TS interaction with Windows dialog?

Is there anything native to or easily integrated with TeamSite that is able to interact with a Windows dialog?

For instance, there is a tool that I would like to use as part of an external task. This tool essentially converts a file to a different format, but (at the moment) prompts for a filename to save the converted file. I'm investigating to see whether we can do all of this stuff on command line, as this is the greatly preferred method, but I'm wondering if anyone has had this problem before and how they've handled it.

Dave

Current Environment(s):
(1) TS 6.5 on W2K3
(2) TS 6.1 SP1 on W2K3
By the way, I miss Unix terribly.

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Comments

Adam Stoller

This sounds like a GUI - in which case perhaps a cgitask would be a better choice than an externaltask?
Does this application have any command line flags for providing that information? If so it should be trivial to implement; if not - you may have to try using something like 'expect' to interact with it (though I'm not sure whether 'expect' works with grapic interfaces...)

--fish
Senior Consultant, Quotient Inc.
http://www.quotient-inc.com

Migrateduser

I'd like to make this as transparent to the user as possible. So, my goal is that if they've uploaded a document with a .xls file extension, for instance, that this program convert the file into something else with the appropriate extension and attach it to the task. Ultimately, I'm looking for command line flags / switches from the program and I'm in discussion with that company about that, but failing that (and failing other acceptable tools to do this, of which I haven't found any other good tools), I'm putting together a PLAN B.

Expect doesn't do GUI's -- only port / stream communications like a chat program or Telnet. Great suggestion, though! I didn't even think of that.

Dave

Current Environment(s):
(1) TS 6.5 on W2K3
(2) TS 6.1 SP1 on W2K3
By the way, I miss Unix terribly.

Adam Stoller

There are GUI testing tools out there - so I imagine there's some way to do it via the GUI too -- but it probably (a) would be expensive [I don't think those tools are cheap] and (b) would be somewhat confusing for the user [seeing a bunch of windows pop-up, mouse pointer moving on it's own, buttons getting pushed by themesleves, etc.]

Can you elaborate a bit more on the input-format and output-format(s) for this conversion you're trying to do?
I find it difficult (though not impossible) to believe that there isn't another [command-line-oriented] way to do what you want.

--fish
Senior Consultant, Quotient Inc.
http://www.quotient-inc.com

Migrateduser

Sure, and by the way, the GUI method is not at all the preferred route, but...

The input format could be anything but the output format would be a PDF. I've researched maybe a dozen tools and 11 of them stink. Only one of them is any good and ideally, I'd like to use command line switches for it. The tool I'm referring to is called Document Converter Pro by Neevia (neevia.com)

Dave

Current Environment(s):
(1) TS 6.5 on W2K3
(2) TS 6.1 SP1 on W2K3
By the way, I miss Unix terribly.

Adam Stoller

I'm curious -- would you be willing to list the 11 that stink - perhaps with a sentence or two explaining why they stink?

--fish
Senior Consultant, Quotient Inc.
http://www.quotient-inc.com

Migrateduser

I probably can't be too specific, but some of the ones that I've researched so far are: Document2PDF, CZ-Doc2PDF, ABC Amber WP Converter, PDF Converter 1.4, Neevia Document Converter, ePublisher Plus and Document Printer 1.5. Some tools screwed the layout on the sample files I'm working with, others made bad use of font substitution (i.e. didn't resemble original font whatsoever), and a couple just gave errors with 0 detail. I'm aware there are dozens of tools out there, but they have to meet certain criteria before I'll even take the time to test them.

Current Environment(s):
(1) TS 6.5 on W2K3
(2) TS 6.1 SP1 on W2K3
By the way, I miss Unix terribly.