I have an infopath form template at
https://mysite/Shared%20Documents/MyForm.xsn
If you click on the xsn file in your browser and hit “open” it opens up the template and allows you to fill it in and then hit a submit button which saves an xml file to
https://mysite/administrator/In%20Process/filledOutForm.xml
Then if an admin comes into sharepoint and clicks the filled out infopath form, it opens up fine.
However if the user first saves https://mysite/Shared%20Documents/MyForm.xsn locally, then the link to the form template appears to be stripped (i think because the actual form template is actually local now, rather then being viewed from the sharepoint). thats fine and dandy, they can still submit the form, and it gets saved to https://mysite/administrator/In%20Process/filledOutForm.xml but now its missing the href link to the form template. now when an admin tries to open the filled out form, they get an error saying infopath cant find the form template.
I can follow the instructions listed here:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/infopath/archive/2006/11/01/relinking-forms-and-form-templates.aspx
to “relink” the form to the form template, and that fixes the issue, but I want to fix the underlying issue. How do i make it so that users either cant save it locally (breaking the href to the form template) or make it so that the link to the form template stays there, even if they save the form locally?
Sadly it is more due to training and configuration. We end up “fixing” this all the time (funny it is the same users that seem to have the problem). Some helpful ideas.
Remind your users that the XSN is a template and the XML is their data. They should never really need to save the template. A good analogy is Word dotx and docx – you open the dotx (template) but when you save it defaults to docx (data) – InfoPath does the same thing.
Usually when you “open” an XSN it opens in data mode. When a user clicks save the default is to save as XML. They have to “design” or “open in design mode” (or switch to design mode once open) to actually modify the XSN itself. Remind the users that when they go to save – if it is trying to save as XSN something is wrong and to back up a step.
We also tried to protect the XSN either by security or location so that the common users don’t have rights to write/overwrite it – they can only save XML. That way even if they do mess up the system will block the save. Of course that doesn’t keep them from local copies.
Just be open minded about it – there will always be cases where you have to go back and relink the template. The more you can reduce the better but they still happen (“but I wanted to keep the template locally so I didn’t have to keep going to the website”).