When a user fills out my form, they're to choose who their manager and advisor is from a dropdown list. At the end of the form, two textfields are autopopulated with that same manager and advisor. When the form is submitted, the specified manager and advisor are to be notified in succession to open the form and choose an approval status (Pending, Approved, Rejected), and re-save the form.
What I'm trying to achieve: I'd like the workflow to pull the specified manager and advisor and use that information within the workflow. Is there a way to dynamically have the workflow interact with form field values?
EDIT:
I'm using Visio to first graphically design my workflow, then I was going to add the logic to it once imported to SharePoint designer. So, firstly, shouldn't I need to add the correct Workflow symbols together within Visio? If so, which symbols do I need to grab the user-selected approver from the form field?
Thanks!
Yes there is - you can just publish the InfoPath form fields to your SharePoint library, then the values of the fields would be available for your workflow:
Of course you will still need to code some logic to convert your text-based field to a real user who can be notified.
I'm pretty sure Visio doesn't support those kind of workflow operations. It's more about designing a high-level workflow. Download sharepoint designer 2010 - it's free, and it is a far more powerful tool for designing workflows and it will let you do what #moontear suggests.
Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2010 (32-bit)
http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=16573
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I've been reading about building an intranet site with different frameworks and I've found Open Atrium to be a great alternative since it's naturally oriented to that use.
I'd love to add some custom workflows associated with personnel management, for example, each team member gets a reminder every Friday to fill out a form with the hours of the week dedicated to each project. Once submitted, the role 'administrator' gets notification of all the forms received and of those not received, the details of each one and the sum of hours per
project. Any insight on how to proceed with this implementation would be greatly appreciated.
I've searched but haven't found a module that has this kind of workflow. How would this be implemented with cck, views or fields?
I would use the Rules module to create the first part: emailing users to remind them to fill in their forms. The rules module has a 'Send mail to all users of a role' action which you can use.
I would use the Views module to create a new view of the filled in forms (which I assume will just be nodes of a certain content type) and make that view accessible only to the administrator in the view's 'Access' section. Views are quite powerful, and you'll probably be able to do most all of what you require with them, but it's hard to be more specific without knowing which version of Drupal you're using and any more details about the problem (such as, will this form users are filling out really be just a node or a webform?). As an example of a views feature: if you go to add a field to your view, you should be able to see a ' Global: Math expression' field, where you can do things like add previous fields together, etc.
On the other hand, if you use the Webform module to build the form users have to fill out, that can send an email automatically each time it's submitted and the responses can be downloaded into an excel file by the administrator to manipulate further.
Hope some of those ideas help!
I'm still new to the CRM world. I know how i can send direct emails to contacts from the contact overview list. But is it possible to do this from u custom button on the contact form?
And if so, can i make sure that a specific template is selected by default?
Thanks in advance!
I'd have to dig deeper to find the answer to your second question but the first bit should definitely be possible. In the Dynamics CRM SDK help look up RibbonDiffXml. This will give you information on how to alter the ribbon-
Use RibbonDiffXml to create declarative definitions of modifications to the default Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 ribbon.
You can export this XML via the customizations area and update it to have a custom button. In the actions of the button you can call a JavaScript method (from one of your web resources). Through the JavaScript you should be able to pop open a new email (either a CRM one or custom ISV).
I'd recommend using the built in email templates when possible.
We are adding a reporting page to one of our asp.net applications, and one of the requirements is the user be able to customize their reports. CrystalReports won't work because we can't guarantee the user will have a local copy in which to modify a report. MS Reports doesn't seem to support what we want either. Is there a package out there with an interactive designer which we could embed in our application? Or some other option that maybe we've overlooked?
The input for the report will be an XML file.
Thanks
How about Microsoft Reporting Services? The user can be given access to an activeX control that will allow them to modify the .rdl files. They are interactive and built for the web.
You can also integrate it into Sharepoint.
Have you checked out the DevExpress reporting and grid packages? What I did was to create a reporting page with a variety of data selection fields at the top. The user could customize the selection criteria and then simply re-run the report. This provides end-user selection criteria customization but not layout customization.
You might also want to look at their grid and pivot-grid packages. It is very easy to customize the grids - even for the end-user. If they rearrange the fields or pull them into a grouping area, that customizes the presentation. These can very easily be exported as a report (PDF), Word document or Excel document as well. We also created an interface that pulled or deleted fields from the grid as well. Thus we have end-user selection and returned field customization as well as grouping and summaries.
The one thing that no one provides, as far as I know, is a full-fledged end-user reporting tool that provides selection criteria, returned field AND formatting customization.
I am just assigned a project to make a paper based process to be web based. What I need to do is to allow user to fill out an online form and sign it using his/her mouse. The data entered and the signature needs to be later retrieved as a PDF file.
So, I've created a working prototype using ASP.NET webforms and a third party PDF library ( iTextSharp), along with a mouse signature capture tool that I purchased.
The prototype works fine. But my concern is, I may need to extend this application to support many ( maybe hundreds of) forms. Each form has different fields, but they all require a signature. It took me 2 days to build the prototype for one form, including creating the web forms, mark fields in PDF template, hook up web form fields with fields in PDF form, etc...In the future I don't want to spend 2 days to set up each form, is there a better way than building custom form using ASP.NET?
I know of InfoPath, but never used it, has anyone done anything similar before? Is InfoPath with SharePoint a better solution to my problem? Or there is something else? If anyone can give me some advice, I would greatly appreciate it.
Thanks a lot!
The advantage that infopath has is that it has the ability to take advantage of digital ink (handwriting) out of the box. if your version of Windows includes Microsoft Ink (XP tablet, Vista, Win 7) then Infopath will allow you to capture text and images using various available input devices (mouse, pen etc..) depending on the control that you use. A textbox will using handwriting recognition to convert the writing into text, where as an image box will allow free drawing, ideal for caputring a signature.
I have used Infopath as a standalone disconected client system that used email as the transport system. the forms were attatched to an email and added to the outbox. when the user retrieved their email, the forms were automatically sent. The great thing about infopath is that the data is xml. this gives you enourmous flexabilty with what you can do with the data.
As a side note...
You may want to think about the legal side of things when people are signing (using handwriting) e-forms. As Infopath seperates the presentation and the data, which is great for capturing the data for reporting, workflow etc, it becomes a downside from a legal standpoint as the data can be manipulated and presented very differently from what the signee originally signed. In most cases this is not problem, but if the the form is any form of legal document (invoice, goods receipt) you will need to think about how to keep both the data and presentation together and seperate at the same time.
This will be a problem for any system that seperates the data from the presentation, be it web based forms, infopath, or PDF forms.
Hope this helps...
I have also been tasked with a similar problem to solve. I looked at solutions like Adobe LifeCycle but we wanted to use SharePoint as an ECM. One of the problems with InfoPath is that it requires SharePoint or the InfoPath desktop application to fill out the forms. If you don't already have SharePoint setup or cannot use SharePoint, then InfoPath is not the way to go. I didn't want to duplicate efforts by having to create the entire form using html forms and then have to merge all that data onto a printable version for them to sign... seemed like duplicating efforts so I saw InfoPath as a possible solution. Adobe LifeCycle seemed almost a better way to go because we can just use a fillable PDF to capture, do some validation and submit the data. However, Adobe LifeCycle was very expensive so wasn't a good solution for the project.
So if its not a problem having SharePoint as part of your solution, then by all means go for it. But, if you need people to fill out the InfoPath form and not use the desktop client or be logged into SharePoint, then I don't think it's the right solution.
#sean717: You approach with itextsharp reminds me of the existing tool we use in our company. Check www.pdfsharepoint.com if you want to both highly interactive pdf forms and integration with SharePoint 2010. It works for us.
I need a forms technology similar to MS InfoPath or Adobe LiveCycle Forms ES in that it has an XML data structure, is compatible with ASP.NET, renders in a browser, and is easily configurable by non technical office worker types. TurboTax Online is a good example of the type of functionality I have in mind.
The missing piece that I have not yet a solution for is that it be able to operate like a wizard such that responses to certain steps dynamically with AJAX or Flash/Silverlight or some kind of RIA either prompt or hide or alter subsequent parts of the form. It needs to be able to save all results or partial results to persistent form.
This would be easy to program the functionality but need a technology that can create / generate these forms and be able to set the rules in some sort of easily configurable way - the same way an office worker can create a form with InfoPath at least with perhaps a workflow style tool to set the ruls and flow of the form.
Was there a reason you didn't investigate Adobe LiveCycle ES2 any further?
It seems to be a good fit for your requirements, and does have a wizard like feature called Form Guides. You can hide/show sections based on user input, and have form events trigger calls to web services.
Given when you posted this, Guides may not have yet been implemented in LiveCycle - might be worth looking at again if this is still relevant for you.