On version upgrade... Custom Event...

[Shawn]

I have a question that I feel the "Custom Event" option on the "On version
upgrade" advanced tab may help solve but am not sure how to implement. The
scenario and desired result is presented below.

(1) User A (corporate user) opens and completes an IT Incident (InfoPath)
form from within a SharePoint document library to which that form is
published as version 1.0.0.0.

(2) User B (IT Developer) opens that same form, determines and corrects the
issue reported by User A and then documents the solution and provides his/her
Digital Signature for compliance purposes.

(3) User C (IT Manager) opens that same form and reviews the solution and
provides his/her Digital Signature for compliance purposes.

Two weeks later...

(4) A new field is now needed on the IT Incident form to capture additional
information. The form is changed and a new version 1.0.0.1 is now
re-published to the same same SharePoint document library with the "Upgrade
form automatically" option selected within the advanced tab.

One month later...

(5) User X, an auditor, is now in to review a sample of IT Incidents for
compliance purposes. They happen to select the Incident that User A created
six weeks prior to review that policy was followed and appropriate signatures
were obtained.

Now the problem... Upon opening the form they receive a message stating
that "This form is digitally signed, but was created with an older version of
the form template. This form will be upgraded to work with the new template,
but this may remove its signatures. Do you want to view the signatures
before upgrading?" Once the form is opened the sections that contained the
Signature information now display the message that "There is a problem with
this signature" in Bold Red letters which unfortunately is a big "Red" flag
to our auditors. With version history for the form library turned on we can
view the version that did have valid signatures but we have no way to print
that version for our auditors.

Now, the question... Is there anyway possible to force InfoPath/SharePoint
to open the form above (version 1.0.0.0) with the template in which it was
created (version 1.0.0.0) and therefore not have the signatures invalidated?
It is o.k. if the form does not contain the new field that was added in
version 1.0.0.1 because when the signatures were obtained this field did not
exist.

I know that one solution would be to publish to a new/different SharePoint
document library but want to avoid this since we have many useful "views"
within this libray that help us track incidents and would not like to
re-create these everytime we need to change the form. I was hoping that the
"Use custom event" option on the Advanced tab may offer a solution to this
problem.

Thanks

 

[renee rieser]

Hi Shawn,

If I understand your description correctly.....You might consider
having the Developer and Manager sign sections of the Infopath form
that don't include parts that will be modified later (and use
conditional formatting to make those sections ReadOnly once they are
signed). The additional information could be added (two weeks later)
using pre-existing fields in a (optional?) section outside the ones
that were digitally signed.

Or maybe I'm missing something, because I don't understand why the
forms need to be republished to Sharepoint....why wouldn't the
modified information just be saved...after all, its the information
that's changing, not the form itself....so User X should be
downloading the same form template as the item's originator.

Regards,
Renee

 

[Madhuri]

Hi Shawn

Here is the solution to your problem. Check out this.

http://infopathdev.com/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=1577

I hope this will help you.

 

[Shawn]

Renee,

Thank you for the feedback. Actually, I believe that the form would need to
be re-published to SharePoint so that all subsequent Incidents can contain
the new piece of data that we need to collect. Currently we have 300+
incidents saved within that form library and we now have a requirement to add
an additional element such as an additional contact phone number. I really
don't care if the existing 300+ forms have this information since it just now
became a requirement. I only care that every incident going forward has the
information. The only way that I know of to gather that information on a go
forward basis is to add the element to the schema and a control to the form
and then re-publish. In doing this with the "Automatically Upgrade existing
forms" option selected it gives me the ability to add it to the original 300+
forms but also invalidates any signatures that have been obtained. I
actually want the reverse of that in that I want the signatures to remain
valid and don't care to have the ability to add the new information to the
older versions.

I am in the process of testing what the next poster suggested in setting the
upgrade option to "Do nothing". So far I have not run into issues and the
new field that I add does show up when you open the old versions of the form
but they are in a read-only mode which is fine since that information was not
required previously.

Thanks again,
Shawn