Requirement:  Submit schedule change requests to SharePoint so supervisors can approve them through workflow.

Challenge:  I needed to be able to create these list/library items with unique names per person, so no one has more than one schedule request active at a time.

 

Solution:  This wasn't a case where I could use a survey or custom list to get the user data into SharePoint--it would have to be Infopath.  I created my schedule maker in InfoPath and learned to capture the current user name from SharePoint using web services and store it in the InfoPath form as a variable.

 

I used this blog article which has some great screen shots but missed one important element--full trust.  After I had the form published, the only way it would work was with Full Trust on.  I followed these instructions from Microsoft, using the Central Administration method to add my template to the site (pointing to my forms library on the submit action). 

 

One other thing that I think helped which was not covered in itaysk's article was the use of a context pointer.  I already had one for my people picker, here are the instructions:

After changing the filename in the submit action, schedule requests are saved to a forms library with the username as the filename and overwrite's that user's previous schedule request.  The next step is to have users select a manager from Active Directory in the form and use that in an automatic approval workflow (I'll write that up later).

 

Thanks to itaysk for the detailed directions of userprofileservice.

 

Here is a link to my InfoPath schedule block.  It's setup for a 35-hour work week which is the union standard here, but that's easy to change using the default values.