InfoPath 2007 and InfoPath Forms Services error about user name cannot be verified

Just last week an old existing SharePoint 2007 environment was re-introduced into the InfoPath development process for my current client and this morning when trying to preview a form either through InfoPath 2007 designer or InfoPath Form Services and using the InfoPath function "UserName()" the below error was given (error when viewing through InfoPath 2007).

The full error message is

InfoPath
Your user name cannot be verified because the form's security settings do not permit it.
Error occurred during a call to property or method 'get-UserName'.

The problem started to happen when the "Domain" textbox on the "Preview" screen and "Enter the URL of a server that is running InfoPath Forms Services and can be used to verify compatibility" textbox on the "Compatibility" screen from the "Form Options" menu was set to point to the development SharePoint server. Below are visuals of the options that I'm talking about.

The error sort of took me back at first because there weren't any problems with any of the previous forms. Since this was a new form I was thinking that there was a setting that was not correct but that wasn't the case. While troubleshooting the issue I changed the form security to "Full Trust" from "Domain" and everything was working but I knew that wasn't the solution but it got me thinking in a different direction. It got me thinking that it wasn't an InfoPath problem after all. To further that theory I changed "Preview" and "Compatibility" values to point to production and when I previewed the form everything worked with no errors. This confirmed my theory in my mind that it wasn't an InfoPath problem and I started to think what else is tied into InfoPath.

So naturally I thought it could be an IE issue because we all know that IE is an integral part of InfoPath. The first thing that I did was open each SharePoint site that I was using in IE and looked at the security zone for each site. To my surprise there was a difference between them. The production site had "Local Intranet" and the development site had "Internet". You can easily tell this by looking at the bottom right corner of the IE 7 browser. After noticing this I added the development site to the "Local Intranet" zone and then tested my InfoPath form out again and there were no errors this time.

This error was a first for me since I started blogging everything on my experiences with InfoPath, InfoPath Forms Services and SharePoint for my current project. I started to really think if I ran into this problem before and I'm thinking that it might have happened with InfoPath 2003 when building custom forms for a client or on an ASP.NET project but not a 100 percent sure. I'm just really glad it wasn't a hard error to figure out.

Courtesy: http://www.sharepointblogs.com/mdlotter/archive/2007/10/10/infopath-2007-and-infopath-forms-services-error-about-user-name-cannot-be-verified.aspx

Evolution of Internet

An excellent article on where the internet and television is headed. Appeared in Daily Dawn’s Magazine in September 2007.

Is it the end?

By Bobbie Johnson

Dr Cerf, Godfather of the Internet, predicts the death of the traditional broadcast TV channel in favour of new interactive services, reports Bobbie Johnson

Thirty years ago he helped create a technology that has revolutionised millions of lives around the world. But recently the man known as the “godfather of the Internet” laid out his vision of where our online future might be, including a time when we download entire TV series in seconds – and even surf the web from Mars.

Talking at the Edinburgh International Television Festival, Vint Cerf – one of the handful of researchers who helped build the Internet in the 1970s –– said that the television industry would change rapidly as it approached its “iPod moment”.

The 64-year-old, who is now a vice-president of the web giant Google and chairman of the organisation that administrates the Internet, told an audience of media moguls that TV was rapidly approaching the same kind of crunch moment that the music industry faced with the arrival of the MP3 player.

“Eighty-five per cent of all video we watch is pre-recorded, so you can set your system to download it all the time,” he said. “You’re still going to need live television for certain things –– like news, sporting events and emergencies –– but increasingly it is going to be almost like the iPod, where you download content to look at later.”

Dr Cerf, who helped build the Internet while working as a researcher at Stanford University in California, used the festival’s Alternative McTaggart Lecture to explain to television executives how the Internet’s influence was radically altering their businesses and how it was imperative for them to view this as a golden opportunity to be exploited instead of a threat to their survival.

The arrival of Internet television has long been predicted, although it has succeeded in limited ways so far. But the popularity of websites such as YouTube –– the video sharing service bought by Google in 2005 for $1.65bn –– has encouraged many in the TV industry to try and use the Internet more profitably. Last month the BBC launched its free iPlayer download service, and digital video recorders such as Sky Plus and Freeview Playback allow viewers to instantly pause and record live television.

Dr Cerf predicted that these developments would continue, and that we would soon be watching the majority of our television through the internet – a revolution that could herald the death of the traditional broadcast TV channel in favour of new interactive services.

“In Japan you can already download an hour's worth of video in 16 seconds,” he said. “And we’re starting to see ways of mixing information together ... imagine if you could pause a TV programme and use your mouse to click on different items on the screen and find out more about them.”

Some critics, including a number of leading Internet service providers, have warned that the increase in video on the web could eventually bring down the Internet. They are concerned that millions of people downloading at the same time using services such as iPlayer could overwhelm the network.

Dr Cerf rejected these claims as “scare tactics”. “It’s an understandable worry when they see huge amounts of information being moved around online,” he said. But some pundits had predicted 20 years ago that the it would collapse when people started using it en masse, he added, “In the intervening 30 years it’s increased a million times over ... We're far from exhausting the capacity.”

Dr Cerf also revealed that he has been working on future developments for the Internet, taking it beyond the confines of planet Earth. With other researchers he has been developing systems for using the Internet to communicate and control space vehicles, including interplanetary landers sent to explore the surface of Mars.

“Up until now we've been using the so-called Deep Space Network to communicate across space with radio signals. What my colleagues and I would like to do is use a version of Internet,” he said. He said the problems encountered by the project –– such as having to wait 40 minutes for a response from a space vehicle 235m miles away –– were proving awkward, but predicted the system could eventually be used to enhance Internet communications.

“I want more Internet,” he said. “I want every one of the six billion people on the planet to be able to connect to the internet –– I think they will add things to it that will really benefit us all.” — Dawn/Guardian News Service