Question

I have a request form I’m working on, wherein different departemnts need to be able to update it. To minimize overlap and lost changes I’d like to be able to submit data from the new form to different lists, but I cannot find a way to do this.

Does anyone have any experience trying to do anything similar?

Answer 1

If you’re familiar with JQuery andSPServices I could envisage a way to do this.

In the EditForm.aspx, add the JQuery and SPServices libraries. using the $.(document).Ready function, I’d do a quick item update with the SPServices and just copy a column with the same data, so in effect no change looks to have taken place. I’d add in the edit comments something like “Pseduo checkout to [name], [date_time]”.

Then allow the user to edit the form as normal but in the code you’ve added, you trap the PreSave Action and check that the person trying to do the save is the same as the last modified – if it is, save as normal, otherwise, return false on the PreSave and it will be denied. When you actually allow the save, set the edit comments to something sensible.

To complete this, check before doing the pseudo checkout, that the last comments don’t contain the psuedo checkout phrase so that you can prevent anyone opening/editing the form whilst somebody else is in the middle of an edit.

This gives a cheap and relatievly easy to implement Check-In/Check-Out for a list. Not perfect of course but should work well in most scenarios (not in datasheet though, so you might need to prevent that type of edit).