Newbie - how to set up more complicated functionality?

[Dave]

Hi;
I'm evaluating InfoPath as a replacement for a ton of forms we currently
have in Outlook. Some of the functionality we need for various forms are:

1. When submitted, the completed form is emailed to someone for
review/manual action. Is this possible within InfoPath itself or does the
forms "submit" action have to call a script or web service to do this work
for it? If so, do we have to design these ourselves from scratch?

2. Access to our Outlook address book from within the form so users can add
addressees (for example, adding their supervisor to a vacation request form
in addition to the "vacation person" who gets the form by default).

3. The ability to "daisychain" emailing of the form when multiple approvals
are required. As an example, person A would submit a form requesting
something and it would go to person B. Person B would approve and the form
would move on to Person C. Person C would approve and the form would go to
whoever processes the request, or C would deny, add a comment, and the form
would return to Person A with the appovals/denials/comments.

Can InfoPath do these things, and just as important, is it relatively easy
to set up?

Also, InfoPath's Help only states that an XML file is created when someone
fills out a form. What happens when, 10 minutes later, someone else fills
out the form? Is the new info appended to the XML or does it overwrite?
Also, I assume the XML file is placed where the form resides, say in a shared
network directory? How are these files managed? Do they simply pile up, do
they get purged somehow?

Thanks for any advice, )

Dave

 

[Jose Emilio Leon]

Hi Dave,

Out of the box InfoPath does not provides the workflow functionality that
you need (approval of different persons).

What other people do is add a workflow product to the equation and model the
processes in it. We have product for this type of situations called Procx
that integrates very well with InfoPath. You can get more information and
see a movie here: http://www.skyxoft.com/procx

Any questions feel free to contact me.

Jose Leon
The first workflow made for business users
http://www.skyxoft.com/procx

 

[Adam Harding]

Hi

1. Yes from scratch
2. link it to Active directory search in this forum and you can do that
3. I have setup similar 4 or 5 times that works a dream.

Difficulty without advice and not knowing infopath it took me 3 months.
With advice the improving knowledge on this forum and my email address
feasibly you could do it in under a week. I take about 2-3 days to setup a
workflow with a data connection.

Cheers (e-mail address removed)

 

[Adam Harding]

By from scratch i meant infopath natively can submit via email but you will
have to design forms from scratch

Sorry for any confusion

 

[Jen]

Dave,

Have you decided to go down this road? If so, how difficult was it for you
to convert the outlook forms to infopath?

Thanks,

Jen

 

[Sander Lesage]

:

2. Access to our Outlook address book from within the form so users can add
addressees (for example, adding their supervisor to a vacation request form
in addition to the "vacation person" who gets the form by default).

Hello,
This is exactly what I need to finish my workflow. I made a form in
infopath, users must be able to fill in a field with data from the company's
address book. How can I link this?

Regards

Sander Lesage

 

[Harlan]

Which version of Infopath did you do this in?

Hi

1. Yes from scratch
2. link it to Active directory search in this forum and you can do that
3. I have setup similar 4 or 5 times that works a dream.

Difficulty without advice and not knowing infopath it took me 3 months.
With advice the improving knowledge on this forum and my email address
feasibly you could do it in under a week. I take about 2-3 days to setup a
workflow with a data connection.

Cheers (e-mail address removed)

 

[Sabrish]

Hello Sander,

Were you able to link the address book with the infopath
form? If yes, please let me know how did you go about doing that.

Thank you in advance.

Cheers,
Sabrish

 

[Michelle]

Harlan,

I am trying to do the same steps as Dave. I created a form from sratch and
was able to insert the submit buttons. However, I need for the form to go to
a particular supervisor when the user clicks on the name of the department.

I somewhat have ot working, but when I try to select another department it
recognizes the first department in the list. How can I work around this?

Michelle