A little known InfoPath thick client trick - no temporary XML files
I discovered the below scenario recently. In asking around I not many others knew of this so I thought I’d pass it along.
Within an InfoPath Client Event wizard I noticed that if I select “Advanced” on the InfoPath client event welcome window on the 3rd dialog in the Advanced Wizard I see:
Notice the “Save to:” drop down. By default it ALWAYS shows SharePoint doc lib. With this selected (which again is default and thus enabled when not in Advanced mode), this client event generates an XML file to the SharePoint lib at the time the client event is planned within the proc inst, just like we’ve always known.
However, if I change the drop down to “Do not save form”:
…then compile and run I see a completely different behavior.
When this client event is hit, no XML file is created. When you open the worklist item it actually goes against a K2 webservice and streams down the XML at that time (notice the IE window below that I get after clicking the worklist item, it is NOT coming from MOSS).
Doing things this way allows me to:
- Take as long as I want to close the Infopath form.
This avoids any potential locking issues on the temp file and the resulting error intermittently encountered where K2 can’t delete the temp file due to the lock.
- Put an ‘Update’ Action in the form and have the XML doc saved back to K2.
If I open form, select update then submit... then reopen from worklist, it re-streams down and I see the values I had just updated.
Additionally, I think this is a pretty scalable and secure approach to using InfoPath forms since the forms wouldn’t physically exist within SharePoint, thus removing the overhead on SharePoint as well as keeping it out of the line of sight from anyone who may have access to that Form lib, but may not have the task assigned to him/her.
Please note, this appears to only be an option for InfoPath thick-client forms. When I select browser-based forms within the IP process wizard, this option in the client event wizard is disabled (thus requiring the creation of an XML file at the time the client event is planned).