How does Infopath forms routing work (ie an Expense Approval form)? Is a PKI required?

Question

I don't have an understanding on how the whole InfoPath product works. I know it can save data to Sharepoint. But here are a few bits of information I'm confused about:

If someone saves an Infopath form to SPS, is the entire form saved, or just the data?

How would an approval scenario work?

My employer wants to use as little code as possible for each form. They are currently using PKI that requires the end user to submit the form (to Access DB), sign the form, then save the form. I know this isn't ideal, but I don't have enough background to tell them what to do instead.

Answer 1

You could create Infopath form templates (*.xsn files) using the InfoPath 2007 form designer which is both the layout and logic (code) for the form. These forms could then be deployed into a site on a SharePoint server (that has InfoPath Form Services, which is a component of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007).

After all of the above, any user that has access to the aforementioned SharePoint site could fill the form and submit it. And typically the filled-in data would be saved as an xml file into an InfoPath Form library on the same SharePoint site.

I didn't understand what you mean by PKI. Hope that helps...

InfoPath Form Services on MSDN

Answer 2

You can digitally sign your forms, section by section. This capability is built-in Regarding showing/hiding field specific to different security roles - you can use views in InfoPath, each view targeting a different person