacking:

We need to zip al these extracted files into a cab or xsn file again so we can open our InfoPath file again,,,

Now this is where you need to use a tool called Make-Cab which can be found in C:\Windows\System32\makecab.exe…

Note:

Using this tool is something I am to going to visit here in this article; I will just explain the part where repacking the files to XSN again,,,

But for more information in details on MakeCab.exe visit this link: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310618/ where you can fid the SDK and download it,,,,

Let's get back to business. Till now you have all the extracted files in a folder, to create your XSN now follow the instructions:

Create a txt file called directives.txt (or any suitable you like).
Copy this code in the file:

;************************************************************

; MSDN Sample Source Code MakeCAB Directive file example

;************************************************************

.OPTION EXPLICIT

;*****************************************************************

; change the value of the caninet name for example myInfoPath.xsn

;******************************************************************

.Set CabinetNameTemplate=AfterRePackaging.XSN

;*************************************************************************************************************

; change the value of the Disk Directory Template value to the directory you want to store the xsn file into,,

;*************************************************************************************************************

.set DiskDirectoryTemplate="D:\Workarea\InfoPath Work"

.Set Cabinet=on

.Set Compress=on

;*******************************************************

; Just List All the files to be added in the xsn file

;*******************************************************

"D:\Workarea\InfoPath Work\Extracted Files\manifest.xsf"

"D:\Workarea\InfoPath Work\Extracted Files\myschema.xsd"

"D:\Workarea\InfoPath Work\Extracted Files\sampledata.xml"

"D:\Workarea\InfoPath Work\Extracted Files\template.xml"

"D:\Workarea\InfoPath Work\Extracted Files\upgrade.xsl"

"D:\Workarea\InfoPath Work\Extracted Files\view1.xsl"

;*********************

; End of the File

;*********************
Save your file. And open the command prompt (CMD).
Now, you need to type the following command:

MakeCab /f directives.txt

*** be sure that you are in the same directory or give the full path name ***
Congratulations now you have your XSN file go ahead and test it,,,

Conclusion and summary:

You have learned in this article how to open an XSN file, modify it and re-package it again into XSN file,,

Once you do this once, the other times will be piece of cake,,

And of course questions are always welcomed J…

Cheers…

[InfoPath] How to filter data on IP web enabled

Wael A. Kabli — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 15:44:00 GMT

One of the famous pitfalls in InfoPath 2007 is thinking that it doesn't have the ability to filter while on web or incase of having web-enabled forms. The few coming line will explain this issue and why many fall into this confusion…

Scenario: if you enabled web compatibility in IP 2007 and try to do a lookup on a field from a data source, sometimes you need to filter the information you get from external data source…

Let's say you have the following data:

Desktop Problems
- Hardware
- Software
Network Problems
- network cables
- IP telephone

Filter: you want to filter the data you bind to your controls, let's say if you have two fields, you want to show in the first field Desktop Problems, the second field should show only hardware and software.

Problem: if you try and filter on a field and the web compatibilities, you will get the following message: "Filtering is not supported in browser –enabled form templates."

Workaround:

Go to control you consider as primary field that it will be the filter key…in this case "MainDataSource.Category"
Right click, properties and Add a rule on it ..
The rule should have the following:
- Action: set a field's value
- Field: set the destination field where you want to filter your data. In this case "MainDataSource.SubCategories"
- Value: here you need to insert a field from the external data source such that the key field in your main data source is equal to the key field in the external data source. To do that do the following:
  - Here is the tricky part.
  - Click on the button (fx)…
  - Click on insert a field or a group
  - Choose the destination filed you want from the external data source. In this case "ExternalDataSource.SubCategories".
  - Click on the "Filter Data".
  - Click on Add
  - You have the format: <<Value>> <<Comparison>> <<Value>>
  - Choose: ExternalDataSource.KeyValue IsEqualTo MainDataSource.KeyValue
  - In this case: ExternalDataSource.Category IsEqualTo MainDataSource.Category
  - The click on "OK" Gazillion times. J

Go and Test…

Start Learning Workflows!!

Wael A. Kabli — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 16:32:00 GMT

Wow such an exciting topic to learn!! its nice and fun yet its a bit difficult to grasp easily,,,

Workflow Concepts:

Developer Introduction to Workflows for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and SharePoint Server 2007

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms406057.aspx

Hands On Practise:

This is a very good course that our colleage of us Eilene Hao, he works as a Program Manager for SharePoint Workflows....

hear is an outline:

"So You Want to Develop Custom Workflows in Visual Studio..." - The Blog Series

Developing Workflows in VS: Part 1 - Workflow Objects and A Crash Course on Mechanics

Developing Workflows in VS: Part 2 - Planning Your Workflow: Two Things to Keep in Mind

Developing Workflows in VS: Part 4 - Design and Bind Your Forms

Developing Workflows in VS: Part 5 - Code Your Workflow

Developing Workflows in VS: Part 6 - Deploy and Debug your workflow

Developing Workflows in VS: Part 7 - Summary and Final Thoughts

Cool webcast on connecting IP with AD

Wael A. Kabli — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 14:21:00 GMT

I would love to share with you all this nice webcast about connecting to AD and populate InfoPath 2007 forms.

Unfortunately, this is not enabled OOB… although it is a very usual scenario,,,,

http://xpstream.winisp.net/alextch/AD2InfoPath.wmv?MSWMExt=.asf