© 2012 PLANET TECHNOLOGIES, INC. Codeless InfoPath Essentials April Wolfe JUNE 21, 2012

Agenda 1.InfoPath intro – the basics 2.Design tips 3.UX tips 4.XPath tricks 5.Working with repeating data 6.Scalability 7.Long-term form management

© 2012 PLANET TECHNOLOGIES, INC. InfoPath Intro – The Basics Views Schema Field Controls Rules Data Connections Promoted Fields

© 2012 PLANET TECHNOLOGIES, INC. Design Tips  Mockups Achieve stakeholder buy-in on overall structure and branding of the form before development begins  Tab navigation Decide how end users will navigate  Back/Next button consistency Decide on back/next buttons early on in the project to avoid re-work later

© 2012 PLANET TECHNOLOGIES, INC. UX tips  Color changing fields Add color shading to required fields, then add a rule: ‘If field is not blank, update formatting to white shading’  Contextual help Add help icons that change a flag field to yes/no that can in turn be used to show/hide help text inside calculated value controls—formula for text: string(“text”)  Friendly validation Because conditional validation cannot be done, consider doing your own validation with messages inside calculated value controls that show/hide based on form criteria, and also disable buttons if required fields have not been filled in

© 2012 PLANET TECHNOLOGIES, INC. XPath tricks  This: or Becomes: (303) concat("(", substring(translate(., "()-. ", ""), 1, 3), ") ", substring(translate(., "()-. ", ""), 4, 3), "-", substring(translate(., "()-. ", ""), 7, 4))  This: Becomes: 06/08/2012 concat(substring(my:Field, 6, 2), "/", substring(my:Field, 9, 2), "/", substring(my:Field, 1, 4))  This: 6/8/ :42:45 Becomes: 6/8/2010 substring-before(my:Field, " ")

© 2012 PLANET TECHNOLOGIES, INC. Working With Repeating Data  Updating existing rows Copy unique identifier for the row and associated data into a flat set of fields, then promote those fields. Add a workflow that updates the list item in the source list where the unique identifier matches  Submitting new rows Promote the fields in the repeating data section using the “Last” setting, then add a workflow that adds those values as a new row in a SharePoint list

© 2012 PLANET TECHNOLOGIES, INC. Scalability  Saving data to multiple lists Use workflows to move promoted field values to other lists  Submitting to multiple libraries You may add multiple submit data connections, and use them on different submit buttons throughout the form  Pre-filter incoming data using XML data connections tied to views &View=GUID&XMLDATA=TRUE&NOREDIRECT=TRUE

© 2012 PLANET TECHNOLOGIES, INC. Long-Term Form Management  UDCs for Dev  Staging  Production Create a data connection library (enterprise only), then convert data connections to UDCs. Copy to other environments, then edit in notepad to change site URLs. Then, form can be published in any environment without having to update the connections.

© 2012 PLANET TECHNOLOGIES, INC. Long-Term Form Management  Re-publishing a form template over active forms Jo-Anne Alfafara Jo-Anne Alfafara Side-by Side versioning with Content Types

© 2012 PLANET TECHNOLOGIES, INC. Questions? More resources: alecpojidaev.wordpress.com claytoncobb.wordpress.com