Deploy Browser-Enabled InfoPath Forms based on Content Types

I want to…

…deploy a few InfoPath forms based on content types. Some of the site columns are used across many content types. I need some level of control on the content type generation and deployment.

How…

The deployment of browser-enabled InfoPath forms using features is described in http://blah.winsmarts.com/2008-8-Deploying_InfoPath_2007_Forms_to_Forms_Server_-and-ndash_Properly.aspx post. However this post is not specific to content type based forms and it doesn’t describe how to deploy the associated content types.

Steps:

• Create site columns and content types. (You can create this in your Sharepoint site as a manual operation). You can reuse site columns across content types.
• Publish form with “Publishing Wizard”.
• Select “To a SharePoint server with or without InfoPath Forms Services” and click next.
• Select the Sharepoint site and click next.
• Select “Site Content Type (advanced)” and click next. Note: If this option is not available you have to remove the code behind during this process.
• Select “Update an existing site content type”, choose one of the content types created at step 1 and click next.
• Map form fields to content type site columns.
• Publish.
• Export the updated content types using the stsadm extension available here http://stsadm.blogspot.com/2008/02/export-content-types.html. The exported fields will look similar to:
• Create a feature that installs the exported content types. Note: Remove the unrecognized Field properties (a few of them are used behind the scene and are not validated by the schema).

Conclusion

The publishing process should be automatic and reproducible. Publishing relying on “Publishing Wizard” is an administration operation more than a deployment one. The described solution provides a mechanism for controlling the creation and deployment of InfoPath content types.