Webdocs Creation & Delivery Electronic Forms Capability Comparison Checklist

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All businesses need to generate standard daily business forms and documents for output. Many of them are still using pre-printed forms and have not yet made the move to generate their documents with electronic overlays for printing, sending via email, or archiving. Others are using old, outdated, or unsupported form technologies that need a refresh. 

Still using pre-printed forms? Looking for a replacement for AFP or other outdated or unsupported solutions? Then let this checklist help you distinguish between Webdocs Creation & Delivery and other electronic form creation products. 

 

TYPES OF FORMS Webdocs Creation & Delivery Others
Single page spooled file or text file documents where data is the same on each page •
Flowing documents that may contain header, footer, detail, or comments and may dynamically overflow to new pages based on variable data •
Letter documents driven by dynamic data fields being filled within a template •
Mailing labels •
Reports documents (i.e., to build flowing columnar reports) •
Documents with terms and conditions are printed on the back of each page. •
Documents that contain multiple business units, departments, or locations where logos and verbiage can be changed on the fly during document generation (eliminating the need for multiple templates for multiple business units) •
 

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COMMON BUSINESS DOCUMENTS Webdocs Creation & Delivery Others
Customer invoice •
Customer sales orders •
Order confirmations •
Customer statements •
Vendor letters •
Customer letters •
Purchase orders •
AP checks •
Shipping documents •
VICS bills of lading •
Bills of lading •
Certificates of Authenticity (C of A) •
Employee documents (W4, I9, etc.) •
Employee letters •
Payroll checks •
Pick lists •
Shop order •
Manufacturing order •
Shop floor traveler •
Job ticket •
Audit reports •
Shipping labels •
Mailing labels •
Part catalogs with images •
Price books •
Any type of report, form-based document, letter, or label •
 

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DOCUMENT INPUT DATA SOURCES Webdocs Creation & Delivery Others
IBM i text based spooled file reports—*SCS •
ASCII text files •
XML data files •
Databases—DB2, SQL Server, MySQL, Oracle, Postgres, CSV, etc. •
Blended data from IBM i spooled files, ASCII text files, and a database table. This provides maximum flexibility when a report may not already contain all the data it needs. Ex: Text report document contains customer number but not the name and delivery information. •
 

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DOCUMENT OUTPUT LOCATIONS Webdocs Creation & Delivery Others
PC printer—print to any Windows print driver or printer •
Spooled—render and re-spooled print data to an IBM i output queue as an *USERASCII spooled file in selected print driver format •
Email—email the generated document •
Local—output the generated document to a local Webdocs Creation & Delivery server directory •
IFS—output the generated document to an IBM i IFS folder •
 

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DOCUMENT PAGE LAYOUT AND FORMATTING Webdocs Creation & Delivery Others
Portrait or landscape •
Paper size •
Page margins •
Simplex or duplex forms •
Fonts—any true type font, normal, bold, italic, underline, colors •
Line spacing •
 

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PROCESS MONITORS Webdocs Creation & Delivery Others
Output queue monitor—monitor an IBM i output queue for spooled file processing •
Data queue—monitor an IBM i data queue for spooled file processing •
Directory monitor—monitor a directory on the Webdocs Creation & Delivery server •
IFS directory monitor—monitor a directory on the Webdocs Creation & Delivery server •
 

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AVAILABLE APIS Webdocs Creation & Delivery Others
Native IBM i command called IFMEXEC to generate a document from an IBM i program or process •
Native IBM i command called IFMASM to merge multiple PDF documents into a single document packet •
REST API is a URL-based API that can be utilized to automatically merge or assemble documents from any application that can call a URL including RPG, Java, .Net, PHP, Ruby, and Fortra Automate software •
 

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FORM DESIGN Webdocs Creation & Delivery Others
Build document designs using the interactive Webdocs Creation & Delivery Designer •
Build text layer designs for text file extraction using the Webdocs Creation & Delivery Text Layer Designer •
Generate a simple graphical overlay from any Word, PDF, or image-based document—even re-purpose an older AFP or other form vendor product overlay without the work of re-designing the form •
 

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FORM DESIGN ELEMENTS Webdocs Creation & Delivery Others
Static text fields •
Dynamic text fields—driven by scripting, database, text or spooled file information •
Horizontal and vertical lines •
Rectangles and boxes •
Circles and ellipses •
Barcodes—1D barcodes, OneCode postal barcode, PDF417, QRCode •
Images—JPG, BMP, or GIF •
Graphs and charts •
 

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FORM SCRIPTING/LOGIC Webdocs Creation & Delivery Others
Java scripting within a form template to add custom form logic •
Swap images on the fly based on data fields in database or report •
Swap barcodes on the fly based on data field in database or report •
Include or build image file locations from text reports or database fields •
Forms can contain parameters for maximum data selection flexibility •
 

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SERVER PLATFORMS Webdocs Creation & Delivery Others
IBM i •
Windows—Physical hardware or virtual machine (VM) •
Both IBM i and Windows •
 

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Seeing Webdocs Creation & Delivery in action will help you determine how automating your form generation processes and eliminating pre-printed forms will help your organization thrive. 

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