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1. 

   Greg.Osimowicz
   Moderator

   Hi everyone,

   Has anyone had any luck updating a field of type "Person or Group" with Sharepoint Designer Workflow? For some reason I keep getting a "Error updating a list item" error.

   Scenario:
   ==========
   I have an InfoPath Purchase Orders form published to a Sharepoint library. Several fields (e.g. Requestor, Approver etc) are promoted to Sharepoint columns. As it is not possible to promote to a Sharepoint column of type "Person or Group" the columns are created as "Single line of text" type.

   Problem:
   ==========
   On the Sharepoint library where the forms reside I need to use filtering using the dynamic [Me] parameter.

   For example, there should be a view for approvers where a given approver will only see forms for which he/she was selected as approver. So, 10 forms have been submitted, 2 forms have Joe Smith set as approver, when John visits the library he can only see the 2 forms.

   The problem is I can't use the "Approver" column promoted from Infopath to create a view using the [Me] parameter as the "Approver" column is of type "Single line of text". What I wanted to do was to create additional columns of type "Person or Group" (e.g. "Approver - for filtering") and have an SPD workflow update the new "person or group" column with the value of the corresponding "single line of text" column.

   For example, when a form is filled out, a user specifies Joe Smith as approver, the form is submitted to Sharepoint, the "Approver" column is updated with "John Smith", a workflow kicks in and updates the "Approver - for filtering" column (Person or group type) with "John Smith". The column is then used to create a filter based on the [Me] parameter.

   Easy enough. The problem is I can't update a column of type "person or group" using SPD workflow. I keep getting "error updating list item" errors no matter what values I use to update the column (email address, full name, user account) - it just won't take it. I've tried changing the "Show field" value on the column itself to Account, email and name but that doesn't make any difference.

   Does anyone know why? Or what other approach I could use in this scenario? I know I could use one of the custom SPD workflow activities from CodePlex but as my intranet is hosted externally this is not an option.

   Thanks in advance,
   Greg

   Posted 6 months ago #
2. 

   AutoSponge
   Administrator

   If you use the people picker in InfoPath, you get person data like this:
   

   <my:MyGroup>
     <my:Person>
      <my:DisplayName>Grenier, Paul</my:DisplayName>
      <my:AccountId>DOMAIN\userid</my:AccountId>
      <my:AccountType>User</my:AccountType>
     </my:Person>
   </my:MyGroup>

   But the data in a Person/Group column looks like this:
   <nobr><span><A HREF="/sites/_layouts/userdisp.aspx?ID=947">Grenier, Paul</A><img border="0" height="1" width="3" src="/_layouts/images/blank.gif"/><a href='javascript:' onclick='IMNImageOnClick();return false;' class='ms-imnlink'><img name='imnmark' title='' border='0' height='12' width='12' src='/_layouts/images/blank.gif' alt='No presence information' sip='[email protected]' id='imn_391,type=smtp'/></a></span></nobr>

   The only thing that seems to recognize strings like "DOMAIN\user" are the web services and the UI. Have you tried to push the data with a web service?

   Posted 6 months ago #
3. 

   Greg.Osimowicz
   Moderator

   Thanks for your reply. I had tried to use the people picker - however, as my sharepoint hosting provider use some custom authentication provider I couldn't get things to work (it works fine with my internal test MOSS server though). I could try and use web services - however, as we don't have coding skills it would most likely take a looong time to get working. Plus it seems to be a bit of an overkills for such a simple requirement.

   The problem is not actually InfoPath related - I already use data connections in the form that successfully pull user info (account, email etc.) from the user information list in sharepoint. I then promote this info to "plain text" Sharepoint column. Where I get stuck really is how to "convert" the plain text column to a "person or group" column (or just copy the value from one column to another). You'd think this should be straightforward. I actually tried to even copy one "person or group" column to another of the same type and that won't work either (e.g. copy the "Created by" column value to a "Copy of Created by" (person or group type)). And these are both of the same type so there shouldn't be any issues... So frustrating!!

   Anyways, thanks again for your reply.
   Greg Osimowicz

   Posted 6 months ago #
4. 

   AutoSponge
   Administrator

   I meant, have you tried to submit the InfoPath form using the built-in web services option(s)? I think you can do this without code as long as you're using the client app version of the form.

   Posted 6 months ago #
5. 

   Greg.Osimowicz
   Moderator

   Hi there,

   Thanks again for your reply. I'd had a look at the web services route before. However, while it's feasible to create or update new list items using Sharepoint web services (UpdateListItem features) it's not the same story when trying to upload a file (Infopath form in this case). The native web services do not seem to include a function to upload a file - a custom service has been written and is available for download (http://www.sharepointblogs.com/ssa/archive/2006/11/30/wsuploadservice-web-service-for-uploading-documents-into-sharepoint.aspx) - however, as my hosting provider won't install it on their platform it's not a viable solution for me.
   Plus it seems to be such an overkill to be going down the route of configuring web services when all you need is use the value of a promoted "Single line of text" column in "Person or group" column... This shouldn't be impossible really! ... Oh well, I guess it's just Sharepoint - you don't either love it or hate it. You love it AND hate it at the same time :(

   Greg Osimowicz

   Posted 6 months ago #
6. 

   AutoSponge
   Administrator

   You may be able to get the functionality you want through a well-designed list instead of InfoPath. With attachments, you can upload the documents you want, use the people picker, and in general have fewer headaches. Any chance you can revisit the requirements?

   Posted 6 months ago #
7. 

   Greg.Osimowicz
   Moderator

   Unfortunately, no - I can't really use a list. There are a few things implemented in the form that could not be achieved using a list. For example, cascading menus (e.g. User chooses Country:Germany and the next drop-down list (Cities) displays only relevant results (Berlin, Hannover etc.). I know - there are a few solutions out there to achieve similar functionality but they're commercial products plus they require extra solutions to be deployed on the server side. Since my Sharepoint is hosted by an external party this is not an option...

   It's very frustrating to not be able to achieve something so simple and trivial... Anyways, hopefully the next version will bring some improvements.

   Cheers,
   Greg Osimowicz

   Posted 6 months ago #
8. 

   AutoSponge
   Administrator

   Well, a filtered choice list is possible with javascript--it's not even that hard. But it does involve writing (or in my case cobbling together) some lines of a foreign language.

   I don't know what your other requirements are, but in a hosted environment you're going to continue to run into problems if you can't use the Standard features to solve the business needs. I would start practicing with javascript.

   Posted 6 months ago #
9. 

   claudiagil
   Member

   Hello,

   I know it may be a little late for posting a response but I've just promoted a text field from my infopath form to a Person type column in SharePoint.

   What I did was, created a custom content type, custom site colum and custom list definition. Inside de list definition I was able to add my custom field, with the Node attribute set to the xpath of my text field in the infopath form. The way to specify a user in the infopath form, so SharePoint column get's the user is by SharePoint user ID.

   I hope that helps

   Claudia

   Posted 1 month ago #
10. 

    laura67
    Moderator

    As a non-programmer, here's what I'd do to accomplish the view you need to create.
    On the same page as your form library view, add a "Current user filter" web part. Set up the web part to look at "Account Name". Then, as long as your form web part list view is displaying your Approver column, you can connect the two web parts using that field.
    End result: Logged in user sees only list items where they are in the Approver column.

    Laura Rogers
    http://spinsiders.com/laurar

    Posted 1 month ago #
11. 

    NancyCentury
    Member

    I know that every time I use SPD workflows to create an item in a task list, I can populate every field in the related task item being created EXCEPT "assigned to." In my original WF, I choose action "update list item" = "Assigned to" and enter a specifc person's name. My goal is to create the task and assign it all at once. Just like the poster above indicated, when I do this the WF returns an "error updating list item" every time. So now I leave off the "assigned to" part and have to go in after the fact and assign the task. Very annoying.

    Posted 1 month ago #
12. 

    kkirkpat
    Member

    This is a known issue for Sharepoint that was supposedly fixed in the February Patches.

    Try this workaround... Create a "single line text" variable in the workflow, and assign it "-1;#{AssignedToVariable}. This will basically generate "-1;#domain/user", and if you assign that to the person/group field it will work.

    This solutions was posted in the Nintex Workflow forums, but should be applicable for regular SPD workflows as well. http://connect.nintex.com/forums/post/1826.aspx.

    Again, sorry if this post is too late, but it should at least be able to help out NancyCentury.

    Posted 3 weeks ago #
13. 

    laura67
    Moderator

    You're right about the bug. I had called Microsoft at some point about my workflow errors, and they ended up telling me that I was getting errors because we had installed the December cumulative. "It's no good" is what they had to say. They told me that February would fix it. Thanks, Microsoft.

    Laura Rogers

    Posted 3 weeks ago #

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