Normally, Forms Services will add an item to the document library when the
form template is first activated. If you upload a new version of a form
template via Central Administration and Forms Services performs an "upgrade",
the new version will be pushed out to all of the servers, but you'll still
see the old version number in the FormServerTemplates library.
If Forms Services is unable to activate the form template in your site
collection, it's possible that the service account used by Central
Administration needs to be granted Full Control permissions to the site
collection. You can do this quickly using the Central Administration option
"Application Management > Policy for Web application". Check the SharePoint
log files in C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server
extensions\12\LOGS to see if any exceptions are being logged when you try to
activate the form template to the site collection.
WARNING!!! Copying a form template directly into the FormServerTemplates
document library may corrupt the item in the document library, so you should
never do this. Forms Services creates a "ghosted" entry in this library when
a form template is activated, and it will get confused if there is already an
"unghosted" entry with the same filename. This can cause runtime errors
during activation/deactivation and possibly result in form templates that
spontaneously disappear or downgrade to earlier versions. We discovered this
the hard way.
If you are experiencing these problems, the best way to clean this up is to
start over by removing all of the form templates and republishing them. You
can accomplish this using the following steps:
1. Make sure your Admin service account has been granted Full Control
permissions to the web application as described above.
2. Deactivate all form templates that have been activated to the site
collection using Site Settings > Manage site collection features. Do this for
every site collection where the form templates have been activated. If the
entry is corrupted, you may get a runtime error when you do this; if so,
ignore the error and continue deactivating the rest of the form templates.
3. Delete any files that remain in the FormServerTemplates library, then
clear them from the Recycle Bin.
4. In Central Administration > Operations > Timer job definitions, delete
any failed jobs for form deployment or retraction
5. In Central Administration > Application Management > Manage form
templates, remove all of the form templates.
6. In Central Administration > Operations > Solution management, remove all
of the solutions starting with "form-".
7. Upload one of your form templates and activate it to your site
collection. Make sure it appears in the FormServerTemplates document library
after the activation step is complete.
8. Finally, upload and activate each remaining form template, one at a time.
Make sure each template is successfully deployed to the FormServerTemplates
library.
If any exceptions occur, check the SharePoint log files for details.
To avoid problems in the future, do not directly publish form templates to
the FormServerTemplates library, as this library is reserved for use by Forms
Services. You may need to create another document library where you can
directly publish form templates that don't have to be uploaded by the
administrator.
