Live Forms - SharePoint Configuration Scenarios

1. Cloud Customers Connecting to SharePoint Online - This configuration had been certified by frevvo. Follow these steps:
   
   1. Configure Live Forms as a SharePoint Add-in
   2. Configure SharePoint for your Live Forms tenant.
   3. Connect your Forms/Flows using the SharePoint wizard.
      
      

2. In-house Customers connecting to SharePoint Online - This configuration has been certified by frevvo.   Follow these steps:

   frevvo only supports/certifies the SharePoint Connector running in the Apache Tomcat container.

   1. Configure Live Forms as a SharePoint Add-in
   2. Configure SharePoint for your Live Forms tenant
   3. Download the SharePoint Connector. Rename it to sharepoint.war. Copy it to the <frevvo-home>\tomcat\webapps folder

   4. Connect your Forms/Flows using the SharePoint wizard.

      Prerequisites for this configuration:

      • SSL must be installed on your frevvo server
      • Your frevvo server must be able to talk to Office 365

      When configuring a test tenant for the SharePoint Connector, you can use this workaround to bypass SSL Security. Do not do this for a Production tenant.

3. In-house customers using SharePoint On-premise - this configuration is supported but not certified.

   1. Customers using SharePoint On-premise also need an Office 365 SharePoint Online account. This is necessary to obtain an authorization token. There is no data transfer from the SharePoint On-premise to SharePoint Online.

   2. Customers are responsible for configuring the On-premise installation and the integration with SharePoint Online.

   3. The On-premise version of SharePoint must be version 2013+.

   4. Refer to this Microsoft website for information about how to use Office 365 to allow  to authenticate.
      
      

4.  Live Forms Cloud customers connecting to SharePoint On-premise - This configuration is supported but considered unlikely as SharePoint On-premise requires your On-premise SharePoint to be exposed to the Cloud. 
   1.  Customers are responsible for configuring the On-premise installation and it's exposure to the Cloud.     
      

Configuring the SharePoint Connector

These instructions assume you are a frevvo Cloud customer or have an in-house installation of  up and running using the frevvo Tomcat bundle. Follow these steps:

Step 1 - Configure Live Forms as a SharePoint App/Add-in

must be added as a SharePoint provider hosted add-in by your SharePoint Administrator. The process is described in Steps 1 and 2 on this Microsoft SharePoint website. Copy the Client Id and client Secret and save them somewhere on your desktop. You will need to add these values when configuring your tenant for SharePoint.

Here are some tips

• The Title can be anything that can differentiate your frevvo SharePoint application from other applications.
• The app domain field should be the server domain name plus the SSL port. It should be the same <server>:<port> as the redirect URL.
  • app.frevvo.com:443 for Cloud customers
  • localhost:8443 for an in-house installation.
• The Redirect URI for is shown below where the <server>:<port>  is the same host and port in the URL used to access frevvo.
  
  • For a cloud customer, that would be app.frevvo.com:443.
  • For an on-premise customer, a typical example would be localhost:8443.
    
    

https://<server>:<port>/frevvo/web/sharepoint/token

• The Permission Request XML should be: You can copy/paste this xml into the Permission Request XML box.
  
  

<AppPermissionRequests AllowAppOnlyPolicy="true">
<AppPermissionRequest Scope="http://sharepoint/content/tenant" Right="Manage" />
</AppPermissionRequests>

Remember SharePoint only allows https.

Step 2 - Configure the Live Forms Tenant for SharePoint

Cloud and in-house customers must configure their tenant to connect to SharePoint as a client. frevvo expects that customers will only be integrating with one SharePoint instance for their organization. You will need the SharePoint Client Id and the Client Secret from Step 1.

Follow these steps:

1. Login to as the tenant admin

2. Click the Edit Tenant link.

3. Click the  blue arrow to expand the SharePoint section.

4. Enter the Connector URL. - This URL is needed if you are using  in the cloud and installing the connector locally. Enter the URL where your installation that is configured for SharePoint is located. This URL must use the https protocol.

   The URL in the Connector URL field will override the connector URL that is specified in the configuration property in the <frevvo-home>\tomcat\conf\frevvo-config.properties file. In some cases you can leave this field blank.

   The default value is shown below:
   frevvo.sharepoint.connector.url=http://localhost:8082/sharepoint

5. Enter the Client Id and the Client Secret that you saved in Step 1 into the respective fields.
   
   
   
   

6. Enter the SharePoint Domain Name e.g. <Your SharePoint tenant name>.sharepoint.com - there is a dot between the SharePoint tenant name and sharepoint.com
7. To determine the realm for your SharePoint site :

   1. Navigate to https://<tenant>.sharepoint.com/_layouts/appprincipals.aspx - change the <tenant> to the name of your SharePoint tenant - e.g. https://frevvo.sharepoint.com/_layouts/appprincipals.aspx

   2. Find your registered application in the list and and look at the App Identifier column. The unique identifier after the @-sign in the App Identifier is the app realm and must be entered in the Realm field.
      
      
      
      

8. Click Submit
9. Browse http://<your server:port>/sharepoint/health (replace <your server:port> with your frevvo server:port) to check the status of the connector. If the connector is up and running, you will see { "status" : "UP" }.
10. Proceed to Connect Forms/Flows with the Save to SharePoint wizard

Step 3 - Connect Forms and Flows with the SharePoint wizard

1. Login as a  designer user.

2. Create your form or flow with controls that capture the data that you want to store in the columns configured in the Lists and Libraries on your SharePoint website

3. Click on the what happens to my data? icon on the designer toolbar.

4. Select the Sharepoint Connector option. If the tenant is not configured for SharePoint, the Save to SharePoint wizard will not display.
   
   
   
   
5. You’ll be redirected to login to SharePoint or Office 365 if you are logging into your account for the first time.
   
   1. On successful login, you will be asked to grant or deny access for your  SharePoint add-in.
      
      
      
      

Click Trust It to authenticate and grant permission to . You will not see the trust screen on subsequent logins. The wizard will display.

1. You can set up a single Document Action to write to multiple places (SharePoint Library and List). Add a route for the second destination by clicking the Route 2 icon.

   1. Select a format for the Snapshot to be saved in SharePoint. The choices are: PDF, PNG or JPEG. If you do not check the Snapshot checkbox under the Destination Type section, you can leave this field empty.

      
      
      

   2. Enter the site URL - this is the SharePoint site or subsite containing the destination e.g. https://frevvo.sharepoint.com - Remember this URL must specify the https protocol. This value is read in from the SharePoint tenant configuration screen for Route 1.

   3. Set up the first location (route) where you want to save your files in SharePoint. SharePoint destinations can be a Library (and optionally a Folder), or List. Select Library or List from the Destination Type dropdown.

   4. The wizard pulls the list of Libraries and Lists configured on your SharePoint site to populate the Library/List dropdown. Select Library or List. Only destinations that the user has access to are displayed.

      1. If your Library has folders configured, the wizard will display a dropdown listing them. Select the destination folder from the list.

   5. Select a Content Type from the dropdown. The wizard automatically pulls the content type choices from your SharePoint site. The Content Type determines the available metadata column names for mapping. For example, if the destination is a Document list you would see Item as a choice for the Content Type. This means your submission is saved as a new item on your SharePoint list. Document Libraries show Document.as the Content Type.

   6. Check the types of files to be saved to the selected destination. The choices are:

      1. Data - checking this includes the XML document to be saved

      2. Snapshot - checking this includes a snapshot of your form/flow in the format selected in the Snapshot Format field to be saved

      3. Files - checking this includes attachments uploaded to your forms/flows to be saved. The wizard automatically lists the Upload Controls in your form/flow by name when Files is checked. The attachments for the selected Upload Controls will be saved in the configured destination. 

      4. Gen Forms - this checkbox appears if you have mapped PDFs associated with your form/flow e.g. W-4 and I-9 filled out by a new employee. Select the mapped PDFs that you want to store in SharePoint.
         
         
         
         

   7. Map the Control Names in your form/flow to the column names in your SharePoint destination. The wizard will populate the Column Name dropdown with all the columns in the destination but a maximum of 15 controls can be mapped.

      When mapping Message controls with templates to the SharePoint Connector, the Save Value property should be checked.

2. Click Submit.

3. Click the save and test icon to save the form/flow and bring up Test mode popup.

4. If you configure a second Route, clicking the Clear Route button removes the information for Route 2 only.
   
   

Special Characters in Filenames

If you want to customize the name of the PDF of your form/flow to Sharepoint, make sure you have Save PDF checked. An optional field that is used to name the PDFs displays. You can use templates in this field. For example, if you have a control called EmployeeName in your form, you can type {EmployeeName} into the PDF Name field and the pdf's in the on your SharePoint site will be named {EmployeeName}.pdf.

•  If you leave the PDF Name property blank, Live Forms uses the flow/form name as the pdf file name. The PDF will not post to SharePoint generating an HTTP 500 status error if the Form Name contains special characters. To avoid any issues, name your form/flows using characters that are suitable for filenames and explicitly set the pdf name in the form/flow using the same standard. Following the POSIX filename standard (A–Z a–z 0–9 . _ - ) will ensure it works.
• Special characters in filenames will cause the submission to be flagged with an error in the submission table.

Check Submissions on SharePoint

When the form is submitted or the flow is completed, submission data, metadata and attachments are uploaded to the specified destination in your SharePoint account

Verify your stored submissions on your SharePoint website:

1. Test your form/flow by filling in data, adding attachments, and submiting/completing it.
2. Login to your SharePoint account and navigate to the specified destination. The image shows submissions saved to a SharePoint list named Demo List and the John Edwards submission data and attachments.

Troubleshooting

The SharePoint Connector generates it's own logfile. Typically, the log is first place to look for information when an issue is encountered. Information about the logfile and some common issues with solutions are listed below.

SharePoint Connector Logfile

If you are using the frevvo tomcat bundle, the SharePoint Connector log is located in <frevvo-home>\tomcat\logs. The logfile is named sharepoint-connector.YYYY-MM-DD.log. Generating separate logfiles make it much easier to search for errors when troubleshooting connector issues. The connector is designed to use the frevvo-config.properties file.

The SharePoint connector logfile defaults to INFO loglevel. To see DEBUG level messages in the SharePoint Connector log:

1. Stop
2. Edit a frevvo-config.properties file in <frevvo-home>\tomcat\conf
3. Add the two properties shown below or add the logging.level.=DEBUG to see DEBUG messages in the frevvo and any connector logs.
4. Save the file
5. Restart
   
   

logging.level.com.frevvo.connector=DEBUG
logging.level.com.frevvo.connectors=DEBUG

Generate the SharePoint Connector log in JSON format

Logging output defaults to text format. To switch to JSON format, add this property to the frevvo-config.properties file.

spring.profiles.include=logging-json 

Doc Post Failure

If the submission doesn't reach your SharePoint website - if does not receive a response back from SharePoint with a status code of 200, you can find information about the error from the submission table.

All tenant admin(s) in your tenant or flow admin(s) configured for specific workflows will receive a Doc Post Failure notification email to alert them that an issue has occurred.

Max file size

The maximum size for all fevvo connectors is set to unlimited. Any size file can be uploaded to and posted to SharePoint.

Determine the version of the SharePoint Connector you are using:

To determine the version of the SharePoint connector you are using:

1. Browse http://<your server:port>/sharepoint/info  - the version information is returned as shown in the image.