Infopath form with managed code

Hi,

I don't believe the above is true regarding code-behind and web campatiablilty of InfoPath Forms. The only issue is that administrators have to upload and activate the form through Central Admin on the SharePoint site for the forms to work.

To deploy a form to SharePoint with code behind publish the form to a common network location(the wizard will take care of this - first option on first screen). Have the administrator upload the form using Central Admin and then activate it for your site collection. This form will then appear a content type which you can use as you wish in any document or forms library.

Excellent pointer.  From this information, it allowed me to find this excellent article - Creating InfoPath Form Templates That Work With Forms Services (http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa945450(VS.80).aspx) which contains the following.

These other links were also pretty useful in understanding the limitations of Web Enabled InfoPath forms.

• 
  
• InfoPath features that are supported in InfoPath Forms Services (http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/infopath/HA102040851033.aspx?pid=CH100211501033)
  
• 
  
  InfoPath 2007 features that are unavailable in InfoPath Forms Services (http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/infopath/HA102105871033.aspx)

...

 After hours (even days!) of suffering and pain, I have just found how to use web-enabled Infopath forms with embedded code with K2 Blackpearl workflow.

 I may write a real tutorial one day but for the moment, here are the required steps (maybe there's an easier way to achieve the goal, but I havn't found it):

• 
  
• Create a Infopath form aimed to be open in a browser
  
• Design your form (add the groups and fields, the data connections, etc.) BUT don't add .Net code now (it may work but that's not how I did it)
  
• Create your K2 project in VS 2005
  
• Design your workflow just like in the Infopath tutorial provided with the Blackpearl documentation until step 5; this step of the tutorial is the one where you must re-design the form to adapt it. Add your .net code now. When you're done, do not finish the Infopath Integration Wizard.
  
• In the Infopath Integration Wizard, edit the properties associated to your forms (ie "publish to") and set the form library where you'd like to see your form published. Select "content type" instead of "form library template", and do not forget to set the opening program as "web browser".
  
• Finish the wizard, and deploy your project
  
• Now go to the form library, the "settings", and delete all the content types set for this library.
  
• On the same site, click on "View all site content", you should see a "K2 Blackpearl Form Templates" or something like this. Open the lib. It contains the form you've just deployed. Right-click it, and copy shortcut to this XSN file.
  
• Go to your MOSS Central Administration, "Application Management" --> "Manage Form Templates", and click on "Upload a form template".
  
• Click the "Browse" button, paste the shortcut, and click "Ok". This file browser is not made to browse URLs, but it works.
  
• Confirm the upload of this form template (you can verify it if you want, but it's quite useless)
  
• Activate it to your site collection
  
• Go back to your site, and to your form library
  
• Click "settings", and add an existing content type. In the list, you should find the name of your form (eg: "my form"), plus the name of your form with a suffix which should be "1" (eg: "my form1"). Select this one (the first one is the content type automatically deployed by Blackpearl, do not select it as it's not admin-approved)
  
• Now go back to the form lib, create a new instance of the form, and.......... it works!!!

It's friday evening, I've just written this after getting successful, so please don't be rude if you spot errors or approximations in this quick and dirty tutorial 🙂

Nevertheless, if you're in trouble with a particular step, do not hesitate to ask for details.

Is all this really necessary? Did the hotfix change any of this. 

Using code behind in infopath seems so natural, is it really cross the grain with K2 BP functionality.

Have you tried updating the form?

Ok - well I had meant to get back to this and it has been some time now.  I spent my Saturday playing around with this and I have posted this to help.  I refined some of the steps that we laid out earlier which have made redeployment of the InfoPath form with changes significantly easier.  Using content types was the key.

Deploying K2 InfoPath Web Enabled Forms with Managed Code - http://k2distillery.blogspot.com/2008/01/deploying-k2-infopath-web-enabled-forms.html

Hope this helps - comments are welcome - I tested it a few times.

Jason

Thanks everybody for the detailed steps...however I can't seem to get this work.

 Whenever I have code in an InfoPath form, if I go to the "K2 BlackPearl InfoPath Form Templates" and choose to 'Edit in Browser', immediately I get the following page: The form has been closed.

I walked through all of your steps, so I activated the template to my site collection.  Is that what you mean?

 I've never used code in InfoPath, so I'm thinking there might be some security configuration somewhere to allow the InfoPath code to run:(