Stumbling Through: K2 [blackpearl] - InfoPath Integration (Part I)
The K2 [blackpearl] product integrates very well with InfoPath, as any sales-pitch and pre-made tutorial will inform you. I was very impressed with how easily I was able to use InfoPath as the user interface to my simple workflow processes, but I feel that every new technology looks good when you take it through its expected scenarios. As such, what I am going to try and do for you in the next series of posts is describe my experiences implementing K2 [blackpear] InfoPath integration in the real-world, where the business requirements don't always exactly match the InfoPath integration tutorials. What I hope for you to get out of this series is the scenarios where InfoPath integration may be more complex than it would seem on the surface, where it will be a quick-win, and some tricks I stumble through along the way to get over some of the hurdles that present themselves.
Here is some background on the project:
Users will be interfacing with SharePoint 2007 to create service request orders, which are sent to a service provider team for processing. There are four distinct services with their own order forms, and each of these order forms can be either filled out from scratch and submitted ad-hoc, or submitted through an automated process where most of the order form data is pre-filled.
Here are some of the key business requirements that I am going to cover in detail:
There are multiple ways to start the same process. That is, it is possible for a user to submit an order at any time (ad-hoc) or to approve and submit an order that is automatically generated for them (outside of this system). This might be tricky because from what I've seen, a process can be tied to only one view of one InfoPath form for process initiation. The ad-hoc and automated order forms will be different views at the least, maybe even completely different InfoPath forms... how will we get one process to start off of the submission of either one of these forms?
Submitting one order form may spawn multiple processes that can be acted on simultaneously by different users to accomplish one final result. How will we have one process split into many, passing along the common information necessary to the child processes?
Since there are a number of activities related to one request, the requestor would like to see the progress being made on each activity. The default task list webpart in SharePoint only shows tasks assigned to the user that is currently logged in. How will we change this so that it shows all tasks associated with the process that they initiated?
All of the various order forms share a certain subset of data, lending themselves to a hierarchical use of content types to represent a base order form and then each specific order form derived from it. I did not see any options in my InfoPath integration experimentation to indicate that the integrated form can be turned into a content type that is based on another content type. How will we get our InfoPath form data to be tied to a base content type?
The task list needs to show various information that exists within the InfoPath form data (such as client name, due date, etc.). The default task list can only show a static set of data, and the InfoPath integration wizard didn't seem to have a screen to promote fields to columns (a feature available when publishing InfoPath forms via InfoPath 2007). How (and where) will I be able to show InfoPath form data as columns associated with a task?
Users want to have buttons or links to click in the InfoPath forms to submit their actions with one click. The InfoPath Integration tutorials all use a drop down list of actions that the user selects from and then clicks a submit button. How will I get the actions related to the task into buttons or links that know what to do when they are clicked?
If you are interested in seeing the solutions to any of the above problems, keep an eye on this blog as I will be posting solutions as I stumble through them over the next few days.