We would like to request the following functionality be added to Laserfiche moving forward. When submitting a document within Laserfiche Forms, it will only come into Laserfiche client as the native document type. We would like to see the ability to have PDF submitted documents be converted to TIFF documents and ocr'd as the are imported into Laserfiche.
Question
Question
Enhancement Request: Laserfiche Forms & Incoming Documents to Laserfiche
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I was thinking about this yesterday and I realized there is a way to do this now, even if it is a little convoluted.
You need to have Forms, Import Agent 9 and Distributed Processing installed.
Import your PDF via a Laserfiche Form. If the file ends in .PDF or .Tif, use workflow to export it to a directory that import agent monitors.
Import Agent 9 has a new ability to “Generate Pages” when importing PDF’s but for some reason it doesn’t actually let you OCR the generated pages. This is where Distributed Processing kicks in, with workflow kicking off a DC process that now has a completely OCR’d document.
It’s a roundabout way to do this but it should work.
I would like to second the request to have the ability to seamlessly have attachments in forms generate pages when imported into Laserfiche.
I'm assuming you are referring to uploaded attachments to a form as far as the coverting to TIFFs, correct?
I'm pretty sure that's what the request is. If we just had access to "generate pages" through workflow or through the distributed processing we'd be all set.
Yes. We have individuals that will be submitting the documents as PDF to a forms page, but the organization would like the ability to have to utilizing the TIFF document format. This provides additional functionality for processing and marking up the document.
It would also be important to have the documents ocr'd during the process of converting the documents from PDF to TIFF.
I would imagine that the OCR option would have to depend on the distributed processing utility. I like the idea of being able to have documents converted though.
Blake, you are correct. The ability to have a PDF imported as a TIFF will provide end-users more flexibility when working with the document. There is times when a PDF is needed, but if we can bring it in as a TIFF, it will save time.
We implemented the workaround the Chris Hagen suggested, but would like to see this added in a future release of the software.
Remove the original pdf after convert to tiff pages has been supported with Forms 11 Update 3. It will follow the save to repository profile user's attribute of "[Settings]KeepPDFFile"
You can see other changes of Forms 11 Update 3 from https://support.laserfiche.com/kb/1014413/list-of-changes-for-laserfiche-forms-11-update-3 and get Forms 11 Update 3 from Laserfiche 11 package https://support.laserfiche.com/kb/1014263/software-versions-and-fixes-included-in-the-laserfiche-11-download-package.
Has this ever been implemented?
Yes, it has been added or maybe it always was a feature. A little trick I just recently learned was that you can modify the Forms user attributes for PDF import to generate pages. I always thought that was handled client side, but it also works on import from Forms. This isn't a well documented trick, unfortunately.
<Properties> <Attribute> <Name>[Settings]ImportPDFPages</Name> <Data>Yes</Data> </Attribute> <Attribute> <Name>[Settings]ImportPreservePdfAnnotations</Name> <Data>Yes</Data> </Attribute> <Attribute> <Name>[Settings]KeepPDFFile</Name> <Data>No</Data> </Attribute> </Properties>
Those properties I have it set to discard the PDF, but for some reason it still keeps it.
Jonathan, Thanks for posting this. It is so helpful for one of our projects! Did you ever find a way to discard the PDF?
Thanks,
Jen
If I remember correctly I ended up just having workflow delete the PDF. I haven't tested this again since we've upgraded to 10.4.1
No worries. I can give that a try. Thanks for the suggestion!