The item is currently locked for editing & Open Task button not disappearing in InfoPath

Question

I have an InfoPath form that submits to a SharePoint 2010 Library. It has promoted fields which can be edited by SharePoint.

Basically, someone gets assigned an approval task via workflow, they then approve the task, and the name of the approver, time stamp, and their comments are then added by the workflow to the SharePoint library, which in turn is changing the content of the text field on the form, showing who approved, when, and comments right there on the form itself.

The users approve the document via the yellow notification bar that appears over the top of the InfoPath form when opened in the InfoPath client. When they approve, the yellow bar with 'Open this task' doesn't disappear, and they can open the task again. This poses an issue as the end users may perceive this as having not accepted their approval of said form.

The workflow log shows the message: "The item is currently locked for editing. Waiting for item to be checked in or for the lock to be released." until the form itself is closed. Once the form is closed, it then gets picked up, and writes the data and progresses the workflow accordingly.

The approval is a custom approval created through SharePoint Designer, and the code that writes the data is under: Change the behaviour of a single task, When a task completes. In here I have: Wait for document to be unlocked by document editor If task process result:Number of approved equals 1 Set field to string I do this in here because I use the Current_Task:AssignedTo, Current_Task:Modified, and Current_Task:Comments variables.

My aim here is to be able to get rid of the Open Task button once the task is actually approved.

Thanks for your time.

Answer 1

I don't work with approval workflows but I will just throw this out and hopefully someone else can expand upon it. When a form or document is opened by an Office product its put into a locked state to keep someone else from making changes to it while you are editing it. Generally the lock goes away as soon as you close the form other times it gets stuck and will timeout after about 10 minutes. If its locked the workflow can't access the form to make the changes it needs to so it has to wait till the lock is lifted. I'm assuming that because its waiting for the lock that is why Open Task button still appears because it doesn't recognize the approval yet. Like I mentioned I don't have approval workflows so if someone else has a better understanding please expand on this.