Hi,
I think most Docman users on IFS Cloud or Aurena on Apps 10 have found that things becomes nicer when the Aurena Agent is installed. It enables features that makes the IFS Cloud on par with what we could to on IFS Enterprise Explorer in Apps 10 and earlier.
Having said that, the Aurena Agent is not without problems. It needs to be installed, to begin with, and it's "an extra technical thing" that can break.
We would like to understand for what purposes our customers decide to install the Aurena Agent.
Here's a list of features that becomes possible when it's installed:
- Deleting local files. This is a good thing for customers that want us to remove a local file after it has been checked in (uploaded) to IFS Cloud. They don't want to have "files lying around."
- Directly open a downloaded file. Web browsers can open a file that was just downloaded, but it's up to the user to set that up and not something we can control from IFS Cloud. With the Aurena Agent we can make sure it always happen and it's what most users want. Those who don't want it can disable or uninstall the Aurena Agent and get a more basic "download only" experience.
- Remember where a file was checked out (downloaded) for editing, automatically picking it up when the user click "Check In" in IFS Cloud. A small convenient feature but once of the most annoying things when you don't have it...
- Execute macros. Makes for very nice "automation" of flows in Docman, especially document editing. The most common example is when the user creates a new document from inside IFS Cloud. We can then download a template file to the user's PC, open it, and fill it in for them, with data from IFS. It's used for viewing purposes as well and even when checking in an edited document (optionally, we can have the macro create a read-only PDF version of the file that will be checked in alongside the original, a popular thing to set up)
- View file support (see above bullet as well). Without the Aurena Agent, we cannot find that extra view file (often a PDF) that lies alongside the original file on disk, and check in that automatically. We are working on adding "manual" support for this in 25R1, and it looks like it will work, but that's more work on the user's part. So, yet another convenience feature.
- Printing directly from IFS Cloud. Similar to how we can force a document file to open on the user's PC, with the Aurena Agent we can make a document print automatically without the user first having to download the document, then manually print it from Windows or the application that is used to open it.
- Copy file to… - A simple way to export one or few documents.
Which of these features makes you install the Aurena Agent? Did I miss any reason? If you need it for many things, can you prioritize them? Do you want the Aurena Agent to enable even more features?
Thanks!
