OpenGroupware

OSSF [OpenGroupware Server Side Filter] modules provide for server-side transformations of work-flow messages and groupware documents via simple HTTP GET requests. Use of OSSF facilitates the simplification of client applications by allowing them to offline some complex and expensive operations to the OpenGroupware Coils server. OSSF modules can be used when requesting message or document content via either the AttachFS or the WebDAV presentation protocols.

We have previously demonstrated testing format descriptions using AttachFS. Now with OpenGroupware Coils 0.1.49rc91 you can also list, retrieve, and test XSLT templates stored in the workflow engine [OIE]. XLST transforms are accessible via AttachFS requests at the URL /attachfs/workflow/xslt.

Most operations are performed by clients using some protocol over HTTP: XML-RPC, JSONRPC, REST, WebDAV, etc... It is also possible to utilize Python on any OpenGroupware Coils node to perform operations to use the Logic commands directly. The following example demonstrates how to create an object link from the specified task, OGo#318084549, to all the documents in folder OGo#231408659, setting the label of the link to the document's display name.

Format descriptions are one of the handiest features of the OIE workflow engine - no more writing code to read/write all the various files that are received or need to be created; OIE formats can read and write fixed-record length files, delimited files, XLS files, and DIF files. Already built-in to the various format descriptions are various work-arounds for the ways in which each of these files can be mangled. OIE's XLS reading, for example, can deal with spreadsheets where those numbers have actually been occasionally entered as strings, and the delimited file reader can cope with randomly placed escape characters dropped in by applications unaware of what an escape character is. But how do you know, other than trying to run the full process to import the data, if your format description matches the file? Or later on how do you know that the vendor/supplied/department/customer hasn't changed their format without informing you - again without running the process? Answer: Format descriptions can be tested via the AttachFS protocol.

OpenGroupware Coils 0.1.49rc89 has been uploaded to Sourceforge and PyPI

For many applications the simplest solution for capturing documents is to define a static upload target. But it may also be advantageous to structure the documents into a hierarchy based upon a specified criteria. EDDP provides a solution for this use-case by supporting document auto-filing; documents uploaded to a folder can be refiled into a folder hierarchy once the document is successfully committed. Auto-filing occurs both when a document is created or when a new document revision is created (the document is updated); in either case a new document is created at the target path from the appropriate revision of the source document.

Whenever a document is created or modified the auto-print service checks to see if an auto-print queue has been defined on the corresponding folder hierarchy; defining an auto-print target on a folder enables auto-print for that folder and all subordinate folders. Auto-printing is provided by the coils.blob.autoprint service which must be running on a server node for which the IPP server specified by the DefaultIPPServer server default is reachable.

The ultimate EDDP [Event Driven Document Processing] feature provided by OpenGroupware Coils is that of Special Processing. By linking EDDP into the power of the OpenGroupware Integration Engine the potential use-cases are almost limitless.

One form of EDDP (Event Driven Document Processing) is "Page Bursting". Page bursting is only applicable to PDF documents [at least as of the current version]. The purpose of page bursting a document is to decompose a multi-page document into single page documents allowing each page to be easily reviewed individually. One use case is to scan a large collection of invoices, workorders, receipts, on a document center using a document feeder.

OpenGroupware Coils records the MIME type of a document, as provided by the client which creates it, as the object property {57c7fc84-3cea-417d-af54-b659eb87a046}contentType. In the case of a WebDAV, or any standards compliant HTTP client, this will be the value of the Content-Type header of the HTTP PUT operation. The value of this object property is used when the content-type is presented to any subsequent client.