Pre-populating a form/word document using IPA

Has any used IPA to email out a word document/form with data populated from Landmark/S3? For example a Leave of Absence form from the department of labor? We would like to automate the Leave of Absence request to check eligibility then email the necessary form(s) to the employee with some of the fields on the form already populated. We have additional processes we would like to automate if this capability exists.
Does this make sense, what I am asking?

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unknown

We do something similar with change of address though ours is not filled out specific to each employee, but it is by company. When an employee changes their address it checks their company and then sends an email with an attached pdf to confirm their school district in PA with instructions to send the filled out form to payroll (since it needs an employee's signature). Some of the fields are

You might be able to do something with a word style document like a mail merge but I'm not great at scripting with Office products.

don-kintzle

So do you modify the pdf before emailing it or is it a standard form that they must complete?

unknown

If this is a fillable .pdf form, you can put it on your company's intranet and then include a link in the IPA email. The other thing you can do is upload the form to "Documents". In IPA, Tools --> Manage Documents. Then you can pull it into IPA. You can find Documents you upload through IPA in Landmark --> Process Server Administrator --> Configuration --> Document Definitions. Once you upload, I found you have to close IPA and reopen it. You should be able to see your document at the bottom of the list of Attachment Documents/Variables.

I have uploaded .xlsx files here before and then used them in the IPA via a data iterator as well as using for attachments.

Tammy Viola

0911060553270289.pdf

don-kintzle

Thanks Tammy but are you able to modify that document via IPA before sending out? For example adding specific employee information within the document before emailing it, possibly passing variables into the word document. Kind of like doing a mail merge?

unknown

I haven't had the need to do a mail merge.

I would think a mail merge... If you can run a syscmd to trigger a mail merge, you could do that in IPA. The document and the data should be on the Infor server (where the application is installed).

0911060553270289.pdf

unknown

Don, do you have Infor OS installed? Specifically, do you have access to Infor Document Management (IDM) in Infor OS? IDM has document output management features that let you do exactly what you are trying to do. They have a plugin for MS Word that lets you design documents and insert placeholders for dynamic content and then save that template. Using that template and dynamic content that you could query from S3 or Landmark, you can use IDM to create, store, email PDF documents with your dynamic content inserted.

...but you have to have IDM...

russel-cornelson

If you don't have IDM, and you are a ST Cloud or On-Premise Customer ... you could look into using my old friend PERL. It's been years since I have tried it to see if it still works, but .... the module was called PDF::Reuse

One google search on Perl Monks shows you the script you could leverage.

Where Ex16.pdf = original pdf with form, Ex17.pdf is new file, pfField's are simply the name of the interactive field and the values. This might be the very same web page I found when I set this up 15 years ago ...

https://www.perlmonks.org/?node_id=305230

use PDF::Reuse;

prDocDir('doc');
prFile('Ex17.pdf');
prField('First_Name', 'Lars');
prField('Surname', 'Lundberg');
prField('City', 'Stockholm');
prField('Country', 'Sweden');
prDocForm('doc/Ex16.pdf');
prEnd();

A couple tweaks to allow you to accept values as variables; then call the script from a Command Line ... voila. Dynamic PDF

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