Infopath and WWF

Infopath and WWF

• Brian Johnson MS

  You can also potentially host WWF within Infopath itself.
  While I haven't done it you should be able to host both the runtime and/or the designer within Infopath.
  
  So, for example you might host the designer in an Infopath task pane or you might use WWF to manage the showing/hiding of various controls on your Infopath form.
  
  Be sure to install SP1 to get managed code support in Infopath and grab http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx FamilyId=7E9EBC57-E115-4CAC-9986-A712E22879BB&displaylang=en
  
  If you want I can probably dig out some managed task pane sample code for you too...
  
  
  

• TheDOG

  The link to the InfoPath 2003 Toolkit that you posted only works on Visual Studio 2003. I need it to be compatible with Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2. I guess there isn't anything available yet that I can use.
  

• error maker

  Here is the InfoPath 2003 Toolkit for Visual Studio. 
  
  Windows Workflow Foundation Beta 1 is only compatible with Visual Studio 2005 beta 2.  See this post for more details. 
  
  
  James Conard
  Architect Evangelist - Windows Workflow Foundation
  http://www.WindowsWorkflow.net
  http://blogs.msdn.com/jamescon

   

  
  
  

• Vinit Tyagi

  You might be able to use InfoPath forms with managed code and a state machine workflow.   The Infopath form code could start and access the state machine workflow instance to raise events and check the state of the state machine.
  
  Unfortunately, we don't have any examples of using InfoPath with Windows Workflow Foundation yet for this scenario.  If you take a look at the Ordering state machine example (screencast or download) you could imagine this WinForm being replaced with an InfoPath form or any other type of UI. 
  
  James Conard
  Architect Evangelist - Windows Workflow Foundation
  http://www.WindowsWorkflow.net
  http://blogs.msdn.com/jamescon

   

  
  
  

• Paul D McMahon

  Hi JMei
  
  well Infopath forms have coresponding schema that you can utilize for information fetching this is quite powerfull as you got compelte definition of field you want to capture . If you want to manage the state of infopath forms and want to show.hide fields you might want to use sqlserver for storing the fields value and based on that values you can perform the certain steps.
  
  

• Aaron Schurg

  Razi, thanks for the info, however I will need to store the filled out forms inside xml files so that they can be stored on a Sharepoint server.
  
  James and Chris, thanks. I am a bit fuzzy on how infopath would communicate with the workflow. Would the workflow be coded directly into the infopath form I will try to do some tests to see if this is possible.
  
  Chris, could you please send me the managed task pane code Thanks.

  
  

• Laquesis

  I downloaded the latest version of Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office (http://msdn.microsoft.com/office/understanding/vsto/gettingstarted/vsto05beta/default.aspx)
  which is the August CTP release. After installing, it looks like it only contains the tools for creating Word, Excel, and Outlook add-ins. Where's the Infopath support
  
  Additionally, VS 2005 August CTP does not integrate with WWF for me. Is anyone else experiencing this
  

• hotfoot982

  WWF is only available for VS.NET 2005, however the Infopath SDK only works with VS.NET 2003. Will WWF only work with VS.NET 2005 And is there an InfoPath SDK that will work with VS.NET 2005
  
  Thanks.
  

• chrisSB

  You actually dont need the InfoPath Visual Studio Toolkit for the kind of scenario you have mentioned. You could access the Infopath XML in sharepoint storage using sharepoint APIs or webservices  and modify the xml directly using Xpath.
  
  You can use web services integration of Infopath to invoke the workflow when desired and have appropriate activity which will update the Infopath form in Sharepoint storage. So potentailly activity can take inputs such as Sharepoint Document library url, and Xpath you want to retrieve and the value you want to set there.
  
  Once you are able to modify Infopath xml contents, you can simply use InfoPath views to achieve hiding or displaying of fields.
  
  Hope this helps.
  
  Arvind Agarwal - Skelta Workflow.NET -  (www.skelta.com)
  
• Infopath and WWF