Question

PDF Form drop down menu and Workflow

Updated July 30, 2013

asked on July 22, 2013

We are writing a PO Workflow for one of our cities and am running into something with the Retrieve PDF Form Content action in Workflow.

I have attached the PDF Form.

When I point the "Retrieve PDF Form Content" to this PDF I get all the fields but I do not get the Department. The Department is a drop down list and needs to be captured. I have tried filling in a value and then pointing Workflow to it but nothing ever gets mapped. Does workflow support this field type?

All the other fields are pulled over although the blue highlighted areas do not match the picture. Not a big deal with the right field naming convention. Though I do need to get the Department field and would like them not have to key it in.

They are on both server and workflow 9.0.2.

Thanks in advance,

Chris

Rosemount Purchase Order.pdf (45.27 KB)

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Answer

APPROVED ANSWER

replied on July 30, 2013

Hello BIll,

There are several possibilities that could be causing this.

When you save it in Acrobat, make sure that it is saved as "Reader Extended (form fill in and save)" and then users should be able to edit the fields.

Another option that Workflow has is to then "flatten" the PDF and make it non-editable by users. This option is regarding the "Fill out PDF form" option and is under the "Make content permanent" section. The checkbox states that it will merge the PDF data onto the image.

An additional issue, are your users opening the PDF with Reader or are they using the Laserfiche PDF container (electronic file pane) or are they opening them as "Pages?"

Last but not least, on some certain PDF's I've received an issue where fields come back as blank/white, wherein the PDF appears to be blank- however the data appears when a PDF field is called into focus. This issue is resolved by setting the PDF fields to be aligned/not aligned in any of the PDF activities utilized by your workflow.

Let me know if any of those options help!

-Hunter

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Replies

replied on July 24, 2013

Hello Chris,

I can say from experience that it most certainly does support these types of fields. I just tested the form on my test server and had no issue extracting data from that field. Try doing something as simple as adding a tooltip to that particular Department field and then replace the existing file with the new PDF and see if it is able to then be selected.

Talk to you soon!

Hunter Bush

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replied on July 25, 2013

Thanks for the response Hunter. I did add a tooltip and that didnt change anything. I tried a few other things and then ended up deleting the whole field and then re-adding it. Brought the PDF back in and it looks like it got it. Not sure what was causing the issue but probably should have tried that first. Although its weird that you said you could read the field just fine off the form I attached. Oh well, thank you for taking the time to respond.

-Chris

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replied on July 25, 2013

Adding to this - when we fill in a pdf form via the Workflow task, it seems like it then becomes un-editable by the users. Is this the norm for fillable pdfs? If so, is there a way around this? If not, it seems to defeat the purpose.

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APPROVED ANSWER

replied on July 30, 2013

Hello BIll,

There are several possibilities that could be causing this.

When you save it in Acrobat, make sure that it is saved as "Reader Extended (form fill in and save)" and then users should be able to edit the fields.

An additional issue, are your users opening the PDF with Reader or are they using the Laserfiche PDF container (electronic file pane) or are they opening them as "Pages?"

Let me know if any of those options help!

-Hunter

0 0

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PDF Form drop down menu and Workflow

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