The Guide of a MOSSLover

Last night someone said that you could not use a SP Designer Workflow with Infopath.  I guess it’s one of those things that not everyone has worked with.  I take it for granted, because I have been using SPD workflows and Infopath.  For all of you who never actually have used Infopath.  You can publish an Infopath Form and elevate certain fields in the form to a SharePoint Form Library.  Before you want to add these columns to the library you want to add them to the Form Options Section (Tools Menu –> Form Options).  When in this menu select Property Promotion and you can add or remove any Infopath field.  You can even name the fields what you want, so that it looks a lot nicer in the form library.  Then what you want to do is add a workflow the same way you would normally add one in SPD.  Click on File –> Open Site and type in your site name.  Then click on File –> New –> Workflow.  You can attach the workflow to your form library once it is published.  The one gotcha you have to remember is an endless loop will occur if you have the workflow running when the form library is updated.  You want to add a Stop command for each If/Else statement or you will end up with endless looping that could possibly have some fun consequences.  Now I wouldn’t recommend using SPD for hardcore complicated workflows, but it is very nice for simple easy workflows tacked onto an Infopath Form Library or even a list that could use a simple workflow.  Don’t get me started on really complex Infopath Forms with crazy repeating fields and XPath.  I created a few for 2003 and it ended really scary.  Remember Repeating Fields do not mesh well with columns if you want each step broken into separate fields in your form library.  If you really wanted a pretty display you could create your own custom one with XSLT or a nice webpart.  It’s doable, but probably not easy if you want something on every single form library.  I am hoping this helped some people understand that you don’t need to do anything crazy with Infopath and that it’s all out of the box with SPD and Infopath.  I hope that you all have a good weekend.

posted @ Friday, June 05, 2009 10:06 AM | Filed Under [ MOSS ]