Publishing InfoPath to SharePoint

[Steve LaPointe]

I am working on updating the InfoPath forms that we use to our new SharePoint
2.0 system and I have two questions.

1) We updated to SharePoint 2.0 and moved the InfoPath forms to this new
site. I do not have access to the original InfoPath templates and I cannot
figure out how to edit these forms without using the template as it is gone.

2) Is it possible to save an InfoPath template in SharePoint versus saving
it on a S Drive?

 

[Ben Walters]

Hey Steve,
I'll attempt to answer your questions but before doing that I'm going to
make some assumptions
1: I'm assuming your working with an InfoPath 2003 template?
2: I assume you've upgraded your environment to Windows SharePoint Services
2.0?

If either of these assumptions are incorrect then please let me know and I
will respond as needed.
now on to my answers

1: An InfoPath form has 2 main parts
a) the template or .xsn file
b) the data or .xml file
when a form template is filled out and saved a .xml file is generated, this
file contains a "Processing Instruction" that points the location of the
original template ".xsn" file the xsn is used to render the .xml data on
screen.
At the moment it sound as though although the data files ".xml" have been
moved the original template ".xsn" wasn't I would suggest republishing the
original template to the site. This will allow any new form submissions to
continue to work. For the existing .xml files you have you may need to
update these manually to point to the new template location.

2: You can "Publish" a form to both SharePoint or a network drive within the
organization, where the final .xml file is stored is irrelevant as it will
attempt to contact the publish location to find the template for rendering
the form.

I hope this helps

Cheers
Ben Walters

 

[Steve LaPointe]

Thanks for the info.

We are using SharePoint 2.0 and InfoPath 2007.

The one problem that I am running into is I have 4-5 forms that I need to
update but I cannot locate the .xsn file. Is there anyway I can publish a
..xml file to a .xsn file?

 

[Ben Walters]

Hey Steve,
Unfortunately not the XML file contains only the data entered, the template
contains all the information on controls, layout, validation etc...

The only suggestion I could make is to design a new form template based on
your existing xml file structure, you could then update each of the existing
XML files to point to this new template to render the data.

Designing the template should be relatively easy, start InfoPath 2007,
select to design a new form template, then select the option to base this
template on an existing XML or Schema file.
when prompted point to one of the xml files and use that as the basis for
the data structure.

As for the version of SharePoint you are using I'm a little confused and
it's probably more a mix of words than anything else.
The versions of SharePoint and WSS that support InfoPath are as follows

Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) 2.0
SharePoint Portal Server 2003 (SPS) Installed on top of WSS 2.0

Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) 3.0
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Installed on top of WSS 3.0


Hope this helps

Cheers
Ben Walters