Question

Merge Documents Together

Workflow

Updated July 2

asked on July 1

Hello -

I am working on a forms process that will invoke workflow. I have a user fill out a form and it goes through an approval process and then saves the form to the repository, after the save I invoke a workflow.

The workflow then pulls in data from the form to fill out a PDF. I have all this working, however want to take it one step further.

I would like to combine the 2 documents together to create 1 document and I am hitting a wall. I was wondering if anyone else has ever done this? After the documents are combined then I want to send 1 email with the merged documents back to our HR.

Has anyone ever done this in workflow? I originally was saving the the form as TIFF and changed to PDF, and I get hung up on the "Move Pages".

Attached is my current workflow setup.

workflow pic.jpg (37.11 KB)

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SELECTED ANSWER

replied on July 2

We are also self hosted. I may have come up with a work around. I can email the PDF that is generated back to the HR person before she approves the request. Then I change my form to a tiff, and attach the PDF and then I have another workflow that should "merry" it all nicely together.

Possibly doing it this way will allow for changes to the PDF if needed.

So crossing my fingers this might work

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Replies

replied on July 1

You do need to save your form as a PDF. Then, in your repository, you need to select the option to create pages for PDF files. This is located under the general menu selection. Attached is my web client for reference, but it is located in a different spot for the Windows client. This should then allow you to combine entries by moving the pages.

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replied on July 2

No, I only changed it to PDF "thinking" it would help with the Merge Pages. This is how I have the buisness process currently setup. Interesting piece is that this is already set in our repository, so I must have to tweak something to get them to merge?

business process.jpg (27.23 KB)

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settings.jpg (60.36 KB)

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replied on July 2

Having these settings within your repository and saving the form as a PDF, does the entry saved have actual pages in the repository before the workflow initiates?

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replied on July 2

I guess I am a little confused on this. In workflow it creates a "document" which that document I attach the PDF that I want filled to and then I fill the PDF and save it to the same folder location as my form. So my understanding is probably off.

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replied on July 2

I see. I thought you were having issues attaching the document created in Forms to another entry in the repository. The issue you are having is attaching the PDF created in Workflow to another entry, and this is because this process does not generate a page when it does this.

I had a similar issue when creating offer letters for our Financial Aid department. Depending on the format of your PDF, I found two ways to work around this. For the actual letter, I was unable to attach this letter to the Financial Aid packet for the student. Instead, I created a form that was saved in their packet with the information. The letter is then printed and mailed, but the information still resides in the student's packet.

Another way I did this was to create the actual letter in Forms and save that, which DOES generate a page in the repository. This was only possible because the header of the letter was simply our logo. I could not do this for the offer letter because our marketing department created a template that had images in the background, which could not be replicated in Forms (at least not by me :-) )

I hope this helps. I apologize for sending you in the wrong direction initially.

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replied on July 2

Ahhh Yes makes perfect sense!

Right now I think I am going to leave it as 2 individual documents, as I have it working where it will email both out to the HR Admin and the Requester. And then I slowly figure out how I am going to merge the two nicely down the road.

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replied on July 2

I should preface: I am a self-hosted system, so there may be other solutions within a cloud system.

I will also say, it may be possible to generate pages for an entry created in Workflow by scheduling a job in a Distributed Computing Cluster Scheduler (DCC) if you have one set up. This was not an option for me as our organization was not interested in setting up the DCC on our server.

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SELECTED ANSWER

replied on July 2

Possibly doing it this way will allow for changes to the PDF if needed.

So crossing my fingers this might work

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replied on July 2

So I changed my Form back to a TIFF file... In my testing everything works except my "Move Pages". It errors out stating it can't find a starting entry. So I must need to tweak something in this but uncertain what.

I have it so that it moves the "PDF" to the "TIFF" if that makes sense. I am going to keep tweaking and testing but if anyone sees my issue that would be great :)

move pages.jpg (66.18 KB)

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replied on July 2

Move Pages can only move image pages. So if you want to go from the PDF to TIFF, that's not going to work.

How does this Workflow start? If it's invoked from your Forms process, there is no starting entry, so you will have to specify a different one. If it has a starting rule for the document created when Forms saves to the repository, then it will have a starting entry.

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replied on July 2

I do have it invoked from Forms. I did test the starting rule piece and had issues, however I also had it invoking from forms (so totally wrong).

However, I did come up with a workaround to make this all flow and it might actually work out a little better as well.

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