We are currently receiving records requests using Forms. After the form is submitted it enters a workflow for our Records Manager to process it. Since the record has already been added to Laserfiche, we would like to create a custom toolbar button that would perform a search based on information in the assigned template of the currently open document to find a document in the repository with a different template. So once the Records Manager opens the request, they could click a button that would then perform a search for that record. Is that possible? If so, where would I start?
Question
Question
Answer
Workflow can generate .lfe files (Laserfiche Entries) which are basically shortcuts into the Laserfiche Client with certain criteria embedded into them. You can see them if you make a shortcut of a Laserfiche entry on your desktop and open it up in a text editor - it's an xml file. You can have it send that information out in the emails instead of WA links as well. You have to have the client locally installed for them to be useful, but that seems like it wouldn't be an issue here.
Replies
Just thinking aloud here - is this something that your RMs would need to do on every submission and does the search itself need to be something they do manually? Or does the report just need to get to them. Also, does it have to happen immediately for each submission or just soon? If it's something that would always happen, you could have Workflow run the search itself and then email out WA links or Client lfe files that will open up to the search results already there for each relevant entry. Then you don't even have to worry about messing with toolbar buttons.
That said, you could certainly make a toolbar button to perform this sort of search in the desktop client, taking the current entry as a parameter and then using CAT to open up the Search UI with the results. Depending on the type of search you need to do, you might able be able to just create a custom quick search within the desktop Client or Web Access that would handle running a search around a provided critera (user inputted in that case). Both of these are client side items though so would need to be pushed out to individual workstations - that's one reason I was asking about the possibility of using Workflow, since that can be centrally administered.
Our users currently are not trained on WA. We are waiting for the WA 10 before we go that way since it looks to have a much cleaner and intuitive interface.
Is there still a way for Workflow to perform the search and some how make that available for a desktop client user to access the results?
Workflow can generate .lfe files (Laserfiche Entries) which are basically shortcuts into the Laserfiche Client with certain criteria embedded into them. You can see them if you make a shortcut of a Laserfiche entry on your desktop and open it up in a text editor - it's an xml file. You can have it send that information out in the emails instead of WA links as well. You have to have the client locally installed for them to be useful, but that seems like it wouldn't be an issue here.
How would we add the information for the search? I imagine I would use the Advanced Search Syntax, but what is the proper way to input that into the XML structure?
Syntax reference can be found at/under: http://www.laserfiche.com/support/webhelp/Laserfiche/9.1/en-US/UserGuide/Laserfiche_Client.htm#ShortcutsURLs/Customizing_LFE_Shortcuts.htm
Thank you for the link. I am having problems finding how to do this within Workflow. When looking at the E-mail or Create Entry activities I am not seeing a way to customize the .lfe attachment. Could you please point me in the right direction?
Or do I create the .lfe file with my criteria first and then attach that to the email that is sent? If I do it that way, is there a way to still use tokens?
I think that for now you'd have to manually create the .lfe file. Since it's just an xml file you should just be able to script that or use a create xml activity, so long as you have the syntax.
I see a Read XML activity, but not a Create XML activity. Where would I find that at?
Oh, huh. I guess I assumed if there was Read there would also be write, sorry about that (I'm not a WF expert myself). I guess you would have to script the creation of the xml itself... That's probably still more straightforward then individual custom buttons though.