InfoPath Property Promotion Woes

Note: I experienced this issue with Administrator Approved templates only. I am unaware if this is a problem with either of the other publishing methods or if it will fix those problems.

I have been having issues lately with property promotion in InfoPath 2007 forms. When I create, publish, and deploy a form to a SharePoint site, promoted properties function correctly. If I add new structural elements and property promotion settings to a form after it has been deployed to a SharePoint site and is in use in a form library, then the new properties do not appear in SharePoint at all.

This has surfaced as a concern within my company as we have a few forms in use which require structural/property promotion changes. After several days of searching for any information on the capabilities and limitations of property promotion, I stumbled upon the following forum entry: Property Promotion - Full Trust Form - TechNet Forums.

In this forum post, there is some discussion of whether this is a bug or by design and possible resolutions.

Jasbury summed up the thread as:

The workarounds presented in this thread suggest the following:

• Rebuild the library or site


• Replace InfoPath’s “Automatically determine security level” with “Domain Security”


• Deactivate/Reactivate the InfoPath Form Template from the Site Collections

The first suggestion was not an option for my situation.
The second suggestion did not apply to me as I experienced problems with automatic, domain, and full trust permission levels.
The third option, however, was right on the mark. Once I deactivated/reactivated the template, the new properties were promoted successfully.

Thanks to bobchauvin for originally suggesting this:

I also notice when using the Publish to Sharepoint as a content type that a change to the promoted cols wont take effect until you disable and then re-enable the content type for the site collection.

With a little investigation, I discovered what was causing Jasbury's problem here:

I was able to deactivate/reactivate with some success (thanks for this work-around!!!). The missing content type columns were added. However, changes to InfoPath property promotion were not reflected...huge bummer!! That leaves me with no other options that to start over…again!

This is due to the order in which the steps were completed rather than a bug within SharePoint/InfoPath. Field values within an InfoPath form are copied into the corresponding SharePoint columns when the form is saved/submitted. If people have been filling out forms prior to fixing the missing columns in the content type, these values will not be stored anywhere. Once the content type is correct, simply open any forms and save them again for the values to be copied.

I recommend the following order for updating a form which has property promotion/structural changes:

1. Deactivate the form from all site collections it is active on


2. Upload the new version of the form


3. Reactivate the form on all necessary site collections

When you go to your SharePoint site, the content type will now reflect the correct promoted properties, and these columns will be available for use withn your form library views.

Enjoy!
--andrew