Home
> SharePoint 2010 > InfoPath 2010 People picker control
InfoPath 2010 People picker control
New with InfoPath 2010 is a People Picker control, this acts like the People Picker in SharePoint and allows you to choose contacts from AD.
I was using this control recently and wanted to promote the chosen person value to a list when the form is submitted, to my surprise I found that the submitted value was just a text value, not a presence aware name, so had none of the rich integration that OCS or Lync offers.
To get around this drawback I had to write a small workflow that fired when the form was submitted.
The workflow read the list value into a variable and then wrote it back to another column in the same list, but was key was to make the return field data type an Email Address.
Now we have a presence aware Name value.
Categories: SharePoint 2010
InfoPath 2010, SharePoint 2010, SharePoint Designer 2010, Workflow
SharePoint (and Project Server) Shenanigans 
Worked like a charm…thanks.
Nice post!
zee
http://walisystemsinc.com
I have recreated your scenario but I am missing something (I can only assume since it is not working for me) – What is “inside” your “Current Item” that you are updating?
Hi There,
I was submitting a Form to a Form library, and promoting some of the fields to the library.
For the people picker I was promoting the ‘middle’ value in the fields list, “AccountId”, The workflow ran when an item was submitted, so the current item was just what had been submitted, the only way I found to make this work as to make sure your return field type was an email address,.
Dont forget to add a comment into your workflow so you can see whats going on.
Hi Giles,
Have you been able to get it to work with multiple people selected in the people picker field? For me, it works great with one but not for multiple selections.
Hi Marc,
Although you can easily use a multiple selection people picker control within InfoPath, when the values are published to a list, they come through as a string value and therefore cannot be used in the same way in list views or workflow.
What is the scenario you are having issues with?
Kind Regards
Giles
Hi Giles,
I upgrading a leave request form where the people picker field is being used to specify the requestors designated backups. Workflows on the SharePoint list send email notifications to these users during the approval process and when the leave is approaching for a reminder. I’ll look into parsing the string to possibly recreate it with a semicolon separating the users. Maybe that will work.