{"id":378,"date":"2016-07-07T10:33:55","date_gmt":"2016-07-07T14:33:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ccrossan.com\/?p=378"},"modified":"2016-07-07T10:33:55","modified_gmt":"2016-07-07T14:33:55","slug":"display-approval-tasks-infopath-form","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crossan007.dev\/blog\/infopath\/display-approval-tasks-infopath-form\/","title":{"rendered":"Display Approval Tasks on InfoPath Form"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n

I’be been working through building InfoPath forms to streamline the approval process of some internal documents, and one of the project requirements is to display the date \/ time as well as comments of each person who approves a document.<\/p>\n

I built a SharePoint Designer workflow which first\u00a0computes\u00a0the approval routing (which varies between 8 and 10 approvers depending on the value of some fields), \u00a0then collects the approvals via the “Start Approval Process” task, and then emails up to 10 SharePoint groups based on a different set of criteria on each document.<\/p>\n

SharePoint Designer Workflows store these “Assigned Tasks” in a Task List, which the developer is able to specify<\/a>. \u00a0Each Task in the Task List contains a\u00a0HIDDEN COLUMN\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>called WorkflowItemId<\/strong> which associates the Task with the Item against which the workflow is running. \u00a0 This column is a pesky little bugger for reasons explained below.<\/p>\n

There is a blog post<\/a> which describes one method for displaying all approvals tasks on the actual InfoPath form which goes roughly as follows:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Create a new custom list containing all of the columns you need to reference<\/li>\n
  2. Edit the “Behavior of a Single Task” for the Approval Process in question so that if the outcome is approved, add a new item to the custom list<\/li>\n
  3. Add a Data Connection on the InfoPath form to pull data from the new custom list and display it on the form.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    I didn’t want to go through the hassle of creating a\u00a0separate list <\/em>for each workflow I’m running, just to store data that’s already being stored in the associated Task List.<\/p>\n

    So, the big question:\u00a0Why don’t you just add the Task List as an InfoPath Datasource and call it a day?<\/strong><\/p>\n

    Well, the answer to that question may infuriate you: you are unable to filter the list according to the ID of the item in question because the attribute that stores the item id (WorkflowItemId) is\u00a0forcibly hidden!\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n