ActiveDocs Integration: SharePoint

ActiveDocs provides SharePoint users with additional functionality, usability, efficiency, and productivity – significantly improving ROI with an end-to-end document creation and management solution.

ActiveDocs allows document creation from SharePoint and document storage into SharePoint, in any combination. An end-to-end solution could comprise the following steps:

• Start document creation from within SharePoint: SharePoint Module web parts present a list of available templates, a list of in-progress documents, and the Document Wizard, within a 'user workplace' page in SharePoint.
• The Document Wizard runs and the document is compiled by ActiveDocs.
• Store the compiled document in SharePoint: any SharePoint library accessible by ActiveDocs can be nominated as a document repository where documents are sent automatically on completion. Documents sent to a SharePoint library are subsequently managed by SharePoint according to that library's configuration with all of the supported maintenance, versioning, workflow, and sharing options.
• ActiveDocs starts a SharePoint Approval Workflow.
• On completion of the SharePoint Approval Workflow, ActiveDocs finalizes the document in PDF format and stores it in another SharePoint Document Library.

Document finalization

Finalizing document with ActiveDocs can be automatic or manual. It can be launched from your SharePoint Document Library in accordance with Approval workflow rules (SharePoint Workflows, Nintex, K2, Kofax TotalAgility etc.).

Finalization features include watermark removal, watermark replacement, document format conversion, and document storage redirection.

Document finalization into SharePoint

Document creation isn't always a linear process, even with the addition of Document Automation. A document can go through a number of revisions and adjustments, and maybe some approval/rework cycles, before it is deemed "complete". And at the point where it is deemed "complete", we could imagine one or more additional, conditional, optional processes being performed on it.

ActiveDocs supports post-creation processing with highly functional, conditional, and configurable Approval and Finalization workflows, including storage in SharePoint and other locations and applications.

Along with the document itself, ActiveDocs sends to SharePoint all of the document's metadata. This includes document properties and ActiveDocs data such as the user, subsite, document id, and return URL (which can be used to enable a link from the SharePoint library back to the ActiveDocs database). SharePoint will match the metadata with the available columns in the specified library.

Like all workflow settings, the library location can be set at the global level, and per subsite, and per Template, and may be varied for every document. This means you have very fine control and oversight over what happens to your business-critical documents.