InfoPath with Document Information Panels (DIP) in SharePoint 2010 Document library

The document information panel DIP is a form that appears within Microsoft office documents, it can be used with documents hosted with SharePoint libraries, it allows the users entering data that can be saved later to SharePoint libraries columns and can be modified to have validation and external data retrieval using web services , in this post we will create custom document information panels using Microsoft InfoPath 2010 that collect data from user and stores it in document library metadata we will modify the look and feel for the DIP to include organization name and logo, this post is related to the main post of InfoPath Forms Options in SharePoint 2010

By customizing the Document Information Panel, you can add business logic, such as data validation, or add custom properties. In addition, by creating a template part to contain common fields, you can organize the efficient reuse of Document Information Panels in different Office release document types.

As start to display document information panel, from the file menu in office document show information panel as follows

Document information panel getting displayed as follows

Now to customize document information panel, open info path from the file menu design form

Enter the SharePoint library URL that will host the documents with DIP

select the content type in library that will have the DIP

now you can modify the design of the DIP using InfoPath , In this example Ill play with the styles and include sample Icon and add subject filed to clarify the idea

Now to publish the changes

now if you open the documents hosted on SharePoint library you can find the modified DIP as shown in figure below

The following figure shows how document property values are assigned and stored, both in the document itself and in the document library. In this example, the content type for the document includes the Title column, which is mapped to the Title core document property. In addition, if content type for example includes two other columns, Property A and Property B. Values for these properties are stored in the document in the customXml section, in the properties data store item. Changing values in the document information panel updates the values in the document itself; these new values are promoted to the document library when the document is next saved back to the library. Similarly, when you change the column value on the document library, the new column value is demoted into the document as the appropriate document property when the document is next downloaded, more information can be found at Document Information Panel and Document Properties in SharePoint Server 2010 (ECM)