Create!Form and Transform Content Center

jdel6654

VIP Member
Is it possible to send the output from Create!form to a different content management package or document managment package besides Bottomline Transform Content Center?


Can it be sent automatically?


Are there any other output management modules besides fax, print, email and TCC ?
 
I'm working on a project now that uses LaserFische (www.laserfiche.com) as the company-wide "archiving" system.

Currently, documents from Cform are printed and then manually scanned into LaserFische. My plan is to use Cemail to write merged PDF's to a network folder and then have LaserFische pick them up and add them to the archive. I haven't gotten things configured and tested yet but all this should work automatically.


Karen.
 
Thanks for the response, Karen. Based on your other posts, it sounds like you have a very good grasp of the Bottomline products. It sounds like you have found a workaround to this limitation.

It doesn't sound like there is a "driver" for output to other document management / content management systems (eg. Documentum, Filenet, etc.). Would it be possible to just have Create!Form output the finished PDF to a folder -or- does it have to go thru Create!Email?

Thanks.
 
Hi there. Some additions on top of what Karen has indicated. Most other content management systems need to receive an additional file on top of the merged PDF in order to have it added in ... to pick up the index information for example. In most cases this can be handled relatively easily with Create!form Director or Create!Stream. The trick is in knowing what details the recipient content system needs and in what layout. We have done this for Sharepoint and also for Oracle's Content Management system, so it is certainly possible. And yes it can certainly be sent automatically, including the ability to build the file names and destination folders on the fly including data from the source document / file.

Other modules ... Director includes the Transform function / design component that allows you to transform the output to prety much any other format you need (not Word or Excel or ones like that, but CSV or XML or test). Director also lets you send to FTP sites, and can also publish the output (i.e., save / store the merged output to a folder), this is a separately licenced add on for Director. Between these options, the normal print / fax / email and the abiliity to creativly use the combinations and the other capabilities ... there is a lot you can do on the output side.
 
Also, for what it is worth ... have you looked through the posts on the BI Publisher forum here? THe level of technical understanding to do things (multiple page output, suppress blank lines, do bar codes) is a lot more complex ... on the Create!form side you typically do not see those types of questions ... because they are not an issue ...

Again I am biased, but have also been in consulting for over 25 years and always want the client to choose the right solution for their needs.
 
Making this work is not really a "limitation". Bottomline has an archiving solution, they are in business to sell that solution. If they didn't have TCC then very likely they would provide tools to publish merged forms to other archiving solutions. Getting things to work with other archive systems takes some effort, and sometimes it just doesn't work.

In the case of the project I'm working on, LaserFische is already the solution. It's been in use company-wide for years and moving everything to Carchive is not a viable solution. That would be like reinventing the wheel. I know that in my case I'm going to manually configure things in LaserFische so it knows where to look for PDF's and how to map them (where the invoice number, date, customer name, etc. is located on the page).

Regarding writing merged PDF's to a folder, that functionality depends on the version you are running. Initially the only way you could get that was with Cemail. Then they added something called "PDF Publisher", which is a licenced product. I think the latest software (v6.4 with a patch applied) can write merged PDF's to a folder as part of it's base functionality (but I haven't tested that yet).

With all that said, I agree with Michael's comments. There is good and bad in every solution.


Karen.
 
Thanks Mike! I appreciate hearing what you have to say. What you are describing is exactly what we want to do on this new E1 9.0 project. We like the Create!Form tools and output. Transform content center doesn't fill the need we have for content & document management. Since we will have 8.98 E1 tools, we think we can get the indexing info from the PDF metadata. Then load a content/doc managment server with the processed Create!form output.

The company I work for chose blue stack ;^( so, unfortunately, we will do without BI Publisher. The next steps for us would be to figure out what part of Blue Stack could be used to store the output from Create!Form.
 
Sorry to anyone reading this post ... the earlier message about BI Publisher was intended as a reply to a different topic thread in this forum ... one of those "fat fingers" moments on my part. Sorry for any confusion, and if I caused any "huh?" thoughts for anyone ...
 
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