Problems Verifying Form with Forms Server

[Rich K]

I have a complex InfoPath Form with 14 different views that was originally
developed for InfoPath 2003. Recently, I saved off a copy to make it
compatible to run on Forms Server.

After correcting the identified errors in the Design Checker (with the last
being the removal of user roles), I begin receiving the error "InfoPath
either cannot connect to the data source or the service has timed out." from
the Design Checker. If I remove all the views except one, the error goes away
and I can publish to forms server. If I add a new blank view, the same error
reappears. Does anyone have any thoughts on the cause and/or how to correct?

 

[Iakov]

Rich,

I'm sorry I can't answer your question. I am new to InfoPath and
considering Forms Server. What's your experience with it? What's involved
with installation? Does it require a particular version of SharePoint to
run? Thank you.

 

[Rich K]

I found a work around to my own issue. I am posting it here in case anyone
else runs into it. It seems with very large/complex forms InfoPath either
times out or looses it connection to Forms Server very easily. For simple
forms, it works fine verifying and publishing directly through InfoPath. For
large forms that you receive the Time Out error message when verifying or
publishing the browser enabled form directly to a Document Library or Content
Type.

If you have this situation, I would receommend trying the following:
- When publishing in InfoPath, use the option for "Administrator-approved
form template" option instead of using the other options to publish directly
to SharePoint.
- Then from the Application Management section in SharePoint Central
Administration, upload via the Upload Form Template page. (To verify for
errors, use the Verify button on this page.)

This seems to always work without any cryptic error messages. By doing
this, I found that my form still had one error remaining not reported in
InfoPath. After fixing and re-publishing using the above steps, the form
works through Form Server.

It looks like this Forms Server feature in InfoPath needs some more work.
(Also, it may take a while to either publish or verify the form in this
manner. I have very memory CPU starved SharePoint virtual server and it
takes more than 15-20 min to verify and/or publish this complex form.)

 

[Rich K]

Form Server comes with MOSS 2007 or can be purchase separately to be used on
WSS 3.0 site. Go to office.microsoft.com under Products section to read more
about it.

If you are looking for the most full featured experience using InfoPath
forms and there is no issue in deploying the InfoPath client to anyone using
the form, use InfoPath without Form Server. It is much easier, and there is
much more that you can do. When you use Form Server, there are currently many
limitations (i.e. no Roles, no Task Pane, no pop-up message boxes from Rules,
and many more) and it is much more of complex effort to develop and deploy
when you have a complex form as you can see with my issue. The main
advantage of Forms Server is that it gives you the ease of deploying a form
without the InfoPath client installed on the machine that needs to open and
run the form.

Good luck.