Can we integrate ActiveDocs with SharePoint, Office, CRM, and Salesforce?
Yes. The following links show you how:
- ActiveDocs integration with SharePoint.
- ActiveDocs integration with Dynamics CRM.
- ActiveDocs integration with Salesforce.
- ActiveDocs integration with other applications.
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Can we integrate ActiveDocs with other applications?
Yes, in many ways; here are some common examples:
- ActiveDocs Templates can use data from other systems.
- The ActiveDocs Document Wizard can be invoked from other applications for document creation in User-Driven Mode.
- The Document Wizard can be invoked with preset Answers from another application.
- Other applications can use ActiveDocs in Automated Mode to create documents programmatically using ActiveDocs Templates.
- Documents created with ActiveDocs can be easily forwarded to storage and handling destinations like WebDAV, SharePoint, networks, and web services.
- Documents created with ActiveDocs can be easily forwarded to other applications for onward processing. Highly customizable document metadata is readily available.
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What applications have other customers integrated with ActiveDocs?
Here is a small sample of the applications that ActiveDocs customers and partners have integrated:
- HP Worksite/iManage
- Appian
- FileNet
- SharePoint Portal Server
- Jalios JCMS (Content Management)
- SAP
- BizTalk Server
- Carizma (Contract Management)
- RBS WorldPay
- Open Text eDOC
- Temenos T24
- Brassring
- Selectica
- Oracle Taleo
- Kofax Capture
- IBM AS/400
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Why would we want to use templates?
Templates allow you to standardize your documentation by providing a convenient starting point for document creation, using and enforcing corporate standards. However, stand-alone templates can still have drawbacks:
- Users still have to go looking for templates with attendant risks and time costs.
- Template repositories need to be kept up-to-date with changes like branding, regulations, and market drivers.
- Large numbers of templates can produce significant maintenance issues.
- Unless templates are easily found and easy to use, users will fall back on practices like copy-and-paste.
- Standard templates don't easily support repeated instances of the same data, filtered access to external data sources, and other features to help reduce errors.
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What advantages does an ActiveDocs solution have over ordinary templates?
- No need to write code!
- ActiveDocs provides an integrated environment for Template Designers using a component-based approach: ActiveDocs Designer.
- ActiveDocs allows Template Designers to build intelligence, rules, and user help, into Templates.
- Users can find, and use, all of their ActiveDocs Templates via the ActiveDocs Express Wizard's web browser interface, allowing your end users to use the right template, right now.
- The web-based ActiveDocs Document Wizard takes users through a well-controlled, rule-driven, help-assisted, logical process to complete their documents.
- ActiveDocs provides Designers with the tools to access external data sources via reusable components.
- ActiveDocs supports rapid change and deployment through reusable components, a robust and comprehensive Design environment, and server-based web-enabled access to Templates.
- ActiveDocs Templates are Word-based with added ActiveDocs intelligence, supporting multiple instances of data, external data sources, image capture, free text editing, and other key features.
- Interactive and programmatic usage of the same ActiveDocs Template to create documents is fully supported.
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What is a “component-based approach” for Templates? Is software development required?
- ActiveDocs uses a component-based approach for Template Design – and there's no programming involved.
- Designers develop catalogs of reusable ActiveDocs Design Components which include:
- Templates
- Snippets for common content
- Data Views for accessing data in other systems
- Templates use Snippets and Data Views, and can be used to build Template Sets
- Snippets can be purely passive content or can also contain their own ActiveDocs automation as Active Snippets.
- Snippets – passive or Active – can be reused in other Office applications.
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Does ActiveDocs require significant IT involvement?
No.
- Installations do require IT support. They take less than a day, and can be done remotely.
- ActiveDocs Designer was created especially with business users in mind. It makes template design and management simple and intuitive.
- User-driven document creation is a simple web-based process using a browser without any application rollout.
- ActiveDocs is designed to integrate with your other applications. Your IT people will want to get involved with configuring that – it's their job and what they do best!
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Does ActiveDocs support multiple delivery channels?
Yes.
- ActiveDocs supports delivery in multiple formats via print, file system, FTP, email, and onward handling.
- Delivery integrates with your existing IT infrastructure.
- Print, fax, and email delivery use configurable queues and support grouping and OCR for cost control.
- Onward handling includes options for delivery or storage into other applications via web services.
Find out more here.
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What level of post-creation document processing does ActiveDocs support?
ActiveDocs supports a comprehensive range of post-creation document processing.
- Pre-release approval which may be standalone or part of a workflow process.
- Edit with the ActiveDocs Client.
- Delivery which integrates with your infrastructure (i.e. email, print, cloud services).
- Onward handling including options for storage into other applications and via web services.
Find out more here.
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What about support for open standards?
- ActiveDocs provides document output in multiple industry standard formats including Word, PDF, TIFF, and HTM.
- The Open Document (Text) Format (ODF-ODT) is fully supported as an open standard output document format.
- For output documents, ActiveDocs will support the ISO/IEC OOXML open standard when it is supported by Microsoft® Office.
- ActiveDocs Template Design is performed in Microsoft® Word and will support the ISO/IEC OOXML open standard when it is supported by Microsoft® Office.
Find out more here.
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How much re-use of content and other components does ActiveDocs support?
Part of the core philosophy behind ActiveDocs is content re-use.
- ActiveDocs Designer provides for modular design of Templates using reusable components for common content, data access, fields, and rules.
- Designer provides complete control, enforcement, and reporting of relationships between components.
- ActiveDocs Version Control integrates with Designer to provide complete version control and publish-now, publish-later control over components.
- ActiveDocs Snippets are designed for common, reusable, content such as standard paragraphs, terms and conditions, legal clauses, and other recurring content.
- Snippets can be purely passive content, or can also contain their own ActiveDocs automation as Active Snippets.
- Snippets can enable re-use of existing external content – ActiveDocs can access content mapped as Snippets in other systems.
- Templates are built using their own content and with links to Snippets when common content is needed.
- Snippets may be re-used in selected Microsoft® Office applications.
- In summary, Snippets can use common content you already have, and new common content, for use in ActiveDocs Templates and in other Office applications.
- ActiveDocs Templates may be combined into Template Sets to create document sets.
- ActiveDocs Templates and Template Sets may be used for interactive and programmatic (Automated Mode) document generation.
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How do I manage the content that I'm using in ActiveDocs?
ActiveDocs Designer's Content Manager provides full content management for ActiveDocs.
- Modular, component-based Template design.
- Component relationship control.
- Check-Out and Check-In of components.
- Integration with ActiveDocs Version Control for
- Check-In as Draft or Publish Now or Publish Later (Deferred Publishing)
- Discard Check-Out
- Promote and copy-out previous versions
- Design Component Approval for pre-publication verification of new or changed material.
- Optional mapping to existing external repositories of Snippet and Template material
- Export and Import functions for moving components between development, QA, and production systems.
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Performance and resilience are especially important considerations – can we find out more?
ActiveDocs is a high-performance enterprise-grade application:
- Multi-threading for scale-up performance using multi-core platforms.
- Multi-server for high-resilience and scale-out performance.
- Lossless auto-failover with Multi-Server load-balancing in-place.
- High volume output benchmarked at over 150,000 documents per hour.
- One of our customers produces over 7 MILLION documents per annum with our fully automated solution.
- Proven design-and-use capability with thousand-page templates.
- Our customers have between 100 and 7000 automated templates and document sets.
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Do ActiveDocs Template Designers need to manually build the end user interview?
No.
- Designers create Templates using ActiveDocs intelligence with grouping and ordering for consistency and flow.
- Designers also use rules to control the flow of groups and the content of the output document.
- The ActiveDocs Document Wizard works automatically with any ActiveDocs Template.
- The Document Wizard follows the Designer's ordering, grouping, and rules.
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What software do my end users need with ActiveDocs?
- To use ActiveDocs Templates from the ActiveDocs Express Wizard, all you need is a web browser.
- Documents can be created in most Word formats, ODF, PDF, XPS, EML and HTML.
- Other software needed will depend on the selected document format, and what your end users want to do with the document after creating it.
- The ActiveDocs Client's functions allow users to save documents back to ActiveDocs, and use ActiveDocs Snippets in selected Office applications.
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Do we need to install Microsoft® Word on our server?
No.
- ActiveDocs natively creates documents in Microsoft® Word (OOXML) format without using Microsoft® Word.
- ActiveDocs can automatically create documents in a wide range of other formats on demand.
- The latest versions of ActiveDocs do not need Word for format conversion on the server, although this is available as an option.
- For older ActiveDocs versions, or when configured in newer versions, a single-user copy of Microsoft® Word is required on the server.
- We provide strict implementation guidelines and built-in monitoring services to ensure Microsoft® Word instances are well-managed and run under very high security.
- Please refer to the following Microsoft Knowledge Base article for further information.
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Do ActiveDocs products work with Open Office XML (OOXML)?
- ActiveDocs Designer is an add-in for Microsoft® Word which uses OOXML for easy template design.
- ActiveDocs creates documents in Microsoft® Word (OOXML) format by default.
- ActiveDocs can create documents in a wide range of alternative formats which are described here. ActiveDocs will support the OOXML IEC/ISO specification when the specification is supported by Microsoft® Office.
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Can ActiveDocs create documents in the Open Document Format?
- Yes. ActiveDocs can create documents in a wide range of alternative formats, including ODF/ODT, which are described here.
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How are ActiveDocs products used?
- Banking and Finance:
- Loans and Statements
- Emails and Letters to Customers
- Insurance:
- Policy and Endorsement Documents
- Procurement and Fulfillment:
- Sales Ready Marketing and Order Fulfilment
- Sales and HR:
- Proposals, RFI responses, and HR Contracts
- Specialized Machinery Sales Quotations
- Regulatory and Government:
- Legal Titles, Rates, Public Notices, Regulation Changes
For more specific use cases including technical details, please have a look at our Case Studies.
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How can ActiveDocs support us?
- We have global offices providing pre- and post- sales support in:
- North America (Kansas, USA)
- EMEA (London, UK)
- Asia-Pacific (Brisbane AUS and Auckland NZ)
- 80% of our business is in the Northern Hemisphere.
- Most installs take less than a day and can be done remotely.
- We provide in-depth feature-specific e-Learning modules for trained Designers.
- We can offer service level agreements.
- ActiveDocs Professional Services Team offers a wealth of value-added services including analysis, planning, implementation, training, and certification.
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What makes ActiveDocs the right company to deal with?
- You can automate your high-value document with the greatest speed, success, and minimum risk.
- You can get it right, the first time.
- You'll be able to move your projects forward efficiently and with confidence.
- Our development team have been involved in the product since its inception.
- We are dedicated to one product line, and we listen to our customers and their needs.
- Our intention is to have mutually beneficial long-term relationships with our customers.
- We encourage customers to try our software through customized presentations and hands-on Proof-of-Concept projects.
- We're a highly profitable, privately owned company.
- We have many Fortune 500 customers.
- We are a trusted part of the core infrastructure of our clients.
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Can ActiveDocs supply references and Case Studies?
Yes. We have complete confidence in our product, and so do our customers.
- All of our Customer Case Studies are available here.
- Please contact us directly for customer references.
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What about the cost and ROI?
- ActiveDocs provides value through enterprise-wide efficiency.
- Price versus features, we believe we offer the best solution available.
- Our customers can tell you about their ROI:
- A large multinational has saved US$1.3m in the first year.
- A major bank has reduced overtime to nil in one department, and isn't replacing staff who leave.
- One major corporate client cut the time required to create a complex legal contract from 4 days to under 1 hour.
- Creating documents takes time. Fixing problems in documents takes time. If you could save just one hour in creation or rework per document using ActiveDocs, across 100,000 documents in a year, that 100,000 hours saved could mean over $5m in annual savings.
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Couldn't we build something like ActiveDocs ourselves?
- We have spent over 20 years developing the ActiveDocs product line.
- You need to consider:
- Time
- Money
- Resources
- Long term user support
- Evolution
- Support for new and changing technologies – such as operating systems, databases, word processing, and document formats
- We issue on average 6 feature upgrades per annum
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Isn't this what Microsoft's Open XML SDK is used for?
- Microsoft's Open XML SDK is an excellent toolkit – for developers!
- For business users, a higher level solution is required.
- Software development is required to make that happen...
- ... and you might ask yourself why you couldn't build a solution.
- And we might refer you to the question (and answers) above.
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Couldn't we harness the capabilities of other Microsoft technologies?
- See "Couldn't we build something like ActiveDocs ourselves?" (above)
- See "Isn't this what Microsoft's Open XML SDK is used for?" (above)
- There is an ActiveDocs White Paper on this subject here.
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