Geeky Girl : data connections

Generating a unique form number

JessMeats — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 15:15:00 GMT

I’ve had someone ask me about automatically giving InfoPath forms a unique number. The scenario in question was one where the forms were being saved to a SharePoint document library with a unique number attached.

Documents in a SharePoint library do get given an ID, which is unique within document library. This can be used as the unique identifier of the forms out of the box with no additional work. The problem is, this only works so long as your forms remain in that document library. Once you start moving or copying forms (perhaps as part of a workflow) the ID will change.

In those situations, you will have to add a bit of work to your form to generate this number. You just have to be careful about when you generate it. If you have the possibility of multiple people filling out the form at the same time, you need to make sure the number is created in such a way that the method doesn’t result in forms being given the same number. If the form were to create this number on open, basing it on the number of files in the library, you would have issues when someone else opens the form template before the first form has been saved to the library. The easiest way round this issue is to have the number generated on submission.

Here I will describe a simple method of creating this auto number.

Firstly, you will need to create a data connection. If your forms (or a copy of them) are going remain in the document library they are submitted to, then you simply need to create a connection to retrieve data from that library. You only need to retrieve the data from one column. For the sake of argument, we’ll say the unique_number column. I’ll discuss another possibility in a bit for the scenario where forms will be moved or deleted from the library.

Set up the data connection using the wizard as you normally would, but uncheck the box when it asks whether to retrieve data when the form opens. You won’t want to get this information until the end. You will also want to set up the data connection to submit the form to the appropriate form library. Do this as you normally would, but make sure that one of your promoted fields is the unique_number field where you’ll be storing the unique ID of the form. From the submit options menu, uncheck the box labelled Show the Submit menu item and the Submit toolbar button. This is because you don’t want your users to just submit the form; you need the form to perform other actions first.

To allow your users to submit, add a button to the form. You’ll want this button to be set to trigger rules and custom code. Click on the Rules button, then Add, then Add Action. The action you want first is to query using a data connection. Choose the data connection you created to retrieve data from the form library.

The second action is to set a field’s value. The field will be your unique_number field. Click on the function button next to the value field. Insert a function. You have a couple of different options here. You can choose to perform the count function on the items in any field, or the max function on the unique_number field. Either way, you should end up with the most recent unique number assigned. So now, you just add one to get your new one.

The third and final action you need to add to this button is to submit the form.

So there you have it. Your form will now check how many items there are in the form library, create a unique number based on that value and save the form back. Brilliant!

But you can probably see why this method only works for scenarios where you leave the forms in the library. If you have a process that involves moving the form from that library to another, the count value will almost certainly be wrong and the max value might well be. There are probably several different ways to work around this. One simple way is to create a SharePoint list to act as a counter.

Have a list with one numeric element. You’ll want to set this list up so that it’s not visible from the menus on the site since you’ll only want to access it through the form and workflows. Initially, this will have the value of 1. Create a one step workflow using SharePoint Designer and attach this workflow to the form library. The workflow should trigger every time an item is created in the form library and all it should do is add 1 to the value in the counter (using the calculate value and update list item inbuilt actions). Then your form should retrieve data from this list instead of the document library and use the counter value as the unique_number.

The phases of technology use

JessMeats — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 17:35:00 GMT

I’d like to make a sweeping generalisation about how people react to technology. Disregarding for the moment the variations and exceptions, I believe that people go through four phases.

Phase 1: What the heck do I do with it?

Phase 2: Wow! That’s amazing!

Phase 3: There’s this one little annoying thing...

Phase 4: I hate this thing.

The speed at which people move through the phases depends on many things, including how technology savvy the person is. My Granny would probably spend a lot longer in phase 1 for almost any product than I would. If a product has a well defined purpose, clear marketing and a good user interface, phase 1 might be kept extremely short. On the other hand, if the product’s purpose is unclear or the user interface difficult to navigate, people might get stuck on phase 1 and eventually give up.

Phase 2 is the ideal spot. How long phase 2 lasts is almost entirely dependent on product design. People in this stage are happily using the project and being pleased with the results. This could be that they’re having fun playing a new game, or it might be that their working is becoming for efficient, depending on the purpose of the product. If the product team has done their job right, people will be in the phase for months. If the team’s done exceptionally well, people might be here for a couple of years.

But nothing is perfect. No matter how well a product does its job, there will always be something it doesn’t do or some little quirk that starts to irritate you. The more you use the product, the more you notice the thing(s) that at first seemed insignificant. You’re now well into phase 3. You still use and like the product, but there’s something about it you wish you could change.

Eventually, the annoyance outweighs the usefulness and you slip into phase 4.

In an ideal product, phase 1 should be short enough to be unnoticeable. Phase 2 should last for years. Phase 3 should last even longer. If the product’s been well-designed, you shouldn’t reach phase 4 until the product is obsolete.

In my journey through using InfoPath 2007, phase 1 lasted about fifteen minutes. I opened up the program with no idea what it was, played around with it and quickly decided it was great. When I started looking into what could be done with conditional formatting and data connections, I was well into phase 2. By the time I realised the power of views, I was in love with the product!

I stayed there for several months but now I’m slipping into the early stages of phase 3. I still think InfoPath is fantastic and can be used in an incredibly powerful way to improve processes in many situations. It’s still my favourite Microsoft product (not that SharePoint and the Xbox don’t have their merits). But there are a few things just are starting to bug me. Like when I have to click “OK” five times to get back to the form after setting a filtered value as the default value for a field. Or when I want to set exactly the same conditional formatting rules for multiple fields and have to manually set the rules for each one.

But now I’ve seen 2010!

I’ve skipped straight past phase 1 and into phase 2. You’re going to be seeing quite a lot of excited posts from me about 2010 over the coming months.

How to: Connect to a database

JessMeats — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 17:22:00 GMT

Continuing my series of how to demos. I had a request to do a video showing how to show red, yellow, green indicators based on values from a database. Yesterday, I posted a demo showing how to set up indicators. Today, you get to see how to connect to a database. The procedure is the same to connect to an Access and a SQL database.

The procedure for connecting to a web service is very similar, but includes choosing which method to use for reading and writing data, based on a list of methods supported by the web service.

How to: Auto Populate

JessMeats — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 13:10:00 GMT

A couple of different people have asked me how to auto-populate the values in fields based on the username and values in external data sources. Those questions were the inspiration for this series of videos. I will show how to do simple but useful things in InfoPath. If there's something you'd like to be shown how to do, please leave a note in the comments and I'll see what I can do.

Better with Office - Data Connection Libraries

JessMeats — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 14:02:00 GMT

Previously in this series, I’ve talked about general Office documents, which might be Word files, PowerPoint slide decks and so on. In this post, I’m going to go a bit more specific. I’m going to talk about data connection libraries and how they are they can accessed using Excel 2007.

A data connection library, as the name might imply, stores data connections. But what do I mean by data connections? Let’s say that you’re creating a spreadsheet that using information from somewhere else. Maybe you’re using Excel to make graphs of sales trends based on figures in a company database. Maybe you want to use SharePoint and Excel’s capabilities to create a visual representation of stock levels in a particular location and tie in a workflow for restocking. Whatever the data is, the point is that you have information stored somewhere that you want to use in Excel. You probably don’t want to manually copy the data over because this is time consuming and would mean you’d have to manually update your spreadsheet whenever the data is changed.

So, you create a data connection. This links your spreadsheet to Access, a web source, a SQL databases, an Analysis server report or a few other options. This allows the data to remain centrally stored but you still get the ability to analysis, view and visualise using Excel’s capabilities.

These data connections are part of Excel’s Business Intelligence offering. My focus is SharePoint, so I’m not going to go into too much detail about how to set up and use these connections. What I am going to talk about are data connection libraries, which are a feature of SharePoint 2007.

The idea is that more than one person is likely to want this data. If you have a database or a SharePoint list storing information that people are going to create connections to, there’s no point each of them having to go through the process of setting up the connection. It’s always possible people will link to the wrong table and bring back incorrect data. Instead, one person, who knows exactly which table or list is the relevant one, will create the data connection and put it in this SharePoint library. From then on, users will be able to access this data connection and don’t have to worry about setting up their own.

There are a few different ways to add a data connection to this library. The first is to simply upload a pre-made data connection file.

If you have a data connection already set up for a spreadsheet, you can open up the properties for this and choose to export the connection. You can then save the connection file into the SharePoint library.

Finally, if you’re connecting to a SharePoint list, you can save it to the library when creating a connection from SharePoint. In a SharePoint list, there is the option to export to spreadsheet from the actions menu. Choosing this option will create the necessary data connection and, at this point, you have the option to the save the file and can choose the data connection library as the location.

Once you have your data connection library populated with this connection files, users can access them from Excel. From the data tab, users should click existing connections then to browse for more. In the browse window that opens, users can go to the address of the data connection library and pick the correct file. If you’re going to be putting a lot of connection files into this library, it’s absolutely vital that you name your files clearly, otherwise users won’t know which is the correct connection.