Populating form fields automatically from active directory in sharepoint

Question

I have a custom list in my SharePoint 2010 website. When I am adding a new item to a custom SharePoint 2010 list, I want to auto populate data from active directory in the respective fields (other details of the user) when I enter the exact user Id in the first field and I will also like to send the field content as an email. - I understand that I can do this easily with MS Infopath, however my organization use the SharePoint standard edition which does not support creating forms using MS Infopath and creating a custom webpart is also not allowed by the company standard.

Can it be done through SharePoint designer or any other way besides out of the box options. Will gladly appreciate you guys help..

Answer 1

This cannot be done in SharePoint 2010 without creating an InfoPath form or publishing a solution. You can use a people picker field to get some user data, but you cannot make it fill in other fields. If you upgrade your SharePoint to handle InfoPath, you would connect to the User Profile service to get Active Directory data. If you want to publish a solution, you'll need to set up and learn about developing SharePoint solutions in Visual Studio.

SharePoint 2013 has better javascript integration. If you upgrade to 2013 and still desire this functionality, you should come to the SharePoint SE and search/ask for javascript to scrape the User Profile service and to populate fields by default. It might not be possible, but it would be worth a shot.