I had a tough time explaining and convincing clients about this and they got another excuse of blaming it all on Microsoft, so I finally decided to solve this problem on my own.

The overall solution looks like this:

a. Create a custom Data structure in InfoPath 2007 browser enabled form.

b. Bind a Repeating Table with our custom Data Structure and tweak the look and feel to make it look more like a Multi-select List box.

c. Use Form Load event for programmatically loading Multi-Select List options.

d. On Submit button click, Save the multi-selected List box items as a semi-colon separated string in another InfoPath text field.

I will explain the above solution Step-by-Step with snapshots to make it more easier to implement.

a. Create a Data Structure in InfoPath 2007: See the snapshot below:

i) In this case, my field name for storing the values selected in the multi-select List items is WorkcenterAssignment. You can give any name you want to the Group and the field. Values selected by the user will be stored in this field.

ii) For MultiSelectOptions, follow the same structure as mentioned below:

-MultiSelectOptions(Repeating Group) – Will be applied as a repeating table in Step b.

- selectedOption (True/False Boolean field) – This will be converted into Checkbox on the UI

- optionDescription (Text string field) – This will be used for storing the multi-select List Item options

b. Bind a Repeating Table with the Data Structure:

i) Right click on the above schema -> Choose Repeating table as follows:

ii) It will look like this on the InfoPath form:

iii) Format it to look more like a multi-select ListBox on your form:

Note: You can also wrap it inside a Table with a fixed width and fixed height, so that Listbox items can act like scroll bar for options)

c. Programmatically loading Multiple items in the List Box from SharePoint List/Library:

Now that our schema and control are all set, we need to load values into multiselect Listbox control.

The key event here is the InfoPath form load event.

The strategy here is to bind the repeating table created above programmatically using Visual Studio for Applications. I prefer to write the code in C# .NET.

Here is my Form Load event, I call the generic method LoadMultiSelectListBox() method, copy the code below:

public void FormEvents_Loading(object sender, LoadingEventArgs e)
{
try
{
this.Errors.DeleteAll();

XPathNavigator root = MainDataSource.CreateNavigator();
XPathNodeIterator listItems = root.Select(”/my:Request/my:WorkCenterAssignments/my:MultiSelectOptions”, NamespaceManager);

if (listItems.Count == 1)
{
//Load Multi-Select List Box
LoadMultiSelectListBox();
}
}
catch (Exception exp)
{
ThrowException(exp);
}
}

Here is the code for Loading Multi-Select items into the repeating table programmatically. I first need to get all my List item options from my SharePoint List/Library, I have created a XML Receive Data connection in InfoPath, you can alternatively get all the options from SharePoint List/Library using the SharePoint object model, copy code below:

private void LoadMultiSelectListBox()
{
try
{
this.Errors.DeleteAll();
//Query Get Approvers From SharePoint List data connection
FileQueryConnection queryConnection = (FileQueryConnection)this.DataConnections["WorkCenterXML"];

queryConnection.Execute();

//Get all nodes from the Work Center XML
XPathNavigator connectionNav = DataSources["WorkCenterXML"].CreateNavigator().SelectSingleNode(”//rs:data”, this.NamespaceManager);

XPathNodeIterator allItems = connectionNav.Select(”//z:row”, this.NamespaceManager);

//Iterate via all records
foreach (XPathNavigator item in allItems)
{
AddMultiSelectListItems(item);
}

//Delete the first row of InfoPath Repeating table programmatically
if (GetCurrentXPathNav(”/my:Request/my:WorkCenterAssignments/my:MultiSelectOptions[1]“) != null)
{

GetCurrentXPathNav(”/my:Request/my:WorkCenterAssignments/my:MultiSelectOptions[1]“).DeleteSelf();
}
}

catch (Exception exp)
{
ThrowException(exp);
}
}

This method adds values into our custom repeating table data structure:

private void AddMultiSelectListItems(XPathNavigator item)
{
try
{
this.Errors.DeleteAll();
//Get Reference to Multi-Select List Options
XPathNavigator Item = GetCurrentXPathNav(”/my:Request/my:WorkCenterAssignments/my:MultiSelectOptions”);
//Create a new Item node for Multi-Select List items
XPathNavigator newItemNode = null;
if (Item != null)
{
//Clones the new item w.r.t repeating table structure
newItemNode = Item.Clone();
}

//Get Reference to Option description
XPathNavigator optionDescription = newItemNode.SelectSingleNode(”/my:Request/my:WorkCenterAssignments/my:MultiSelectOptions/my:optionDescription”, this.NamespaceManager);

//Set Option description values
optionDescription.SetValue(item.GetAttribute(”ows_Workcenter”, String.Empty));

//Add a new Item in the Multi-Select List options
Item.InsertAfter(newItemNode);
optionDescription = null;
newItemNode = null;
}
catch (Exception exp)
{

ThrowException(exp);
}
}

Preview your InfoPath form, your control should load all the options dynamically and look like this:

d. Saving the values selected from the Multi-select List box item on saving the form:

Assume user selects multiple items, we will have to save the values selected in our Multi-select Listbox control using a separate field in the InfoPath form, in this example, we created the WorkcenterAssignment text field in Step a.

Again we will use the programming approach to iterate through the repeating table nodes, identify the list items selected and store them as semi-colon (;) separated values in the WorkcenterAssignment InfoPath field.

WorkcenterAssignment can be further promoted as a SharePoint column using Property Promotion feature in the InfoPath form. To know more on publishing and deployment of InfoPath forms, see my detailed post on Publishing and Deploying browser based InfoPath forms

Here is the code to Save the selected Multi-select Listbox items:

private void SaveMultiSelectListItems()
{
try
{
this.Errors.DeleteAll();

XPathNavigator root = MainDataSource.CreateNavigator();
XPathNodeIterator listItems = root.Select(”/my:Request/my:WorkCenterAssignments/my:MultiSelectOptions”, NamespaceManager);

String optionsSelected = String.Empty;
StringBuilder selectedListItems = new StringBuilder(String.Empty);
int counter = 0;
while (listItems.MoveNext())
{
optionsSelected = listItems.Current.SelectSingleNode(”my:selectedOption”, NamespaceManager).Value;

//Check whether the Check box against the option was selected or not
if (Boolean.Parse(optionsSelected) == true)
{
if (counter == 0)
{
selectedListItems.Append(listItems.Current.SelectSingleNode(”my:optionDescription”, NamespaceManager).Value);

}
else
{
selectedListItems.Append(”; ” + listItems.Current.SelectSingleNode(”my:optionDescription”, NamespaceManager).Value);

}
//increment the counter
counter++;
}

//Clear variable
optionsSelected = String.Empty;
}

//Set all the multi-selected List Box values
GetCurrentXPathNav(”/my:Request/my:WorkCenterAssignments/my:WorkcenterAssignment”).SetValue(selectedListItems.ToString());
}
catch (Exception exp)
{
ThrowException(exp);
}
}

I think the above code is self-explanatory. This is how we simulate a Multi-select List control using the repeating table model and dynamic options loading in a browser enabled InfoPath form.

Feel free to share your comments.

References: InfoPath Team blog

I am using the “SciTE” editor for “Ruby On Rails” programming.  For Iron Ruby we need to configure the “SciTE” editor.

Step 1: Launch the “SciTE” editor

Step 2: Choose “Options > Open ruby.properties” file

Step 3: Use “Ctrl+G” and goto line “108″

Step 4: command the existing line and modify the line (108) as below

Step 5: Save the file.

Step 6: Create a file “hello.rb” and type the below lines


require 'System, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089, processorArchitecture=MSIL'
require 'Microsoft.SharePoint, Version=12.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c, processorArchitecture=MSIL'
Uri = System::Uri
SPWebApplication = Microsoft::SharePoint::Administration::SPWebApplication
mywebapp = SPWebApplication.Lookup(Uri.new("http://nintex"))
mywebapp.Sites.each do |site|
puts site.Url
end


Step 7: Save the and “Click” F5 to execute the code.

Step 8: Here’s the results (the above code print all the site urls)

InfoPath 2007 form and Nintex workflows 2007 Part 1 covered basics of integrating InfoPath forms with Nintex workflows using in-built Nintex webservices, creating Receive Data Connections, submit data connections, creating Form Load Rules and building complex InfoPath Role based Views.

InfoPath 2007 form and Nintex workflows 2007 – Part 2 covers on how to deploy browser enabled InfoPath forms as Content Types in your SharePoint List/Library.

3. DCL library just got created. This is the place where all your InfoPath Data Connections gets stored in the form of a .udcx file.

4. Go to your InfoPath Form Tools -> Data Connections, you will see all your data connections:

5. Select your InfoPath Data Connection and Click on the “Convert” button besides it. There are two options here: Relative to Site Collection and Centrally managed, choose Relative to Site Collection, because we will later export this site to production environment and there we need to get all these Data Connections.

Give an appropriate name to your data connection and Click on the Ok button

6.  Go to the DCL library, you will see the InfoPath connection appears herem check the status, it shows as Pending

7. Click on the Name Context menu, select Approve/Reject link

8. Select the radio button Approved and click on Ok button.

9. The DCL is now seperated from InfoPath form and has all the connection details.

10. The Convert button against the converted Data Connection becomes disabled

3. Follow the Steps in the Publishing Wizard, select first radio button i.e Publish to a SharePoint server and click on Next button

8.  Enter your Publishing Location, this is the path where you will save your Published Form (this form will be used for Deployment to SharePoint), do not miss out to name your Published Form here, for eg: MyPublishedForm.xsn or the same name as your existing Form Template. Click on Next button

10. Click on the Publish button now.

3. Next create a solution package for the feature, download the Create WSP batch file sample, all you have to do here modify values in the placeholders I have specified like creating a new GUID and modifying the WSP Name, you may also have to change the WSP Builder path.

Place the createwsp.bat file in the same folder you have your 12 hive structure created, see the snapshot:

4. Run the createwsp.bat and it creates the feature solution package as shown in the snapshot below:

d. Create a batch script to Install your InfoPath forms: Download the InfoPathInstall.bat file batch file, this batch file will be used to Install the InfoPath form feature, change your InfoPath form .wsp name in the batch file, you may also have to change your stsadm path. See snapshot below:

Click on Ok button, do not uncheck the checkbox.

Ensure that the name and title should be the same with proper casing as it appears in the DCL library, do not change the other attributes, click on the Ok button

Select the Approve/Reject the modified and uploaded .udcx file and set it status to Approved.

2. Select Advanced settings

4. Go to Document Library settings again and Add the Microsoft Office InfoPath Content Type that we deployed using Add from existing content type option in the document library.

Your InfoPath form should open up fine, if it throws errors like Cannot connect to the Data Source, then be sure to check your .udcx files in DCL’s again.

With this we complete the 2nd part series which covers correct way of deploying your InfoPath forms to the Production environment.

Stay tuned for Part 3 which will cover Nintex workflow deployment, I will share my workflow deployment scripts and share tricks and tips to deploy your Nintex workflows the correct way.

In case you face any issues implementing the same, drop in your comments, I will be glad to help you…

Apart from the busy schedule, I don’t have the desktop/laptop at home with microsoft recommended configurations for installing the microsoft sharepoint 2010 beta.

To learn and get more experience on SharePoint 2010, Last week I have ordered a new dell desktop with below configurations.

Today (03 Dec 2009), I got a chance to install the SharePoint 2010 in my new dell desktop.  The installation went successfully. 

Here’s the screen snapshots of Central Admin/Main Site.

Central Administration

 Main Site 

 The ACS Blogs site is providing a step by step instructions to install the sharepoint 2010 beta and it is really helped me to solve few installation issues.

I will share my installation experience and issues in my next article.

This time after a lot of analysis, I have come up with a new Estimation template. This template effectively captures all the key parameters required to estimate both Data migration and Application migration effectively and leaves little scope of missing out on critical things.

I have come up with the Application Quadrant approach where we analyze Lotus Notes applications based on the 4 Application quadrants. See the diagram below:

I hope it will benefit all.

Click here to download the Notes to SharePoint Migration Estimation template.

The author of this post frequently blogs at www.mehulbhuva.blogspot.com You can also follow him on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/Mehul_Bhuva

In this case, I want my workflow application users to use my custom InfoPath form as their Task form and not want users to edit tasks directly.

Solution:

I created a custom page in the /_layouts directory based on Nintex provided ApproveReject.aspx, lets name it InfoPathApproveReject.aspx and removed the Task update actions like Approve/Reject radio buttons and Comments, here I only have a read only view of the Task item.

For the webpart to redirect users from My Workflow Tasks Webpart to my custom InfoPathApproveReject.aspx page, I used the following NWAdmin command:

Command Syntax:

NWAdmin.exe -o SetTaskForm -siteUrl teamsiteurl -contentType contenttypename -taskformUrl taskformurl [-formType Edit|View|All] [-updatechildren Yes|No]

Actual Usage:

a. Download the custom InfoPathApproveReject.aspx form from here or the link given below.

b. Paste this form under the following folder: C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS\NINTEXWORKFLOW

c. Then run the following NWAdmin command:

NWAdmin.exe -o SetTaskForm -siteUrl “http://nintex/sites/myteamsite” -contentType “Nintex Workflow Task” -taskformUrl “/sites/myteamsite/_layouts/InfoPathApproveReject.aspx” -formType View

So now when users click on the My Workflow Tasks Item column, my custom Task form opens up in the read only mode, now they can’t update the task form directly without by-passing the InfoPath Task form.

This solves my problem, but What if my Site Collection contains a Nintex workflow bound to a standard SharePoint List form and another Nintex workflow bound to a Document Library/List with InfoPath form as Content type.

What happens in this case?

Since, I have customized my Task Form URL to InfoPathApproveReject.aspx, it would redirect my standard SharePoint List workflow users to my custom page and does not allow them to use the OOTB ApproveReject.aspx task form. My solution created another problem. I will be sharing a solution to solve this in my future posts.

Click here to download the custom InfoPathApproveReject.aspx task form.

Feel free to share your comments and ask me in case of any doubts.

The author of this post regularly blogs at www.mehulbhuva.blogspot.com. You can also follow him on Twitter: http://twitter.com/Mehul_Bhuva

Suppose you have accidentally turned on the versioning feature in your document library and you are migrating data from Lotus Notes to SharePoint using any third party utility like Quest Notes migrator for SharePoint and assume you had to re-run the utility again and again on the version enabled document library so as to migrate notes data with full fidelity. What happens then? Many versions of the same document/list item get created.

Assume there are 4000 records which got properly migrated into the versioned enabled document library, but each record created many versions of the same item, as a result average size of each item went to somewhere around 400-500 MB and some of them items were also 1 GB in size.

The site was also deployed into Production. Clients encountered performance issues while accessing items in the document library since the size of the document library had sky rocketed.

What do you do in this case? How do you delete the unnecessary versions and retain only the latest version of the document/list item?

My utility will just do that for you, Delete Item Versions utility  will  delete older versions of the document library items, while retaining the most recent version of the same. Most of the times, the site is  already deployed and running into the production environment, hence , we needed a utility, which can access our production site remotely from any local workstation without touching or deploying anything on the production environment.

We have tested it thoroughly and it works like a charm. It uses SharePoint web services and users can run it from their workstations provided they have access to that particular SharePoint webapplication.

We also plan to enhance the features of this utility. Here is a snapshot of the same:

Delete Item Versions

Click here to download the source code.

NOTE: You will have to change the webservice reference in the source code, Build the Project, Test the utility in your test environment and then use the DeleteItemVersions.exe for remotely deleting versions for your SharePoint List/Library.

Feel free to share your comments and ask me in case of any doubts.

The author of this post regularly blogs on his SharePoint experience at www.mehulbhuva.blogspot.com.

You can also follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/Mehul_Bhuva

I have successfully installed the new nintex version (110001) in the VMware  in my office laptop. I got very little time to test the new nintex release (110001).

During my quick check in the nintex workflow actions , I have found that the nintex team added a new workflow action called “Switch”.

Here I am providing a simple business rules and I am going to design the workflow in earlier version of Nintex (10906) and the new version.

Business Rules are:

1. If the color is “Red” then discount is 10000.

2. If the color is “Blue” then discount is 5000

3. If the color is “Green” then discount is 15000.

4. For Other Colors, the discount is 3000.

The above business rules implementation using Nintex – Version (10906).

The above business rules implementation using Nintex – Version (110001).

Look at that above diagram, it is very simple and easy to read/understand. I am very sure that this action will be really useful to all the nintex workflow designers and I am really thankful to nintex for providing such a nice workflow action.

Table: Activities The nintex workflow actions available in the nintex workflow designer are stored in the Activities table.  Table: Activity Resources Nintex supports multiple languages and Internationationalization information stored in the above table. The sample list is below ID Category Description 2 Operace Pozastaví pracovní postup a� do vybraného data a casu. 2 Berechnungen Hält den Workflow bis zum angegebenen Datum an 2 Muveletek Megadott idopontig felfüggeszti a munkafolyamatot. 2 Operazioni Metti in pausa il workflow fino alla data e tempo selezionati. 2 Darbibas Aptur darbplusmu lidz noraditajam datumam un laikam 2 Operaciones Pausar el workflow hasta la fecha y hora seleccionadas 3 Interakce u�ivatele Vy�aduje, aby u�ivatelé polo�ku schválili nebo odmítli. 3 Benutzerinteraktion Genehmigung bzw. Ablehnung durch einen oder mehrere Benutzer erforderlich 3 Felhasználói tevékenységek Felhasználó(k) jóváhagyása szükséges. 3 Interazione Utente Richiesta che un utente o Gruppo di utenti approva o non approva un elemento 3 Saskarne ar lietotajiem Pieprasa, lai lietotajs vai vai “>lietotaji apstiprinatu vai noraiditu vienumu. 3 Interacción con usuarios Se requiere que uno o más usuarios aprueben o rechacen un elemento. 4 Logika a tok Vytvorí podmínku urcující smer pracovního postupu. 4 Logik und Fluss Erstellt eine Bedingung, von der der weitere Fortgang des Workflows abhängt. 4 Folyamatlogika Létrehoz egy feltételt mely meghatározza a munkafolyamat irányát. 4 Logica e flusso Crea una condizione che determina la direzione di un workflow 4 Logika un plusma Izveido nosacijumu, kas nosaka darbplusmas virzibu 4 Lógica y flujo Crea una condición que determina la ruta del workflow Table: ApprovalAI You are all aware of that Nintex supports Lazy approval and again it supports multiple languages.  The sample list is below ID Site ID Web ID Phrase 1 NULL NULL approve 2 NULL NULL approved 3 NULL NULL decline 4 NULL NULL declined 5 NULL NULL no 6 NULL NULL ok 7 NULL NULL reject 8 NULL NULL rejected 9 NULL NULL yes 10 NULL NULL odmítnout 11 NULL NULL odmítnuto 12 NULL NULL ne 13 NULL NULL schválit 14 NULL NULL schváleno 15 NULL NULL ok 16 NULL NULL ano 17 NULL NULL dobre 18 NULL NULL Declina Table: Delegation The Active User Delegation details like (From Date, End Date, User Name, Delegate) for the site are stored in this table.  Table: DelegationHistory The delegation history has all the workflow task delegation details. Table: MessageTemplates The Email message templates are stored in this table. Table: Global Settings The Nintex Settings available in the Site/Central Administration are stored in this table.

Table: StringFunction 

The nintex workflow built-in string functions are stored in “StringFunction” table and which can be used in the nintex workflow. The following string functions are available in the table.

The following reports are available in the nintex.

In the next post I will cover how to add the custom reports (which requires some modifications in the above tables) in the nintex.