Question

Date stamp (text box) annotation appearing with white text on the pdf in Weblink

Laserfiche WebLink Version 10 Forms

Updated February 29, 2024

asked on February 20, 2024 • Show version history

I have a workflow that converts pdf file uploads from a pdf to a tiff (using DCC). I then add a text box (date stamp) to the first page of the tiff. The tiff is then stored in Laserfiche.

When viewing the tiff image in the Laserfiche Client and Laserfiche Web Client and Weblink, I can see the date stamp. It appears as black text.

If I try to print the tiff from Weblink, Weblink generates a pdf (of the tiff). The date stamp does not appear to be there. However, I noticed that if I hover over the area where I expect the date stamp to be, the date stamp is there, but the text is white. White on White does not show up. There is a little editor that comes up when I hover over the text that allows me to change it's color so it then shows up on the newly converted pdf. There is also an option to trash the date stamp.

What I need is for the date stamp to appear in black, and to not have the option for deleting it.

Can anyone provide assistance?

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Replies

replied on February 28, 2024

Hi Christine, it looks like the reason this annotation is displaying that way is because it is being converted to PDF annotations. Not all PDF viewers display all PDF annotations, and when a PDF with annotations is viewed in a full PDF viewer, it can be moved or deleted.

Although they may not necessarily be what you are looking for in this case, there are a few potential alternatives:

Instead of using a text box, you could use a stamp. This may be visible in a wider range of PDF viewers. However, you may be more limited in the information or tokens displayed in the annotation if you are applying this through Workflow. If you want to use a stamp with tokens, you could also consider using Quick Fields to reprocess documents and apply that stamp.
There is a user attribute called "[Settings]ExportImageConvertPDFAnnotations" which can be toggled to "flatten" annotations into the image when is downloaded rather than converting them to PDF annotations. This attribute should work when documents are downloaded from the Web Client. In testing this I noticed that WebLink does not currently support these "flattened" annotations, and our team has filed this as a bug to investigate.

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replied on February 29, 2024

Thanks Kathleen,

I have a workaround that I added to my workflow. It deposits the newly date stamped tif created by workflow, into a folder in Laserfiche called "To Flatten" where it waits until a document change. Workflow then sends an email notification to the user letting them know a date stamp needs to be flattened. They will go to the "To Flatten" folder and copy page 1 (page with the dates stamp) to a folder on their pc (which burns the date stamp into the tif). They then drag it back into the "To Flatten" folder, then put it into the original file (deleting the original page 1). Once they close the document, workflow picks up the process automatically and finishes the remaining steps. This allows the date stamp to appear via weblink flattened and unalterable after being converted to a pdf (before printing) by weblink.

Involves human intervention, but is a valid workaround.

I know this can be scripted, looking for more details on that. The oringal post by Jason Smith on the script is great, but I need a little more hand holding to make that work (I did try).

There is also an interesting tool on Laserfiche Marketplace

Hoping this workaround could be useful for someone.