Lab 4: Enabling Digital Signatures in InfoPath 2007 Form Templates

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05/05/2014

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Learn how to enable digital signatures in an InfoPath form so that users can sign the form in Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007 or in Internet Explorer. Discover how end-users will interact with the form in Internet Explorer to digitally sign the entire form or parts of it. (4 printed pages)

February 2007

**Applies to:**Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007

Contents

Lab Objectives
Lab Setup and Requirements
Scenario
Exercises
Conclusion
Additional Resources

Lab Objectives

In this lab, you will learn how to perform the following tasks:

Enable a Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007 form to be signed in a Web browser
Sign an InfoPath form in Microsoft Internet Explorer

Lab Setup and Requirements

To complete this lab, you must have the following items on the client computer:

A digital certificate with which to sign the form. You can obtain a 60-day trial Class 1 Digital ID from VeriSign. In this case, VeriSign is the certification authority.
Access to a Microsoft Office SharePoint Server site on a server that is running InfoPath Forms Services.

For the user’s certificate to be trusted, the certificate of the certification authority must be installed in the Trusted Root certificate folder on the server. When you use a VeriSign certificate, it is installed with Windows Server 2003. If you are using a different certification authority, install the certificate in the Trusted Root folder on the server.

Note
You can use different Web browsers to open InfoPath forms from a server running InfoPath Forms Services; however, you can only use Internet Explorer to digitally sign InfoPath forms.

Scenario

The IT Department at Contoso Corporation has been asked to add support for digital signatures to the employee performance review form. Because many of the Contoso employees travel and work remotely, the forms must be available to be completed and signed in a Web browser.

Exercises

Creating and Signing the Form Template

You will first create a form template that can be signed, and then sign it with a digital certificate in Internet Explorer.

To create a form template that can be signed in Internet Explorer

Start Office InfoPath 2007.
In the Getting Started dialog box, click Design a Form Template.
In the Design a Form Template dialog box, click the Form Template option, and then select Blank.
Check the Enable browser-compatible features only check box, and then click OK.
On the Design Tasks task pane, click the Controls link.
On the Controls task pane, drag a section into the view.

This will be the main section for your form.
Drag controls into this section to customize the employee review form.

When completed, your form should look similar to Figure 1.

Figure 1. Creating an Employee Review form
Right-click the tab at the bottom of the main section labeled Section and select Section Properties.
In the Section Properties dialog box, select the Digital Signatures tab.
Select the Allow users to digitally sign this section check box.
In the Sign the following data in the form when this section is signed list, select Add data that can be signed.
In the Set of Signable Data dialog box, select the Allow only one signature option, and then click OK, as shown in the following Figure 2.

Figure 2. Inserting the Digital Signature
On the File menu, click Save, and save the form to the computer desktop.
On the File menu, click Publish.
In the Publishing Wizard, select To a SharePoint server with or without InfoPath Forms Services, and then click Next.
Type the URL of your SharePoint Server site, and click Next.
Click the Document Library option, select the Enable this form to be filled out by using a browser option, and then click Next.
Click the Create a new document library option, and click Next.
In the Name text box, type EmployeeReview as the name for your document library, and then click Next.
You are not promoting any properties in the form, so click Next to skip this screen. Then click Publish.
Click the Open this form in a browser link.

The form is displayed in an Internet Explorer window.
Switch back to InfoPath and select the Open this document library check box.
On the last page of the Publishing Wizard, click Close.

To digitally sign the InfoPath form in Internet Explorer

Navigate to your form by entering the following URL. Replace <ServerName> with the name of your SharePoint server.

http://<ServerName>/_layouts/FormServer.aspx?xsnlocation=http:// <ServerName>/EmployeeReview/forms/template.xsn&OpenIn=browser

Note
If you publish to a SharePoint Server site, include the site name in the URL after <ServerName>. For example, http://<ServerName>/Sites/<SiteName>/_layouts/FormServer.aspx?xsnlocation=http://<ServerName>/Sites/<SiteName>/EmployeeReview/forms/template.xsn&OpenIn=browser.

Click the Click here to sign this section link at the bottom of the form.

A License Agreement dialog box appears.
Select the I accept check box, and click Next.
Click Install to install the digital signature control software.
Fill out the Signing Web page dialog box, and click Sign when you are finished.

To enable the I have verified this content before signing check box, you must select the digital certificate that you obtained from the certificate authority.
The signature is now visible on the form.

Conclusion

In these exercises, you learned how to modify an InfoPath form to be signed in an Internet Explorer browser window. You saw how users can interact with the form in Internet Explorer to digitally sign it.

To learn how to convert existing Microsoft Word documents into InfoPath forms to take advantage of the InfoPath form design and form-filling features, see Lab 5: Importing Word Forms into InfoPath 2007.

Additional Resources

For more information about developing with InfoPath, see the following resources: