Deployment Scenarios and Forms Service Security

Deploying an InfoPath form involves examining the type of InfoPath development that was performed, whether the forms you developed were codeless or code-bound. When developing custom forms that don’t hook into any backend business logic, the forms can simply be deployed to the server by an end user for consumption by other organizational units. However, if the .XSN contains backend business logic, a server administrator must intervene in the deployment process in order to deploy the form, providing the vital step of allowing activation of the form before the form is consumed by the user base. Server administrator intervention is also required when other conditions for form deployment are met, namely if the form being deployed requires full-trust, since Forms Services offers domain trust or restricted security as the only other options. Server administrator intervention is required if the form is leveraging a data connection that is building a sensitive data pipe, and therefore is managed by the server administrator. These data connections are usually managed through the use of a Data Connection Library, and the relevant data connections must be approved before they are available for users that are using the SharePoint Form Designer.

Form Verification

As pointed out earlier in this section, there are several deployment considerations to take into consideration when deploying an InfoPath XmlFormView control. The first to consider is the list of unsupported controls that HTML cast forms are subject to. The following is a list of the controls that are supported within Forms Server as well as those that are not supported.

Supported and Unsupported Controls

Supported Controls	Not Supported Controls
Text Box	Combo box
Rich Text Box	Plan Lists
List Box	Bulleted Lists
Date Picker	Numbered Lists
Drop-Down List Box	Multiple-selection list box
Check Box	Picture
Option Button	File Attachment
Button	Scrolling and Horizontal Regions
Repeating Table	Repeating Choice Groups
Repeating Section	Vertical Label
Section	Picture and Ink Pictures
Optional and Repeating	Custom Controls
Hyperlink	Choice Group
Expression	Repeating Recursive Section
File Attachment	Ink Picture
File and Picture	Horizontal Repeating Table

When deploying a form to the Forms Server, it will verify that you are not using any of the above controls along with the warning and errors that are thrown for your custom form, going back to the “Design Once” principle that was introduced earlier.

Form verification can be performed by the server administrator prior to the deployment of a form by using the STSADM command line tool provisioned by SharePoint by navigating to the