Using offline forms in IP2010 and SP2007

Question

I am using InfoPath 2010 and SharePoint 2007. I have created a form that has a custom button to submit the form to the library in SP using a data connection.

My issue is that some of the people that need to fill the form out are sub-contractors that do not have access to our SP site. I would like for them to be able to fill out the form offline and then email it to our document control person, who would then run the Submit function. The reason I want to use the Submit feature is that it creates a filename base on the contract number and date, and I need to have it locked to that format.

When I send the form to the offline users they get an error stating that they do not have access to the data connection and the form will not open. 

Any ideas would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Al

Answer 1

Hi Al,

I am trying to involve someone familiar with this topic to further look at this issue. There might be some time delay. Appreciate your patience.

Thanks

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Daniel Yang

TechNet Community Support

Answer 2

Hi lokisince89,

I would like to first clarify some information then I can propose some options for you:

- Do your sub-contractors see the data connection error when they just open the form or when they try to submit the form? If it is when they open it, then it sounds like you have one or more "Receive" data connections to your SharePoint list that gets executed when the form opens. If this is the case, do you want to get rid of the error they see or is it satisfactory to just get past the error and have the form open?  If they are getting the error when they submit the form, then we need to discuss how you have your "submit" data connection setup.

I don't want to assume which is the case so once you clarify the above then I can suggest some routes for you to take.

Best regards,

Scott

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Scott Heim - Microsoft Office InfoPath and SharePoint Designer Online Community Support

Answer 3

I have not got to the point of sending the form to any of the subs yet, as part of my testing I sent it to users in the office who were not currently logged into the server.

The error they receive when trying to open the form is:

Warning: A server must be contacted to open this form and personal information may be sent back to the server if you choose to continue. You should only continue if you trust the server's location witch appears below.

(Address)

Do you wish to open the form?

When the user selects yes, they gets this:

the form can not be opened because it requires a domain permission level and it currently has restricted permission To fix this problem, open the form from the location it was published to:

(Address)

I then went into Security and Trust and changed the security level from Auto (Domain) to Restricted. This results in the user getting the same first message above, but instead of the second message the form opens and the user can fill out, save the data and email me the form.

When I receive the form and save it to my desktop I open the file and try to run the Submit function and receive an error that some rules were not applied. Under the details i get this message:

InfoPath cannot submit the form.
An error occurred while the form was being submitted.
InfoPath cannot submit to the following location: (Address)

The form template has insufficient security privileges.
Access is denied.

So it seems that there are mutually contradictory security rule here; one allows the user to open the form, but do not allow me to upload. The other prevents the form from being opened by a non-logged in user (it works fine for me when I test it logged in, including the Submit function).

To the best of my knowledge the form is not trying to pull any info from the server. All of the automation is built in as rules based formatting.

Since the subs have no access to teh server, my goal is to have them fill out the forms, save them and then email them to my Document Control people. DC would then just have to run the Submit function and the list would be populated.

I hope that answered your questions, and I really apreciate you looking at this for me.

Al

Answer 4

Hi Al,

Thank you for the additional information. Based on the behavior you are describing, have you actually "published" your InfoPath Form Template (the XSN file)?  To test this you will want to publish the XSN to, say, your SharePoint site for your internal users and let them access it from SharePoint (or some shared network location if you prefer.) For your sub-contractors, you will need to "publish" the XSN choosing the "Email" option. This will send those folks a copy of the XSN that they can open. Now keep in mind, if you have connections to your SharePoint data and they don't have access, they will still see the an error but the form will open.

Let me know if you need more details around this.

Scott 

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Scott Heim - Microsoft Office InfoPath and SharePoint Designer Online Community Support

Answer 5

Scott,

Thank you for the quick reply.

As far as I know the form is already published to SP. If I open the form in designer and go to publish the "Quick Publish" button shows the list address on the server, and if I go to the list I can create a new document from there.

I tried clicking on the Email button on the Publish list, and I get the following error:

The form template contains the following features that require publishing to a shared location: SharePoint library or list submit data connection

Thank you,

Al

Answer 6

Hi Al,

So what about this:

- Remove the submit data connections (temporarily) that cause the message to appear, make sure you add an "email" submit connection (for your external users), publish to e-mail for those users and then add back the normal submit connections? 

I know this is a little bit of work but should not be too bad. The other option would be to keep a separate copy of the XSN that you use just to publish for your external users. The only caveat here is you would need to implement changes in two XSN files.

The other option would be to open up your site slightly so your external users could hit, say, a custom page that simply contains a link to the form template. Now, you would need Forms Services (so the form opens in the browser) which means the Enterprise version of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007...not sure if this is an option. If it is, then your external users would interact with the form in the browser and they could either "submit" the form to email (you would need to have SMTP mail setup on your SharePoint server) or you could create a small web service that they submit to and the web service would create the form in the appropriate library.

Scott

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Scott Heim - Microsoft Office InfoPath and SharePoint Designer Online Community Support

Answer 7

Scott,

In the first case you mention above. Won't the external users need to have access to the SP server to email submit the form? We are specifically prohibited from giving the sub-contractors accounts on the system.  

Answer 8

Well - yes and no. I am not trying to be funny but here is my thought:

If you allow anonymous access to the site (or even a separate SP site) those folks could open the form without credentials and then submit to the custom web service. Your web service would then create the form in the appropriate library.

Scott

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Scott Heim - Microsoft Office InfoPath and SharePoint Designer Online Community Support