Question

The application I’m writing has a need for a solution to the following situation:

Salesman and customer is located offsite. They are finalizing a list of requirements, and will input business data that at some point need to be inputed in the onsite database.

My idea is that the salesperson gets a InfoPath document that is almost completed with default values and heads over to the customer. While at the customer the document is updated to satisfy the customer’s need. I must also cover that the document is passed back and forth by email between the salesperson and the customer.

When the salesperson returns to the office he uploads the InfoPath into the database and the order is updated with few user interactions.

Now to the questions:

1. Is this a workable/sensible solution? Other suggestions to how to solve this?
2. How do I ensure that form and data stays together when the salesperson takes the document on a USB stick or it’s emailed to the customer?
3. How do I (with C# code) fill a form with default values?
4. How do I read back the changes?

Sharepoint is not an option.

Answer 1

Some issues that you will need to think about

• will customer have infopath installed and therfore may not be able to view the document.
• If you email the document or need a customer to view it, generally only the data is transmitted with a pointer to the Form Template. If you want the customer to update it and send it back, then the template will need to be located somewhere publicily accesseable.
• The data is stored as an XML document so as part of the startup you could detect that it is a new form set the defaults that you need.

when you publish a form to a networked folder it will also ask for a local path for the form. this allows for a disconected scenarios.

From my experience, InfoPath is a great tool when you have control over the environment. It starts to break down as a viable option once you get outside a controled environment, because you then have to start jumping through hoops to make it work as it should.

EDIT

One you loose control of the environment I think that a web interface would be the way to go.

The sales person could create a new document on the website with the back-end populating all the defaults necessary. A link to the document could be emailed to the customer, who could update their stuff via the web interface and then sales person can then finalise the process.