Question

Making Forms "File Uploads" Part of the Main Form

Forms Workflow

Updated April 1, 2021

asked on January 27, 2021

Is it possible to build a workflow that will take the attachments submitted with a form and add them as pages to the form itself? We have a paper process that I'm converting and it requires up to 7 different attachments. It's hard for me to sell this digital process as an improvement when it's now creating 8 separate documents within the repository.

Yes, I know they can be imported to the repository as "Attachments" and viewed under the Links tab, but this isn't as efficient or clean as having one document end up in the repository with all attachments included.

I found a thread asking about this as well but it was from 2016 and I'm hoping some improvements have been made regarding this functionality since then. Any thoughts? Thanks!

0 0

Replies

replied on January 27, 2021 • Show version history

I had that issue. I solved it by using Quickfields to convert the attachments that workflow can't convert to pages (like Excel, Word etc) into laserfiche pages and then a workflow to move those pages to the end of the original form entry.

1 0

View 3 previous replies

replied on January 27, 2021

That's clever! I know how to add pages to the end of an entry via workflow (I think) - I'm brand new to workflow but picking up things as I go.

As for Quickfields, I've heard mention of that before but I'm not even sure what that is, if I'm being completely honest. Could you explain how that works, if you don't mind?

0 0

replied on January 27, 2021

It is another laserfiche tool. It allows you to scan a network, local or laserfiche repository folder and process documents by bringing the pages in and then saving them into the repository. It can OCR pages and based on that fill in meta data, it can read bar codes. The OCR can be finicky at times, but it works perfectly for us. You can use coversheets to determine when a new document starts or use OCR for that purpose as well. You can use parts of the document name to populate meta data. We love it. And it has helped me do this very thing with attachment that I really didn't want to allow, yet the client wants them to be allowed as attachments.

1 0

replied on February 17, 2021

Is there any other way to accomplish this aside from using Quickfields? I just checked with our Laserfiche admin and apparently we do not have Quickfields, unfortunately.

0 0

replied on February 17, 2021

For now, the only other way to generate pages without a user is Import Agent, which requires exporting the documents and bringing them back into the repo. I've done this and it is a huge hassle involving SDK scripts and all kinds of workarounds.

Like us you probably can't rush right into LF 11 when that releases, but maybe you could still set up one LF 11 workflow server/dcc worker just for this piece. We never upgrade right away, but we might set up one WF 11 server early to leverage the new page generation functionality.

0 0

replied on February 18, 2021

Jason,

Thank you very much for the response. I'll consider this functionality a pipe dream then for now. You are correct in that we are likely a LONG way off from upgrading to LF 11, seeing as how we're still on 10.2. I appreciate the information and will pass it along to those responsible for the decision on when and why to upgrade. My fingers are crossed. Have a great rest of your day, and stay safe!

0 0

replied on February 18, 2021

Dylan,

It is worth noting that you typically don't need to update everything, especially when you're talking about Workflow; the only things you might have an issue with are new features in WF that depend on changes to the repository or Forms.

For example, we updated Workflow to 10.4 long before we updated everything else in our environment because we needed some of the new redaction functionality for a project and everything worked just fine.

0 0

replied on January 27, 2021

Are you talking about PDF attachments, different types, or multiple types?

0 0

replied on January 27, 2021

Hey Jason, 9/10 times they would all be pdf attachments, but occasionally we receive a jpg (a photo of the document in question) instead.

0 0

replied on January 27, 2021

In that case the only way to really automate this would be through Quick Fields with the Quick Fields Agent add-on.

Page generation is still a tricky subject because for now, the only tools that can do it automatically are Quick Fields and Import Agent.

In Laserfiche 11, I believe they're adding page generation as an option for the Distributed Computer Cluster that currently handles workflow-initiated OCR, so that might make things a lot easier if you can hold out until you're able to upgrade.

0 0

replied on January 27, 2021

As a city, I'm not sure that'll be happening anytime soon unfortunately. I'll look into the Quick Fields option. I'm not even sure we have that but I'll ask around. Thank you Jason!

0 0

replied on January 27, 2021

I have several workflows where I add the attachment to the end of the original document. I wish this was built-in functionality. Seems like it wouldn't be too big of a stretch for the Laserfiche gurus.

0 0

View 8 previous replies

replied on March 31, 2021

Do you actually do this? I would like to see how you handle that in the workflow.

0 0

replied on March 31, 2021

I have a generically written workflow that I can hand documents off to for several different forms. In order for the workflow to work, the instance id needs to be stored in a field on the form itself and the uploaded attachments. The instance id is the key for finding the attachments. On our site these uploaded 'attachments' go to a landing zone known as the LZ folder.

Once the workflow is triggered here is how it works...

I retrieve the instance id from the starting entry and assign it to a token.
I use Find Entries on the LZ folder to make all the documents available to the workflow.
I loop for each entry and check to see if it has the same instance id as the starting entry.
When I find a document with the same instance id as the starting entry, I move all the pages to the end of the starting entry.
I delete the now-empty attachment document.

Hope that helps. I can email you a copy of the workflow if you would like.

0 0

replied on April 1, 2021

I'll give this a try and let you know. Thank you. If this works, it may be super helpful for many of my workflows!

0 0

replied on April 1, 2021

So, when a user attaches a word document and I try this, I get the message that there are no pages in that Word document. This is what I thought would happen because the pages have not been generated. How do you generate the pages when someone uploads a Word or PDF or even a JPG document?

0 0

replied on April 1, 2021

It worked, apparently, for pdf though...

0 0

replied on April 1, 2021

Katy, I'm pretty sure the only way to generate pages from a Word of PDF document is through Quick Fields. I haven't done it myself, but that's what I've been told several times now, which is unfortunate because we do not have Quick Fields with our organization!

0 0

replied on April 1, 2021

The way we got around the limitation is that every document that is loaded into the repository is immediately converted to tiff, if they aren't already. All of the forms save as tiff. One of the benefits is that all the documents have pages. The conversion takes place thanks to a script that was written by our var during our initial instillation in the before-me times. :)

0 0

replied on April 1, 2021

Ah, so it's not a setting you can just change to default everything to import as a TIFF?

0 0

replied on April 1, 2021

But an uploaded word document isn't converted to a tiff upon save to repository from froms.

0 0

replied on April 1, 2021

I wish there was a delivered setting that would convert documents. That would be super helpful!

My cheat to get around this to limit the document types that can be uploaded to types that can be determined. Probably 90% of the documents that are uploaded to us are pdf's.

1 0

replied on April 1, 2021

Yeah, I think that is going to be my temporary solution.

0 0

You are not allowed to follow up in this post.

Question

Question

Making Forms "File Uploads" Part of the Main Form

Replies

Sign in to reply to this post.