different list forms for edit and new

Question

I have a custom list that one part needs to be filled out on by one department and the other part from another. One requirement is the departments don't want to have to switch between content types to get to there part of there forms.

So after trial and error I developed the below app:

Steps:

First, I created two site columns the first one has the fields that the dept. 1 needs. The second column type has what dept. 2 needs.

Then I create two site content type first one (called: dept1) is based on “Item” and I added the columns for that department. I created a second site content type (based on the one above called: dept2) and added the site columns for that department.

Then I created a new custom list and added the new site content types dept1 and dept2. Then within the SharePoint designer I open up my new custom list and click on the ribbon to modified each new content type form in InfoPath.

In infopath I setup a form load rule for dept1 that say’s if field “refno” is not blank then switch views to edit.

In share point designer I created a new edit form set it as my default and placed a web part on that page and added the form for dept2.

Up to now everything is working. Except when I go to edit the record the edit form (dept2) is the correct form but is acting like the new form not the edit . Is there any way to get dept2 to be the edit form ?

On both content type form (dept1 and dept2) I have one common called “refno”. What I thought would happen is once the first department filled out the new form then a new record would be entered in the list (which works). if I went to edit that record I would see in the edit form the field(refno) filled in while the other fields would be blank and the second department would fill in the blank fields and once the edit form was submitted it would update the record.

There is more to this workflow than the above scenario I'm just tring to get the froms worked out first.

Answer 1

Ok, if anyone runs into this post heres how I I got it to work:

As far as I can tell you can only have one form per list however.

This is not a real problem because you could have many views in a Infopath form. So I created a second view in infoPath (dept2 because it contains all the fields) and in the first view I added a rule on the form load event where its checks the field "ref_no" (see my post above) and if its not blank then I switch to the other view! I see many possibilities.