Question

PDF Conversion of Documents in IFS Aurena Attachment Panel

  • 18 May 2021
  • 5 replies
  • 387 views
M
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Hi All,

There is a request from a customer to customize the Attachments Panel in IFS Aurena (APP10 - UPD9),  to convert  the documents attached using the below options in the attachment panel as a PDF Document upon creating the document. This can be used for any of the file types (Word / Excel). Both Original version and the created PDF should be stored in DocMan.

 

I would highly appreciate if you can respond whether this is a feasible solution or if you have any previous experience related to this

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5 replies

Mathias Dahl
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The best and most stable solution would be to do something server-side, either when the document is checked in or using some process that executes afterward (perhaps using a background job). All the file upload and download in Docman is handled by Java code, so it should be possible to add a PDF-creation mechanism there. It might not be easy, and it depends on what file formats need to be converted, but surely doable.

The other option is to have the client do it, using a macro (which relies on the Aurena Agent being available), or by modifying the Aurena Agent, or some combination. The latter is not easy either, but also doable. A macro is the simplest option, but it might not cover the full requirement and there could still be gaps in Aurena in this area, so make sure to test where macros work and how they work. It’s a classic solution to have a macro create a PDF when the user checks in a file or when he saves the file or closes Word. Here, too, it depends on what file formats they want to handle.

What do they need this for?

 

/Mathias
M
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The requirement is that there is a new customization to add a new email functionality. In here the customer require the attachment panel to add in as a new window. users can attach document with any file type and this has to be converted as a PDF and store in DocMan. User should be able to select the required Original Document or the PDF version to be sent. (IFS -Outlook synchronization will be done by a third party)

Mathias Dahl
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Userlevel 7
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Aha, so it’s about the same requirement as discussed here:

I can tell you that supporting the creation of PDF files for “any file type” will not be easy to do (especially not server-side). My advice is to have the customer list down the file types they MUST have converted to PDF and some that “would be good” and look for different converters that support the most needed formats. It can be done client-side in a quite generic way, by making Windows print to a PDF, or some intermediate format that can be converted to PDF. Not easy to get stable though...

I really suggest you try to restrict the number of file types you need to support.

Good luck!

 

/Mathias
AndreasIsengaard
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I agree with @Mathias Dahl here, converting any file to PDF will be a challenge (and so far we have seen, different SDKs gives different PDF-result, especially when converting from Excel to PDF), at some customers though we have:


1. Restricted what types of files that are to be created (e.g. doc, docx).
2. Call our web service that creates a view-copy of the file.

For the restricted formats it works quite well.

For other customers that uses our Microsoft Office add-in we can both check in the original into IFS DocAdm and create a view copy in one go as such:

 

 

Regards, Andreas
M
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Userlevel 2
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@Mathias Dahl @AndreasIsengaard Many Thanks for your comments. We will look in to the solution based on your comments and to restrict the Files.

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