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Question

What type of PDF does Workflow create?

asked on May 27, 2019

Hello!

We have a potential client that is needing the ability to bulk export repository documents, convert them to PDF/A, zip them, and send it to another piece of software. Simply put, is this something that Workflow can accomplish? I know that the Update Word Document task has a convert to PDF option, but I'm not certain what type of PDF it's creating. Moreover, I'm not sure if there are other ways to get PDFs out of documents if they are in a different format than Word. Any suggestions would be awesome.

Thanks!

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Answer

SELECTED ANSWER
replied on May 28, 2019 Show version history

Hello,

There's no built-in option for exporting as PDF to a network location, but you can use an SDK Script activity within Workflow to some document types to PDF, and PDF/A is one of the options.

It would look something like this

                    // Build a list of watermarks and add tag watermarks associated with the document
                    List<WatermarkSpecification> watermarks = new List<WatermarkSpecification>();
                    foreach(TagWatermark w in doc.GetTagWatermarks()){
                        watermarks.Add(new WatermarkSpecification(w.WatermarkText,w.WatermarkTextSize,w.WatermarkRotation,w.WatermarkPosition,String.Empty,0,String.Empty,0,w.WatermarkIntensity));
                    }

                    // Initialize document exporter
                    DocumentExporter dExp = new DocumentExporter();

                    // Configure document exporter settings
                    dExp.CompressionQuality = compression;
                    dExp.IncludeAnnotations = true;
                    dExp.BlackoutRedactions = true;
                    dExp.PageFormat = DocumentPageFormat.Jpeg;
                    dExp.Watermarks = watermarks;

                    // Set PDF export options to flatten annotations and include searchable text
                    PdfExportOptions ExportOptions = PdfExportOptions.RenderAnnotationsAsImage | PdfExportOptions.IncludeText | PdfExportOptions.PdfAConformance;

                    // Export PDF
                    dExp.ExportPdf(doc, doc.AllPages, ExportOptions, file);

Note the PdfExportOptions.PdfAConformance option being set for the ExportOptions.

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replied on May 28, 2019

Hi Jason!

This looks great, thanks! We'll likely be using something similar to it if we go ahead with this potential customer. 

As a point of pedantry, there are some (very) limited options to exporting to PDF in Workflow, specifically the Update Word Document task (you can specify that it saves as PDF), and also the Email task, where you can attach documents as a PDF as well. Not great options for bulk work, but they exist! 

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replied on May 28, 2019 Show version history

To clarify, what I meant is in most cases Workflow doesn't have any options to take a document and export a PDF to a network location or another application.

I updated my post to be more specific since as you pointed out there are exceptions.

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