Creating multiple documents out of one record "on demand"

rorso

I got the task to occasionally create TWO documents out of ONE Empower file with "essentially the same content but …"

I have no hint to do this when creating the Empower document in the first run. This is a decision in the "Interview page". The user may decide to create both a "long" and a "short" document that share 99% of their definition.

Here are my current findings:

• The API call for fulfillment (or creation) would return multiple outputs of the same document, like PDF + Empower without problem.
• Likewise I can receive multiple documents, if my trigger file contains multiple "Customers", but these do certainly end up in multiple Empower documents too.
• I cannot run a single customer twice in one run.
• I'd like to avoid duplicationg the structure, as it means to do every change twice or the documents drift apart.
• I obviously cannot "preview" multiple documents while in Empower
• I cannot communicate the user choice to the calling application, to get the document "fulfilled" twice with different parameters
• I cannot rely on a rule that does run during fulfillment. Yes I can create one of two choices, but I cannot just "run this document again with different settings".
• Creating a second output connector does not help me out.

In "Streamserve", I would just set a variable and call the output process (Storyteller) twice, either merging the documents or creating separate ones. No brainer.

But with "Exstream"? 😱

Steven Cheal

Hello,

It's not clear if you are using Communications Designer or Design Manager for designing the interactive applications, but there are a couple of concepts in Exstream/Empower that may help you here:

1. Recipient processing. This is the ability to generate a set of 'documents' for a single 'customer' record, and then produce copies or subsets of copies that will go to multiple end recipients. This functionality is best suited to use case, where you have just a few end recipients, such as the customer's agent and or attorney copies. This works with Interactive (Empower) such that you can pass the recipient data in either the initial Engine run, or fulfillment Engine run. There is documentation on this functionality in The Designing for Exstream and Designer for Empower sections of the reference guides.
   Note that for Communications Designer application this functionality is not generally available, and will be available in an upcoming version.
2. One-to-many fulfillment. This functionality is intended for use cases, where you want to create a single Interactive document, designed to be fulfilled to multiple end 'customers'. For example, you need to create a generic letter, which is personalized with unique customer details to hundreds, or thousand of end recipients. In this case, variables will be updated, and business logic can be executed, for each end customer during fulfillment processing.
   For information on this functionality, please see the section "Fulfillment scenarios for Empower documents" in the Designing Empower documentation.

Hope this helps, please respond to this post if you cannot find the documentation I am referring to.

Steve.

rorso

Thanks for your reply.

The application is a one to one. Just one "customer" yields one document. It's a Quoting application. The quotes are massively "hand crafted" in Empower and the initial run is just an "educated guess". Documents live in Empower for weeks and months before the content is customer-ready. This is highly interactive.

In the meantime there might be several changes to the original quote record (which we fetch live from Empower).

But eventually the management decides to need two sets of "this quote" with certain information skipped in one expression, i.e. hand over two variants in fulfillment instead of just one. So they can archive a "technical quote" along with a "business quote" as two separate files.

Development is done in Designer with a rudimentary Communications Builder shell to get it deployed.

The document(s) is fetched via Exstream API call /communications/create for the Exstream "fulfillment application" i.e. fetch the Empower file and render the placeholder content.

rorso

https://forums.opentext.com/forums/developer/discussion/comment/969345#Comment_969345

I take every help I can get. If you have a hint about the documentation, where I could find more ideas how to create several versions of the same document on demand with "Exstream Designer", then please…

Steven Cheal

Hello,

Most Interactive (Empower) use cases we see, typically involve edit>export>fulfill, in a matter of days. The use case you refer to, is a little outside the norm, and I'm not sure here is a straightforward way to achieve that with current server based functionality. Interactive does not store multiple versions of a single document, it can produce variants in final output by triggering business logic as I mentioned.

Cloud Native has functionality which allows you to create an Interactive document, and have the user import Interactive content directly from an asset store, where content authors have been maintaining and updating content as business requirements change. I realize this does not help your immediate business requirement.

Regards,