Goodbye WhoAmI! Hello userName()

Anyone who's tried to get the username of the person filling out their form in InfoPath 2003 knows the WhoAmI web service. That was the only way to get the username without writing Visual Basic or C# managed code and using System.Environment.UserName.

 

In InfoPath 2007 we built an easier way.

 

Announcing a new formula function: userName()

Now you can simply set the default value to the current form-filler's username. No code, no data connections, no custom web service. Just use the formula dialog and select the function from the category "All":

 

 

To get a default value like this:

 

 

If that's too easy for you, use it in script

If you're writing script anyway, or if you need to check this value as part of a bigger algorithm and don't want to persist the username anywhere in the form, then you can also access this value in script:

 

Application.User.UserName

 

Of course, you can also use this in C# or Visual Basic, but you could always use System.Environment.UserName, so that's nothing new.

 

Either way requires Domain Trust

For security reasons, either approach will make your form require domain trust, so you'll need to publish the form to a shared location (like Windows SharePoint Services) for the function to work.

 

Enjoy!

-ned