Word document to DCR using perl function

HI
I have a peculiar situation. We want to have lot of people interacting on our website but instead of using dcrs and tpls - we want the users to use word templates and convert those to dcr and publish using teamsite - Has anyone of you guys done anythign like this before? Is it feasible? and any design ideas will be very very appreciated

process : user created content using word -> word document becomes dcr -> dcr published html to the website using teamsite

Environt: windows 2003 server
teamsite 6.1
Opendeploy 6.0.1
Uisng Windows for desktop too

Thanks very much in advance
kish

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gzevin

you shoould stop crossposting on different forums.

such a functionality did exist. not enymore. However, I could think of some workflow/process that might work.

Greg Zevin, Ph.D. Comp. Sc.
Independent Interwoven Consultant/Architect
Sydney, AU

kish2

couldnt decide whether this belonge dhere or in teamsite section so added in both

I wouldnt want the users to even use teamsite - if i can get the raw word documents - can i convert them to dcrs ? if so any hint on the workflow process to use would be really appreciated in teamsite
thanks
kish

gzevin

the answer is no. TeamSite's Front Office does not have this functionality anymore. However, if you use the Front Office tools so you can submit a document to TeamSite and then let a workflow take it from there.

but it's not going to be an easy task.

Greg Zevin, Ph.D. Comp. Sc.
Independent Interwoven Consultant/Architect
Sydney, AU

chuckles

My best guess would be to use something link the Win32: Smiley Surprised

LE module. But I have a feeling you will have tons of problems with character sets and unstructured data. Also, watch our for viruses.

Johnny

Why do you need to turn them into DCR's?.. If you are going to use Word as your template system, don't bother with teamsite templating.

Seeing that you are running on windows, you could use something HTML Transit or the other suggestions mentioned here.

Taking that extra step into a DCR then TPL... well what's the point.

John Cuiuli

kish2

Hmmm.... so basically there is no way without using dcrs ... I need teamsite to capture the approval process and the deployment process . will text files work?if i ask the users to save as text files with marker tags for bosy -i can capture that using perl and then convert to dcr or generate files i guess... Any suggestions? do u think this will work?

Can someone tell me what the old functionality of teamsite office was - maybe i can customize that.
thanks in advance
kish

gzevin

this *can* work. Provided you do a proper analysis of the documents and design of conversion scripts. In any case, Word documents HAVE to be highly structured, otherwise you would not be able to turn them into structured XML documents

As I mentioned, TeamSite's Front Office tools did allow for using Microsoft Word as a substitute for datacapture forms. Still, it was not 100% what you want.

Greg Zevin, Ph.D. Comp. Sc.
Independent Interwoven Consultant/Architect
Sydney, AU

kish2

Thank you guys for your input
I will try to implement this out and report back to you
Thanks for all your input
kish

patrickm

How did you get on with this? My company are asking for a similar set up. I've heard that with TS7+, integration with Office is back on the cards. Does anyone have any more info?

miletwo

I've been looking at doing the same recently for a client who desires this functionality. My best guess at a solid direction would be to use a tool like word2xml from cambridge (http://www.cambridgedocs.com/products/overview/word2xml.htm) to parse the word document, then pick out the nodes you want and create a DCR from that.

Hope that helps,

Jeremy Anderson
www.miletwo.com

jkm

Hi guys,

We have a very similar requirement. Our users are accustomed to use word,xls,pdf all kind of documents but not TS unfortunately. We are thinking something if user can upload a document in TS and then click on a link in the menu items and it will generate the dcr for and finally web page to go for publishing.

This will make content authors life lot easy, at the same time we will be able to reuse the content in xml format but in terms of feasibility of this it seems to be really difficult because high amount of unstructured data..Any inputs appreciated.

gzevin

I've been looking at doing the same recently for a client who desires this functionality. My best guess at a solid direction would be to use a tool like word2xml from cambridge (http://www.cambridgedocs.com/products/overview/word2xml.htm) to parse the word document, then pick out the nodes you want and create a DCR from that.

Hope that helps,

Jeremy Anderson
www.miletwo.com

cambridge docs are OEM'ed into TeamSite (for an extra fee). But I am not sire the immplementation in TeamSite converts into DCRs

gzevin

Hi guys,

We have a very similar requirement. Our users are accustomed to use word,xls,pdf all kind of documents but not TS unfortunately. We are thinking something if user can upload a document in TS and then click on a link in the menu items and it will generate the dcr for and finally web page to go for publishing.

This will make content authors life lot easy, at the same time we will be able to reuse the content in xml format but in terms of feasibility of this it seems to be really difficult because high amount of unstructured data..Any inputs appreciated.

one of the easier approach would be to paste the whole word doc into a single visualformat field in a DCT. Or, if one could convert all word docs into HTML, a script could run against the list of files and encapsulate them into a DCR.

Nicholas

My best guess would be to use something link the Win32:LE module. But I have a feeling you will have tons of problems with character sets and unstructured data. Also, watch our for viruses.

Win32:

LE could right choice if you have fix format of word documents, you can easily program such kind of task. Well, what about XSL-FO?

Nicholas

You can also use POI api, I am not sure about the progress in it but you can explore it aslo, if it helpful to you.

Thansk Nicholas

Sailesh

Why not use the word macros instead, user keep putting text in the predefined format in Word or xls and then when we run this macro, it convert the document into a xml file, user can then be asked to upload these xml to teamsite.

gzevin

Why not use the word macros instead, user keep putting text in the predefined format in Word or xls and then when we run this macro, it convert the document into a xml file, user can then be asked to upload these xml to teamsite.

in the real world scenarios, we have

1. differnt word versions
2. unstructured documents, even if they are structured only the latest Word can lock styles.

jkm

True, In the real world scenario number of combinations are endless for example

1. Type of documents
2. Version
3. unstructured content biggest pain
4. different business lines owning these documents no centralized place or format
5. Then size of the documents matters a lot ...it may be Okay for the few page documents but it wont be easy when documents are in the form of product guides etc ...Another thing our IT people are thinking to make this everyday job not one time....
This conversion has lot many advantages in terms of content tracking and content + user mappings but it would require a lot of efforts and migration issues to make it stabalise

gzevin

Another thing our IT people are thinking to make this everyday job not one time....

I hear you, bro Smiley Happy

this happens so often, and it's really hard to explain that is is really hard.

as I said, if one can standardize on one version of Word (the latest one), then we can start talking about something

gzevin

just wanted to add. A friend of mine works for a company Netcat, that are also claiming to be a WCM company. What she does - is to script to convert zillions of Word documents forth and back... This is her only task for last year or so.

Just to illustrate a complexity of this issue