I've created a BSV that I call DocumentManager to test out some concepts.
One main thing that it solves is the naming of the PDF files to "real" names (rather than AwareIM's default PDF name of RDDoc......). That was a real stumbling block that I needed to solve because the users MS Access systems I have created are accustomed to PDF names that are very descriptive -- in fact they are dynamically generated to include the from / to dates of monthly financial reports. Naming like this makes historical archiving of the PDFs very intuitive.
What I'll describe below is the first cut & I'm sure can be improved:
1- Create a BO: DocumentManager
2- DocumentManager attributes:
a- DateTimeStored - type: timestamp
b- Department - type: plain text -- used for categorizing
c- Description - type: plain text -- describes content of report
d- Doc - type: document -- holds the PDF report
e- ReportNumber - report # that is printed on top right of each report
DocumentManager BO is a place that will hold PDFs and appropriate descritions of those reports.
Next step is to create a Process that will send an AwareIM Document to the DocumentManager BO. The EXPORT & subsequest IMPORT allow for a "real" name to be applied to the report. Steps in a sample 4 step process:
1) EXPORT DOCUMENT SampleReport1 TO FILE 'c:/AwareIM/Sample Report 1.pdf'
2) CREATE DocumentManager WITH DocumentManager.Description='Sample Report 1 sorted by attribute 1',DocumentManager.Department='Finance',DocumentManager.ReportNumber='301'
3) IMPORT DOCUMENT DocumentManager.Doc FROM 'c:/AwareIM/Sample Report 1.pdf'
4) DISPLAY 'Documents Available to View'
Step 4 is a Query that displays all items in the DocumentManager BO with the most recent item on the top line. I have 2 buttons on each line: Email & View. Email will send the given report to the LoggedInRegularUser 's email address & view performs a DISPLAY DOCUMENT. The difference here is that the PDF displayed is named with the 'real' name assigned by the process.
One remnant of this process is that PDFs are left on the server hard drive from the EXPORT process in Step 1. Can anyone help me with a procedure that would delete that PDF after IMPORT DOCUMENT from Step 3 is complete?
In addition to "real names" for PDFs, the DocumentManager BO allows someone in an organization to control the report flow if that is desired. We have some situations where we want to review reports before making them available to clients or other departments, so the DocumentManager wil allow reports to be produced & reviewed by 1 department before being made available to others in a Query / email process.
I'd love to hear feedback about suggestions for improvement / application to other scenarios, etc.
Tom
