Access a list residing at the root level from a subsite for an InfoPath 2010 form

Question

Sorry for the confusing title! I'll try to explain my problem a little bit better..

So the site that I'm building has a contact form (created using InfoPath2010) on each page that the visitor can fill and their answer is saved into a SharePoint list that is residing at the root level of the site. (/Lists/Answers for example)

Now, the form works fine on the homepage because the list is at the same level but when I open a subsite I get an error that the list cannot be found.

So the main problem is that FormLocation in BrowserFormWebPart always takes the current subsite as a starting point and it looks like there's no way to make it look for the Form starting always from the root level.

<WebUI:BrowserFormWebPart runat="server" AllowEdit="True" AllowConnect="True" SubmitBehavior="KeepOpen" ConnectionID="00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000" Title="InfoPath Form Web Part" IsIncluded="True" Dir="Default" ExportMode="All" IsVisible="True" ShowFormRibbon="False" DefaultView="Edit item" AllowMinimize="True" ExportControlledProperties="True" ZoneID="ImportedPartZone" ID="g_18238c7b_1447_44f6_b0de_64e6d7555930" FormLocation="/Lists/Answers" FrameState="Normal" SendDataOnPostback="True" AllowHide="True" SuppressWebPartChrome="False" DetailLink="" HelpLink="" MissingAssembly="Cannot import this Web Part." PartImageSmall="" AllowRemove="True" ListFormMode="Editable" ContentTypeId="0x010082E93815C5A4B14997932C045B09BFBC" HelpMode="Modeless" FrameType="Default" AllowZoneChange="True" PartOrder="0" Description="Use this Web Part to display an InfoPath browser-enabled form." PartImageLarge="" IsIncludedFilter="" __MarkupType="vsattributemarkup" __WebPartId="{18238c7b-1447-44f6-b0de-64e6d7555930}" WebPart="true" Height="" Width=""></WebUI:BrowserFormWebPart>

Does anyone have any idea how to fix this issue?

Thanks guys!!

Answer 1

My guess is that you should remove the trailing '/' of the FormLocation attribute. So make look like this: FormLocation="Lists/Answers".

Answer 2

Two ideas:

1) Have you tried the full Url for the list in the FormLocation property?

• or -

2) Just create a web part page at the root, drop the BrowserFormWebPart on it, and then on every page you want to let them leave comments put a link or button that loads that page in a nice 2010 dialog. You could even go as far as adding a feedback/comment button to a custom master page and then you don't have to worry about adding it to each page individually. Here's an example from a website I recently worked on...in this case it was a custom application page I was deploying as part of a feature, but the end result is the same.

<a onclick="javascript:NewItem2(event, &quot;/_layouts/padotcom/contactform.aspx&quot;);javascript:return false;" href="/_layouts/padotcom/contactform.aspx">Submit Inquiry</a>

NewItem2 is a OOB js function that displays the page in a dialog.

Answer 3

So I finally got the form working on all of the pages of the site.

Basically I created a new Visual Web Part and I created all the necessary fields there and also a submit button that when clicked, validates the input fields and then adds a new item to a list with the answer from the user.

Because this is a public Sharepoint 2010 site, anonymous users will fill the form so basically the web part creates the item in a temporary list and then the item is moved automatically by an event receiver to a list that only logged in users can see.

So what I learned from this: InfoPath 2010 forms only work on the subsite they are published to. If you need a form that is displayed on each page, you should create a new Visual Web Part in Visual Studio instead of using InfoPath.