Working with a client we had a need to allow anonymous users to fill out InfoPath Forms and have their responses show up in a SharePoint document library. Unfortunately, anonymous users cannot be given the right to post to a document library (for good reason) so we settled on the idea of having the form submit via e-mail to a MOSS e-mail enabled document library set to allow anonymous e-mail submissions.
However, it appears after testing that there is an issue with the way MOSS Forms Server is creating SMTP emails that causes SharePoint E-Mail enabled document libraries to be unable to accept the inbound email and the contents are simply lost (which is never a good thing).
The test scenario is as follows:
A simple (one field) MOSS InfoPath Server Form is created that uses E-Mail submission. The e-mail address given to the form is that of an e-mail enabled document library on the same server.
Results:
Submitting the form from InfoPath Server through the web interface is successful, the SMTP service on SharePoint picks up the email (confirmed by the SMTPSVC logs), SharePoint consumes the e-mail from the Pickup folder (confirmed by visually checking the message file was removed and is not sitting in any of the SMTPSVC directories) but no file is placed in the e-mail enabled document library.
Test results:
1. Submitting the form from the form server to the e-mail enabled document library is not successful.
2. Submitting the form to an Exchange end-user e-mail account is successful and the form can be opened by InfoPath 2007.
3. Saving the form XML attachment to the desktop received in the previous step, creating a new e-mail and attaching the XML file and sending it to the SharePoint e-mail enabled document library is successful. The form can then be opened from the document library.
4. Forwarding the original e-mail message from the e-mail account to the SharePoint e-mail enabled document library is NOT successful. The form never shows up in the document library.
5. Sending other attachments (e.g. an image file) to the e-mail enabled document library is successful.
The results indicate that there is something specifically about the content and structure of the e-mail that InfoPath Form Server sends that is breaking the e-mail enabled document library when it tries to import it. In addition, no errors were logged to the event manager (which they should be as SharePoint should not silently drop messages but have a proper rejection mechanism in place)