Tip: infopath comments and newline textbox

Tue, 26 Apr 2011 10:21:12 +0000

One method for persisting data in a SharePoint environment is the use of Infopath forms. Infopath stores data in your form in XML format. I have a form which has a “comments” box where people add new comments as they progressively update the form and a “consolidate comments” box which shows all previous comments*. However, Infopath forms don’t natively support appending new data to existing data - and new comments added may blow away any previous comments.

Visual Studio 2010 Workflow + Infopath 2010 forms - troubleshooting

Mon, 28 Mar 2011 21:58:33 +0000

Microsoft markets that Sharepoint Designer workflows are directly exportable to Visual Studio workflows. And in many ways, this is absolutely true. It’s trivial to create a .wsp from an SPD workflow and import it to VS. However, if you then inspect the workflow that has been created for you, a little concern would not be underestimated. If your SPD workflow was what you wanted, then you could be reasonably confident that its VS version would do the same job. But presumably your reason for importing to VS is because you need more control over the workflow in the longer term, in which case, you’re likely to be left underwhelmed by what the import process creates for you. Imagine creating a webpage in Microsoft Word and you’ll get the drift.

So when faced with a similar proposition, recreating the workflow in Visual Studio from scratch immediately became apparent as the best solution. After all, the intent and purpose of the workflow was clear; recreating it in VS ought to have been a doddle. However, to complicate matters, the SPD workflow used Infopath edit forms. This turned out to be easy in SPD, but non-trivial in Visual Studio. Getting an Infopath form to register with a VS workflow project requires various items, that VS may not do automatically for you.

Infopath on Matt Thornton

Tip: infopath comments and newline textbox

Visual Studio 2010 Workflow + Infopath 2010 forms - troubleshooting