Assign multiple users document permissions using one InfoPath people picker

Question

I'm trying to have my InfoPath 2010 form (actually using InfoPath 2013 but set to 2010) be able to use one People Picker control to pass multiple account ID's in order to set document-level permissions on a SharePoint 2010 workflow (via Impersonation Step).

The method that has worked has been: Once the AccountID has been submitted via the IP form, a quick workflow runs setting "Shared_Group" Person/Group column to the AccountID string and, voilà, the list now populates with the working Account username. Then workflow then uses the "Shared_Group" to set the proper document permission level.

When I enable the InfoPath people picker to be able to select multiple users, and allow the SharePoint list person/group column to allow multiple users, the workflow only updates one account entered into the IP people picker. I've tried changing the InfoPath submit options to "first" and "merge" for "AccountID" but nothing has worked.

Basically the process is: 1) Choose users in InfoPath people picker 2) Set list variable to users AccountIDs 3) Workflow runs in Impersonation Step to set document permissions to relevant users

Any advice?? Thanks!!

Answer 1

From what I can tell, using one multiple people picker to assign multiple permissions via an Impersonation step is not possible on SharePoint with out of the box options. The workaround I found was to create 10 different people picker fields and set the "Account ID" data to a separate Library column that is the data type "person/group." From there, you can assign specific permissions as you wish via the Impersonation step using the 10 different Library column inputs.