I'm implementing a workflow that includes a lot of stakeholders to review material in each phase of the workflow and simply sign off or check to say that they have reviewed and the workflow needs to capture the date they reviewed. I need to have a form or a sheet (read only, that will only be updated by the workflow) that displays a list of all reviewers and the dates for each of them. This can include close to a 100 reviewers or stakeholders. What do your think is the most effective way to achieve this? The users wouldn't go into the task list to see who approved/rejected but it is mainly a communication process which needs one sheet that any of them can print that lists who viewed the info. I have 4 big communication processes that I will be implementing and was wondering before I dig into it if any of you have a recommendation on an optimal way to achieve it.
You could connect the task list to an Excel workbook. Format the workbook to print however you’d like. Whenever someone wants an updated list they could simply refresh the data and it would pull in the updated task information. Or you could set it up to refresh upon being opened each time.
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Thanks Brendan. But wouldn't the excel sheet be open for editing by the approvers? They can get easily confused thinking that in order to approve, open the sheet, put your name and date. we need to prevent this from happening and have that form/document in read only. Any idea how to make it read only if the users already have contribute permissions to the library?!
No, not if you don't want it to be. You could either put the file in a library that is read only to the users, or put it in a shared library, but change the permissions on the file itself to be read only. You can also protect cells within Excel so that people can't edit them. I'm not sure why the approvers would think the place to do their approval is in Excel. They would get an email notification with links to the task to do their approval. I'm assuming this form you're trying to create is something to be used by either management or whoever is watching the overall process correct?
Personally I prefer creating a view to the task list for the users. I actually did this on a site I have. Users can only edit task they are assigned to so there is no risk of them doing something they can't. And it's always up to date. But I didn't have a need to print anything, so that is why I suggested Excel.
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I was able to solve this with the help of one of my great colleagues.. Thanks "S.H." if you saw that post 
We basically created form fields for all users who are involved in the process. And then used the Update XML action to connect to those field names.
Without much talking , here is some screenshots:
- Create a panel on the form where you can display the approvers info. one for each approver/stage. It is a big but will show the communication process clearly. give a name to each field but it doesn't have to be connected to a list item field.
2. After each approval track : approve/reject, collect the approver information, name, outcome..etc then add "update XML" action and "update field" action.
The "Update XML" action will include all the fields that need to be updated. Because I was new to XML forms, here is what should eb there. make sure to include {ItemProperty:FormData} as below. and then /FormVariables/<field name> in the xpath query.
store the result in a multiple line text variable.
Then the Set field is to update the OOTB form data with that MLT variable.
done.
Hope that would help someone else in the future.
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