Person / Group Picker Improvements in InfoPath 2010

Hi, this is Frank Mueller, a developer on the InfoPath team. In this post which is the first of two blog posts about the Person / Group picker, I want to tell you about the improvements we’ve made to this control in InfoPath 2010.

The Person / Group Picker (aka contact selector) control allows you to type or select users and groups from a SharePoint site, and validate those users against a directory provider. In InfoPath 2010, the Person / Group Picker control is now a 1st class citizen and is available out of the box in the controls gallery! With the new and improved person / group picker, we have eliminated the detailed steps required to insert and configure this control in your forms (the blog post outlining these steps has been one of our most viewed posts). In addition to making the control available in the controls gallery out of the box, we have added new features to improve its integration into SharePoint scenarios.

For information on how to upgrade InfoPath 2007 forms with Person/Group Picker controls to InfoPath 2010, click here .

Adding the Person/Group Picker to your form

From the Controls Gallery on the Home tab or the Controls task pane, click the Person/Group Picker to insert it into the view.

Controls Gallery

Specifying a SharePoint site to query for people and groups

The Person/Group Picker needs to connect to a SharePoint site to be able to function. Specify the SharePoint site as follows, unless you have already published the form to a SharePoint site, in which case that site will be used.

  1. Right-click the control in the view and select Person/Group Picker Properties from the context menu

  2. In the Person/Group Picker Properties dialog, select the SharePoint Server tab

  3. Type the URL of the SharePoint site you want to query

    Control Properties

  4. Click OK to close the dialog

Specifying data validation (optional)

In InfoPath 2010 it is now possible to mark the field the people picker is bound to as Cannot be blank. This means that users will not be able to submit a form without having entered at least one valid person or group in the control. You can mark a field as required by doing the following:

  1. Select the control in the view
  2. In the Properties tab in the Modify chunk, click the Cannot be blank checkbox

 

PPickerCBB

Testing the control

Preview the form in InfoPath Designer or publish the form to a SharePoint site and view the form, enter a name or logon alias, click the “Check Names” button and resolve the name! Alternatively, you can click the “Address book” button to perform a search if you do not know the complete name of the user.

For information on how to upgrade InfoPath 2007 forms with Person/Group Picker controls to InfoPath 2010, check out my other post here.

Frank Mueller

InfoPath Developer