Muhimbi's SharePoint Blog

Convert document types using the PDF Converter for SharePoint (xls to xslx, doc to docx)

2012-02-22T16:44:00.001Z

We have known for a long time that this day was coming, but the PDF Converter for SharePoint is no longer limited to generating just PDFs. So now we have a product that doesn’t quite describe what it does…GREAT! Oh well, the good news is that once again we have added some excellent new functionality that allows documents to be converted to types other than PDF. (Available in version 6.0 and newer)

So, how is this useful? Well, let’s say that you have a large amount of legacy Office 97-2003 files, but your company now requires all files to be saved in the more modern, and open, Office 2007-2010 formats. By using the Muhimbi PDF Converter you can convert between these formats automatically using a SharePoint workflow or a simple web service call using Java or .NET.

Naturally you can go in the other direction as well. For example many users in your company may still be on Office 2000 or 2003, but those fancy guys in IT are saving documents in Office 2010 format. No-one else in the organisation can open these shiny new files using their geriatric versions of MS-Office / Open Office. A simple SharePoint workflow will automatically take care of this and convert the file to the desired format.

Naturally we have to be realistic about which files to convert between. Going from AutoCAD to Excel, makes no sense. The table listed below shows which files can be converted and how.

Some points of interest:

It is now possible to convert InfoPath files to MS-Word, Excel or HTML. (More details in a future blog post)
Although not displayed in this chart, it is also possible to convert PDF (and any other file type) to PDF/A.
It is even possible to ‘convert’ to the same format as the source, e.g. docx to docx, but specify additional settings such as a password on the document.

Convert using Web Service calls

Converting files to non-PDF formats using web service calls works identical to converting files to PDF. The only difference is that the Format property on the ConversionSettings object must be set to the file type you are converting to. For details see the existing Convert to PDF sample code for Java and .NET.

Convert using SharePoint Workflows

Converting a document using SharePoint Designer workflows works similar to converting to PDF. The main difference is that you now use the Convert Document Workflow Activity rather than the Convert to PDF one.

After adding the new activity to your workflow you will see the following Workflow Sentence.

The workflow sentence is consistent with our other Workflow Activities (e.g. Converting / Watermarking / Splitting / Merging), and is largely self-describing.

This document: The document to convert. For most workflows selecting Current Item will suffice, but some custom scenarios (List or Site workflows) may require the look up of a different item.
This File: An optional filename (and path) to write the converted document to. When not specified, the same name as the document that triggered the workflow will be used, just with a different extension. Please make sure that the path does not include the host name, e.g. ‘http://your site/…’., see this post for details about specifying paths.
Select file type: Select the type to convert to from the drop down menu.
Include / exclude meta data: In case of sensitive documents you may want to strip any custom SharePoint columns from the file. For example, if your document library contains a column named ‘Yearly sales forecast’ then you may want to select ‘Exclude’.
Optional parameters: Reserved for future use.
Parameter ‘List ID’: The ID of the list the converted file was written to. This can later in the workflow be used to perform additional tasks on the file such as performing a check-in or out.
Parameter ‘List Item IDs’: At the moment this workflow activity will always generate a single output file. However, in the future it will be possible to generate multiple output files in one go, in which case this parameter will return a string with ‘;’ separated values of the generated item IDs. This list can then be used by other (custom) activities, e.g. the ones created by our Workflow Power Pack, to process the individual files further.

A basic sample workflow is included below, by attaching this workflow to a Forms Library any InfoPath form saved in it will automatically be converted to an MS-Word 2007 file.

Similar to all other functionality provided by the PDF Converter for SharePoint, this new Workflow Activity works on all SharePoint 2007 and 2010 editions.

For a more complex scenario see the existing blog post about the PDF Conversion Activity.

PDF Converter Services 5.2 - PDF Splitting, MSG Conversion & PDF/A support

2012-01-23T12:02:00.001Z

At the end of last week we released version 5.2 of the PDF Converter for SharePoint, which ships with an improved version of our popular PDF Conversion engine. Today we are releasing an update to the standalone version of the Muhimbi PDF Converter Services that includes all new functionality and fixes including the ability to convert MSG (email) files and output in PDF/A format.

The list of new features and improvements is considerable but the main ones are as follows:

Convert Outlook MSG files to PDF including all attachments.
Splitting PDF Files using Java or .NET .
PDF/A Post processing for all supported file formats.
Support for the 64 bit version of Office 2010

A quick introduction for those not familiar with the product: The Muhimbi PDF Converter Services is an ‘on premises’ server based SDK that allows software developers to convert typical Office files to PDF format using a robust, scalable but friendly Web Services interface from Java and .NET based solutions. It supports a large number of file types including MS-Office and ODF file formats as well as HTML, MSG (email) AutoCAD and Image based files and is used by some of the largest organisations in the world for mission critical document conversions. In addition to converting documents the product ships with a sophisticated watermarking engine, PDF Splitting and Merging facilities and the ability to secure PDF files. A separate SharePoint specific version is available as well.

New, PDF Conversion of MSG based emails

In addition to the changes listed above, some of the main changes in the new version are as follows:

1580	CAD	Improvement	Converting AutoCAD files results in much smaller PDF files as before.
1575	CAD	Improvement	Support for Spatial Filters has been added for AutoCAD to PDF Converter
1565	CAD	Improvement	Default "EmptyLayoutDetectionMode" setting is now set to "SkipEmptyLayouts"
1543	CAD	New	Provide different sorting options for CAD Layouts
1472	Documentation	New	Create Merge example for Java
1582	Excel	Fix	Excel sheets in 'Page Break Preview' mode do not convert
1443	HTML	Fix	Images are split when converting certain pages.
1140	HTML	Fix	HTML to PDF Conversion of SP2010 screens is not working correctly.
1501	HTML	Fix	Base tag is ignored when converting HTML fragments to PDF
1540	HTML	Fix	Conversion hangs on certain SP2010 pages
1542	HTML	Fix	HTML to PDF on SP2010 uses wrong page breaks when split images is enabled
1566	InfoPath	Fix	InfoPath Schema Validation error on forms that use FusionX and view switching
1433	InfoPath	Improvement	Provide an option to 'skip' or 'fail' problematic InfoPath attachments
1511	InfoPath	Improvement	Downloading InfoPath XSN files on systems using FBA does not work
1551	InfoPath	Improvement	Add option to create PDF bookmarks for each attached InfoPath document
1517	InfoPath	Improvement	Add switch to pre-process Full Trust InfoPath files
1568	InfoPath	Improvement	Allow invalid SSL Certificates to be used for downloading InfoPath XSN files
1513	Merging	Fix	Merging certain PDF files results in 'index out of bounds'
1594	Merging	Fix	Error in Lexer' when loading PDF File
1617	Merging	Fix	Merging of PDF Files generated with IOS scanner app
1618	Merging	Fix	System.NullReferenceException when loading certain PDF files for merging
1637	Merging	Fix	Bookmarks corrupted when merging certain files
1317	MSG	New	Improve email converter (with MSG support)
1553	Open Office	New	Add support for open office template files (ott, ots, otp)
1505	PDF/A	New	Allow PDF as an input format to support PDF to PDF/A conversion
676	PDF/A	New	Excel Conversion - Add support for PDF/A
619	PDF/A	New	Add support for PDF/A Post Processing (requires 'pro' license)
1458	Setup	New	Add support for silent install / uninstall of Conversion Service
779	Setup	New	Add support for the 64 bit version of Office 2010
1537	Splitting	New	Update web service to allow PDFs to be split
1541	Visio	New	Add support for Visio VDW extension
1547	Watermarking	Fix	Watermarking: Applying rotation of less than -45 degrees rotates the entire page during conversion to PDF/A
1636	Watermarking	Fix	Error in Lexer when applying watermark on merged documents
1613	Web Service	Improvement	Conversion Service Authentication problems on certain systems that have disabled anonymous access (Kerberos related)

For more information check out the following resources:

As always, feel free to contact us using Twitter, our Blog, regular email or subscribe to our newsletter.

Download your free trial here (10MB). .

PDF Converter for SharePoint 5.2 - PDF Splitting, MSG Conversion & PDF/A support

2012-01-20T14:01:00.001Z

Over the past 4 months our engineers have been hard at work on a number of brilliant new facilities resulting in the new 5.2. release of our popular Muhimbi PDF Converter for SharePoint.

The list of new features and improvements is considerable but the main ones are as follows:

Convert Outlook MSG files to PDF including all attachments.
Splitting PDF Files using SharePoint workflows.
PDF/A Post processing for all supported file formats.
Support for the 64 bit version of Office 2010

For those not familiar with the product, the PDF Converter for SharePoint is a lightweight solution that allows end-users to watermark, merge, split, secure and convert common document types - including InfoPath, AutoCAD, MSG (email) MS-Office, HTML and images - to PDF format from within SharePoint using a friendly user interface, workflows or a web service call without the need to install any client side software or Adobe Acrobat. It integrates at a deep level with SharePoint and leverages facilities such as the Audit log, Nintex Workflow, localisation, security and tracing. It runs on WSS 3, MOSS as well as SharePoint 2010 and is available in English, German, Dutch, French, Traditional Chinese and Japanese. For detailed information check out the product page.

New, PDF Conversion of MSG based emails

In addition to the changes listed above, some of the main changes in the new version are as follows:

1580	CAD	Improvement	Converting AutoCAD files results in much smaller PDF files as before.
1575	CAD	Improvement	Support for Spatial Filters has been added for AutoCAD to PDF Converter
1565	CAD	Improvement	Default "EmptyLayoutDetectionMode" setting is now set to "SkipEmptyLayouts"
1543	CAD	New	Provide different sorting options for CAD Layouts
1472	Documentation	New	Create Merge example for Java
1582	Excel	Fix	Excel sheets in 'Page Break Preview' mode do not convert
1443	HTML	Fix	Images are split when converting certain pages.
1140	HTML	Fix	HTML to PDF Conversion of SP2010 screens is not working correctly.
1501	HTML	Fix	Base tag is ignored when converting HTML fragments to PDF
1540	HTML	Fix	Conversion hangs on certain SP2010 pages
1542	HTML	Fix	HTML to PDF on SP2010 uses wrong page breaks when split images is enabled
1471	HTML	Improvement	HTML to PDF Conversion - Error not clear when user has no rights
1566	InfoPath	Fix	InfoPath Schema Validation error on forms that use FusionX and view switching
1433	InfoPath	Improvement	Provide an option to 'skip' or 'fail' problematic InfoPath attachments
1511	InfoPath	Improvement	Downloading InfoPath XSN files on systems using FBA does not work
1551	InfoPath	Improvement	Add option to create PDF bookmarks for each attached InfoPath document
1517	InfoPath	Improvement	Add switch to pre-process Full Trust InfoPath files
1568	InfoPath	Improvement	Allow invalid SSL Certificates to be used for downloading InfoPath XSN files
1513	Merging	Fix	Merging certain PDF files results in 'index out of bounds'
1594	Merging	Fix	Error in Lexer' when loading PDF File
1617	Merging	Fix	Merging of PDF Files generated with IOS scanner app
1618	Merging	Fix	System.NullReferenceException when loading certain PDF files for merging
1637	Merging	Fix	Bookmarks corrupted when merging certain files
1317	MSG	New	Improve email converter (with MSG support)
1508	Nintex WF	Fix	Nintex File Merge activity fails when used inside Nintex 'For each' iterator
1553	Open Office	New	Add support for open office template files (ott, ots, otp)
1505	PDF/A	New	Allow PDF as an input format to support PDF to PDF/A conversion
676	PDF/A	New	Excel Conversion - Add support for PDF/A
619	PDF/A	New	Add support for PDF/A Post Processing (requires 'pro' license)
1458	Setup	New	Add support for silent install / uninstall of Conversion Service
779	Setup	New	Add support for the 64 bit version of Office 2010
1536	Splitting	New	Create workflow activity to split PDF files
1537	Splitting	New	Update web service to allow PDFs to be split
1541	Visio	New	Add support for Visio VDW extension
1538	Watermarking	Fix	Watermarking using a workflow activity removes meta data
1547	Watermarking	Fix	Watermarking: Applying rotation of less than -45 degrees rotates the entire page during conversion to PDF/A
1636	Watermarking	Fix	Error in Lexer when applying watermark on merged documents
1507	Watermarking	Improvement	Watermark filtering - Checking for 'modified = today' does not work
1535	Web Service	Improvement	Add support for the conversion of files up to 1GB
1613	Web Service	Improvement	Conversion Service Authentication problems on certain systems that have disabled anonymous access (Kerberos related)
1576	Workflow	Fix	Merging Workflow Activity fails when used after a 'Pause for Duration' activity
1573	Workflow	Fix	Backslashes are not allowed in output path of HTML to PDF Conversion activity
1545	Workflow	Improvement	Merge workflow activity does not accept URLs

For more information check out the following resources:

As always, feel free to contact us using Twitter, our Blog, regular email or subscribe to our newsletter.

Download your free trial here (14MB). .

Converting and merging multiple files using Java and the PDF Converter Services

2011-12-02T17:44:00.001Z

To facilitate the new PDF Merging facility in our PDF Converter for SharePoint we have added the ability to convert and merge multiple files to our core PDF Conversion engine, which our SharePoint product shares with our generic Java / .NET oriented PDF Converter Services.

In this post we’ll describe in detail how to invoke this new merging facility from your own code. This demo uses Java, but the web services based interface is identical when used from .NET (See the .NET version of this same article).

This post is part of the following series related to manipulating PDF files using web services.

Key Features

The key features of the new merging facilities are as follows:

Convert and merge any supported file format (inc. HTML, AutoCAD, MS-Office, InfoPath, TIFF, MSG) or merge existing PDF files.
Apply different watermarks on each individual file as well as on the entire merged file (e.g. page numbering).
Apply PDF Security settings and restrictions on the merged file.
Optionally skip (and report) corrupt / unsupported files.
Add PDF Bookmarks for each converted file.
Apply any ConversionSetting supported by the regular conversion process.

Object Model

The object model is relatively straight forward. The classes related to PDF Merging are displayed below. A number of enumerations are used as well by the various classes, these can be found in our original post about Converting files using the Web Services interface. A detailed Developer Guide is available here.

The Web Service method that controls merging of files is called ProcessBatch (highlighted in the screenshot above). It accepts a ProcessingOptions object that holds all information about the source files to convert and the MergeSettings to apply, which may optionally include security and watermarking related settings. A Results object is returned that, when it comes to merging of files, always contains a single file in element 0 that holds the byte array for the merged PDF file.

Sample code

The following sample merges all files specified on the command line into a single PDF. If the source files are not already in PDF format then it automatically converts them in the process. A PDF bookmark is automatically generated for each merged file as well.

The example described below assumes the following:

The JDK has been installed and configured.
The Conversion Service and all prerequisites have been installed in line with the Administration Guide.
The Conversion Service is running in the default anonymous mode. This is not an absolute requirement, but it makes initial experimentation much easier.

The first step is to generate proxy classes for the web service by executing the following command:

wsimport http://localhost:41734/Muhimbi.DocumentConverter.WebService/?wsdl
-d src -Xnocompile -p com.muhimbi.ws

Feel free to change the package name and destination directory to something more suitable for your organisation.

Wsimport automatically generates the Java class names. Unfortunately some of the generated names are rather long and ugly so you may want to consider renaming some, particularly the Exception classes, to something friendlier. This, however, means that if you ever run wsimport again you will need to re-apply those changes. For more information have a look at the high level overview of the Object Model exposed by the web service.

Once the proxy classes have been created add the following sample code to your project. Run the code and make sure the files to merge are specified on the command line.

As of version 5.2 this sample code is automatically installed alongside the product. The source code, including pre-generated proxy classes for the web service, can be downloaded here.

package com.muhimbi.app;               
              
import com.muhimbi.ws.*;               
import java.io.*;               
import java.net.URL;               
import javax.xml.bind.JAXBElement;               
import javax.xml.namespace.QName;               
              
public class WsClient {               
              
  private final static String DOCUMENTCONVERTERSERVICE_WSDL_LOCATION =               
        "http://localhost:41734/Muhimbi.DocumentConverter.WebService/?wsdl";               
              
  private static ObjectFactory _objectFactory = new ObjectFactory();               
                
  public static void main(String[] args) {               
    try {               
      if (args.length == 0) {               
        System.out.println("Please specify one or more file names to convert and merge.");               
      } else {               
        System.out.println("Merging files");               
              
        // ** Initialise Web Service               
        DocumentConverterService_Service dcss = new DocumentConverterService_Service(               
            new URL(DOCUMENTCONVERTERSERVICE_WSDL_LOCATION),               
            new QName("http://tempuri.org/", "DocumentConverterService"));               
        DocumentConverterService dcs = dcss.getBasicHttpBindingDocumentConverterService();               
              
        // ** Get the options for all files that need to be merged               
        ProcessingOptions processingOptions = getProcessingOptions(args);               
              
        // ** Carry out the merging (and converting if needed)               
        BatchResults results = dcs.processBatch(processingOptions);               
              
        // ** Get the content of the first file, which holds the merged file in the byte array               
        byte[] convertedFile = results.getResults().getValue().getBatchResult().get(0).getFile().getValue();               
              
        // ** Write converted file to file system               
        writeFile(convertedFile, "merged.pdf");               
        System.out.println("Files merged into 'merged.pdf'");               
      }               
              
    } catch (IOException e) {               
      System.out.println(e.getMessage());               
    } catch (DocumentConverterServiceProcessBatchWebServiceFaultExceptionFaultFaultMessage e) {               
      printException(e.getFaultInfo());               
    }               
  }               
              
                
  public static ProcessingOptions getProcessingOptions(String[] sourceFileNames) throws IOException               
  {               
    // ** Options and all settings for batch conversion               
    ProcessingOptions processingOptions = new ProcessingOptions();               
              
    // ** Specify the minimum level of merge settings, you can optionally add watermarks and security settings               
    MergeSettings mergeSettings = new MergeSettings();               
    mergeSettings.setBreakOnError(false);               
    processingOptions.setMergeSettings(_objectFactory.createProcessingOptionsMergeSettings( mergeSettings ));               
              
    // ** Create an array of files to merge               
    ArrayOfSourceFile sourceFiles = new ArrayOfSourceFile();               
    for(int i =0; i<sourceFileNames.length; i++)               
    {               
      SourceFile sourceFile = getSourceFile(sourceFileNames[i]);               
      sourceFiles.getSourceFile().add(sourceFile);               
    }               
                  
    processingOptions.setSourceFiles( _objectFactory.createProcessingOptionsSourceFiles(sourceFiles));               
    return processingOptions;               
  }               
                
                
  public static SourceFile getSourceFile(String fileName) throws IOException               
  {               
    File file = new File(fileName);               
                  
    // ** Read the contents of the file               
    System.out.println("- Reading: " + fileName);               
    byte[] sourceFileContent = readFile(fileName);               
                  
    // ** Set the absolute minimum open options               
    OpenOptions openOptions = getOpenOptions(getFileName(file), getFileExtension(file) );               
                  
    // ** Set the absolute minimum conversion settings.               
    ConversionSettings conversionSettings = getConversionSettings();               
                  
    // ** Create merge settings for each file and set the name for the PDF bookmark               
    FileMergeSettings fileMergeSettings = new FileMergeSettings();                
    fileMergeSettings.setTopLevelBookmark(_objectFactory.createFileMergeSettingsTopLevelBookmark(file.getName()));               
                          
    // ** Create a source file object and return it               
    SourceFile sourceFile = new SourceFile();               
    sourceFile.setOpenOptions(_objectFactory.createSourceFileOpenOptions(openOptions));               
    sourceFile.setConversionSettings(_objectFactory.createSourceFileConversionSettings(conversionSettings));               
    sourceFile.setMergeSettings(_objectFactory.createSourceFileMergeSettings(fileMergeSettings));               
    sourceFile.setFile(_objectFactory.createSourceFileFile(sourceFileContent));               
    return sourceFile;               
  }               
  
              
  public static OpenOptions getOpenOptions(String fileName, String fileExtension) {               
    OpenOptions openOptions = new OpenOptions();               
    // ** Set the minimum required open options. Additional options are available               
    openOptions.setOriginalFileName(_objectFactory.createOpenOptionsOriginalFileName(fileName));               
    openOptions.setFileExtension(_objectFactory.createOpenOptionsFileExtension(fileExtension));               
    return openOptions;               
  }               
              
              
  public static ConversionSettings getConversionSettings() {               
    ConversionSettings conversionSettings = new ConversionSettings();               
    // ** Set the minimum required conversion settings. Additional settings are available               
    conversionSettings.setQuality(ConversionQuality.OPTIMIZE_FOR_PRINT);               
    conversionSettings.setRange(ConversionRange.ALL_DOCUMENTS);               
    conversionSettings.getFidelity().add("Full");               
    conversionSettings.setFormat(OutputFormat.PDF);               
    return conversionSettings;               
  }               
  
              
  public static String getFileName(File file) {               
    String fileName = file.getName();               
    return fileName;               
  }               
              
              
  public static String getFileExtension(File file) {               
    String fileName = file.getName();               
    return fileName.substring(fileName.lastIndexOf('.') + 1, fileName.length());               
  }               
              
              
  public static byte[] readFile(String filepath) throws IOException {               
    File file = new File(filepath);               
    InputStream is = new FileInputStream(file);               
    long length = file.length();               
    byte[] bytes = new byte[(int) length];               
              
    int offset = 0;               
    int numRead;               
    while (offset < bytes.length               
        && (numRead = is.read(bytes, offset, bytes.length - offset)) >= 0) {               
      offset += numRead;               
    }               
              
    if (offset < bytes.length) {               
      throw new IOException("Could not completely read file " + file.getName());               
    }               
    is.close();               
    return bytes;               
  }               
              
              
  public static void writeFile(byte[] fileContent, String filepath) throws IOException {               
    OutputStream os = new FileOutputStream(filepath);               
    os.write(fileContent);               
    os.close();               
  }               
              
              
  public static void printException(WebServiceFaultException serviceFaultException) {               
    System.out.println(serviceFaultException.getExceptionType());               
    JAXBElement<ArrayOfstring> element = serviceFaultException.getExceptionDetails();               
    ArrayOfstring value = element.getValue();               
    for (String msg : value.getString()) {               
      System.out.println(msg);               
    }               
  }               
              
}

Embedding SharePoint Document IDs in PDF files and generating Short URLs

2011-11-25T18:16:00.001Z

Some time ago we wrote about some new functionality in the PDF Converter for SharePoint that allows ‘real-time’ and ‘user specific’ watermarks to be added to PDF files as soon these files are opened / downloaded / copied. This has proven a real hit with our customers and one of the questions that recently came up is how to use this functionality in combination with the SharePoint 2010’s Document ID Service. (Hint, the internal field names are called _dlc_DocId, _dlc_DocIdUrl and _dlc_DocIdPersistId).

In this post we’ll show how to automatically apply a watermark containing the Document ID to PDF files and then generate a Short URL based on this Document ID. Rather than using our watermark on open facility, we’ll create a SharePoint Designer workflow that carries out the work. Once a Document ID has been created it never changes so although real-time watermarking will work, it is not necessary and a waste of valuable processing resources.

Please note that the example in this post uses both the Muhimbi PDF Converter for SharePoint and the Muhimbi URL Shortener for SharePoint. If you are only interested in URL Shortening or just in Watermarking then you can change the sample accordingly. Also in this example we are not carrying out any PDF Conversion. Examples for PDF Conversion are available on our site for SharePoint Designer as well as Nintex Workflow.

OK, let’s get all the prerequisites in place first.

Download and install the PDF Converter for SharePoint and install it as described in Chapter 2 of the included Administration Guide.
Download and install the URL Shortener for SharePoint and configure it to accept short URLs on a web application of your choice as described in the included Administration Guide.
If not already installed, download and install the free SharePoint Designer for your environment.
Make sure you have the appropriate privileges to create workflows on a site collection.
Enable and configure SharePoint 2010’s Document ID Service

Item with Document ID Populated

With the prerequisites in place, let’s build our custom solution.

On a Document Library of your choice, modify the View to include the Document ID field. (This is just for reference, you don’t need it in the real world.)
On this same document library create a new field named Short URL of type Hyperlink. (This is just to see the name of the short URL after the workflow has executed, it is not needed in the real world).
Create a new SharePoint Designer Workflow using a method of your choice. In this example we’ll do this by navigating to the Library Tab and then selecting Settings / Workflow Settings / Create a Workflow in SharePoint Designer.
Give the workflow a sensible name, e.g. Document ID Processing and change the workflow settings to automatically start when an item is created.
Switch to Edit Workflow and insert a Create Short URL workflow Action.
Click optional short name, followed by the fx button.
From the 'lookup string' dialog, select Document ID Value from the Field from source drop down and close the dialog.
Click this ID / address, followed by the '...' button.
Enter the Document ID URL for your site, you can copy it from the Document ID of an existing item. Generally it is something like http://<path to your site collection>/_layouts/DocIdRedir.aspx?ID= .
Position the cursor after the '=', click the Add or Change Lookup button and select the Document ID Value again. Close the String Builder.
From Document / Display Form select Document.
From Overwrite / Return null select Overwrite.
When the workflow executes it will write the shortened URL to a workflow variable named this variable. The variable name can be changed, but we accept the default.
Insert a set field in current item workflow action, select Short URL as the field.
Click value, followed by the fx button. From the Data Source select Workflow Variables and Parameters and from Field from source select this variable.

The URL Shortening part of the example is now ready. Publish the workflow, upload a file to your document library and after a few seconds the Short URL field will be populated. Click the Short URL to verify it works.

This is what the final workflow will look like after the Watermarking is added as well

You can do whatever you like with this Short URL. Send it by email, tell someone on the phone, or.... embed it in a watermark, something we'll do next.

Return to the Workflow editor and add the following steps:

Position the cursor JUST ABOVE the previously added Set field action and add the If current item field matches condition.
Click field and select File Type.
In value enter pdf (lower case, no '.' prefixed) .
Position the cursor inside the condition and add the Add Text Watermark activity (other watermark types are also available).
Fill out the fields for the watermark

- this document: Set to Current Item.
- this file: Leave the default to overwrite the existing file.
- content: Add the this variable Workflow Variable to insert the previously generated URL. Other content can be added as well.
- position: Bottom Center.
- width x height: 600 x 30

That should take care of the watermarking. Publish the workflow and upload a PDF file. You should now see the Short URL being created and when the document is opened you should see the Short URL at the bottom of the document.

If you find this useful, or have any questions, then feel free to leave a comment below.

Specifying paths and file names when using the PDF Converter for SharePoint

2011-11-23T10:13:00.001Z

The Muhimbi PDF Converter for SharePoint has grown over the last few years from a relatively modest SharePoint GUI application to a sophisticated framework that can be used from Nintex, SharePoint Designer and Visual Studio workflows to carry out all kind of PDF processing, including securing, watermarking, splitting and merging.

Regardless of the operation that is carried out, input and / or output file names, including paths, need to be specified. Although we have tried to make this as intuitive as possible, and we continue to make improvements, according to our statistics the most common support call we receive is related to how to specify these paths. We hope to clarify the situation in this post.

Targeting the same directory / using the same file name as the source file

If you wish to read from or write to the same location as the source file that is being processed, e.g. you are using a SharePoint Designer workflow to automatically convert files to PDF, then leave the path empty. This works for all situations with the exception of the HTML to PDF Conversion as that is not necessarily associated with a source file (it can convert URLs as well).

If you wish to use the same name for the target file as the source file then there is no need to specify a file name, the system will generate the name for you. When converting files to PDF the files’ extension will automatically be updated to ‘PDF’, however when the source file is a PDF (e.g. when applying PDF Security) then omitting the file name and path will overwrite the source file. This may be desired, but keep it in mind.

Targeting a (sub) folder in the current Document Library

If you wish to specify a (sub) folder in the same Document Library as the source file then you must specify the Document Library name as well as the path to the folder. Just specifying the folder name will not work. For example to convert a file to the ‘Archives/PDFs’ folder in the Shared Documents library, specify:

Shared Documents/Archives/PDFs/

Make sure you use a trailing slash as that is used in some cases to resolve potentially conflicting file and folder names. Please do not start the path with a slash in this particular case.

Targeting a different Document Library

To specify a location in a different Document Library in the current Site, specify the name of the Document Library followed by any folders. E.g. if your workflow activity is operating on a file in the Shared Documents library, but you want to write the generated file to the PDF folder in the Archive Document Library then specify the following as the path:

Archive/PDF/

Make sure you use a trailing slash when specifying folders as that is used in some cases to resolve potentially conflicting file and folder names.

Targeting a Sub Site

SharePoint Site Collections can contain multiple Sub Sites. To write a file to a location in a Sub Site specify the name of that Sub Site followed by the name of the Document Library followed by any folder names. For example if the current workflow is acting on a file in the root web of a Site Collection and you wish to write it to the PDFs folder in the Paid Document Library in the Invoices Sub Site specify the following path:

Invoices/Paid/PDFs/

Make sure you use a trailing slash when specifying folders as that is used in some cases to resolve potentially conflicting file and folder names.

To target a Sub Site ‘next’ to the current site, use an absolute path. For details see Targeting a different Site Collection below. Please note that ‘traditional’ relative path notation such as ‘../../’ is not supported.

Targeting a different Site Collection

In order to read from or write to a file in a different site collection you have to use an absolute path starting with ‘/’. For example if a PDF Conversion workflow is running in the Accounting Site collection and the generated PDF file should be written to the Archiving site collection in the PDFs folder in the Accounting Document Library, use the following path

/Archiving/Accounting/PDFs/

If all your Site Collections live under ‘/sites/’ then this will need to be reflected in the path, e.g.

/sites/Archiving/Accounting/PDFs/

Please do not start absolute paths with http://YourWebApplication/, always start absolute paths with a slash.

Targeting a different Web Application

As there are clear security boundaries between SharePoint Web Applications it is not possible to exchange files between them. If this is required then you will need to use a third party Workflow Activity, use Nintex Workflow or write a little bit of custom code using the Muhimbi Workflow Power Pack.

Creating dynamic paths / file names

All of Muhimbi’s SharePoint Designer and Nintex Workflow activities allow lookup variables to be used in order to generate dynamic paths. For example, in order to make a workflow generic, the name of a source or target File / Library / Folder can be determined at run-time.

For Nintex Workflow use the ‘Insert Reference’ button
In SharePoint Designer use the ‘Add Lookup’ button

Some final, generic, hints and tips:

Never start a path with http://YourWebApplication/. Start absolute paths with a ‘/’.
Some activities support templates in the output file name, e.g. to automatically generate file names when splitting PDFs.
Although you can use forward (/) as well as back (\) slashes, make it a habit to use forward slashes as SharePoint Designer 2010 workflows do not always deal well with back slashes.
No matter where you read from or write to, your user must have access to the location that is being specified.

Convert Outlook MSG files to PDF, with attachments, using the Muhimbi PDF Converter

2011-11-16T14:48:00.001Z

In our eternal quest to add support for as many file formats as possible we have arrived at the ‘MSG’ file format. Many people don’t realise that this is probably the most popular file format in the world as each individual message in your Outlook client is an MSG file. As a result I personally have more than 50.000 of these ‘files’ on my machine.

Official support for the MSG file type is available starting with version 5.2 of the Muhimbi PDF Converter for SharePoint as well the PDF Converter Services. The key features are as follows:

Support for all common MSG content types, including HTML, RTF and plain text.
Conversion of rich content including in-line images.
Conversion of attachments.
No need for external dependencies on the server, e.g. Outlook.

Like proud parents we ‘love all our features equally’, but our favourite ~~child~~ feature is the automatic conversion of attachments. Many of our customers are sitting on massive heaps of emails that need to go through a long term archiving process to make sure that 30-40 years down the line this information can still be retrieved. Using the new MSG to PDF facility of our products it is now possible to convert each email, including all attachments, to a single PDF file. In combination with our PDF/A post-processing facility this is the perfect solution for long time archiving.

As the converter is part of our highly scalable PDF Conversion platform, it automatically benefits from all its features including reliability, scalability, watermarking engine, cross platform support, web services based API, PDF security, SharePoint integration, Nintex Workflow integration, Java support, InfoPath attachments, Windows Azure etc.

Example output of a regular email conversation as well as part of a web based newsletter

Splitting PDF Files using the PDF Converter Web Service and .NET / C#

2011-10-27T17:02:00.001+01:00

To facilitate the new PDF Splitting facility in our PDF Converter for SharePoint we have added the ability to split a single file into multiple ones to our core PDF Conversion engine, which our SharePoint product shares with our generic Java / .NET oriented PDF Converter Services.

In this post we’ll describe in detail how to invoke this new splitting facility from your own code. This demo uses C# and .NET, but the web services based interface is identical when used from Java (See this generic PDF Conversion sample).

This post is part of the following series related to manipulating PDF files using web services.

Key Features

The key features of the new splitting facility are as follows:

Split a single PDF file into one or more individual PDF files.
Split based on number of pages or bookmarks.
Automatically generate numbered file names using .NET’s formatting syntax, e.g. 'split-{0:3D}.pdf' will use 3 digits for the sequential numbers starting at ‘split-001.pdf’. When splitting by bookmark then an optional {1} parameter can be inserted in the file name to include the name of the bookmark as well.
Can be combined in combination with other actions, e.g. convert & merge.

A note about splitting based on bookmark levels: PDFs store bookmarks at the page level, so it is not clear on what part of the page a heading starts or ends. As a result an extra page will always be exported for each file split based on bookmark levels.

For example let’s assume the following document:

Page 1: Contains chapter 1 and sections 1.1. and 1.2.
Page 2: Contains the last paragraph of 1.2 and all of chapter 2.
Page 3: Contains Chapter 3.

When splitting this document based on bookmarks using ‘1’ as the batch size then the following files will be created:

File 1: Contains page 1 and 2 as expected.
File 2: Contains pages 2 and 3 even though Chapter 2 is only really part of page 2. This is because there is no way to know if Chapter 2 runs over into page 3 or not.
File 3: Contains Chapter 3.

Object Model

The object model is relatively straight forward. The classes related to PDF Splitting are displayed below. A number of enumerations are used as well by the various classes, these can be found in our original post about Converting files using the Web Services interface.

The Web Service method that controls splitting (as well as merging) of files is called ProcessBatch. It accepts a ProcessingOptions object that holds all information about the files to process and the operations to apply. A Results object is returned that, when it comes to splitting of files, contains one or more results that hold the contents of the file as well as the suggested output file name, which you may us to save the file locally.

As the ProcessingOptions class accepts both MergeSettings and SplitOptions it is possible to convert and merge a set of input files and then split up the results, all in a single web service call. Just populate the various properties and the system will take care of the rest.

Example code

The following sample describes the steps needed to split up a single PDF file based on the number of pages. We are using Visual Studio and C#, but any environment that can invoke web services should be able to access this functionality. Note that the WSDL can be found at http://localhost:41734/Muhimbi.DocumentConverter.WebService/?wsdl.

A generic PDF Conversion Java based example is installed alongside the product and discussed in the User & Developer Guide. The source code for this example can be found in the folder the Muhimbi Conversion service has been installed to.

Start a new Visual Studio project and create the project type of your choice. In this example we are using a standard .net 3.0 project of type Console Application. Name it ‘Split PDF’.
In the Solution Explorer window, right-click References and select Add Service Reference. (Do not use web references!)
In the Address box enter the WSDL address listed in the introduction of this section. If the Conversion Service is located on a different machine then substitute localhost with the server’s name.
Accept the default Namespace of ServiceReference1 and click the OK button to generate the proxy classes.
Optionally add a PDF file to the solution, set the Build Action to None and Copy to Output Directory to Copy if newer. By doing this there will always be a valid test file in the same directory as the compiled executable.
Copy and paste the following code and replace the contents of Program.cs.

using System;

using System.IO;

using System.ServiceModel;

using Split_PDF.ServiceReference1;

namespace Split_PDF

    class Program

        // ** The URL where the Web Service is located. Amend host name if needed.

        static string SERVICE_URL = "http://localhost:41734/Muhimbi.DocumentConverter.WebService/";

        static void Main(string[] args)

            DocumentConverterServiceClient client = null;

try

                // ** Determine the source file and read it into a byte array.

                string sourceFileName = null;

                if (args.Length == 0)

                    //** Delete any split files from a previous test run.

                    foreach (string file in Directory.GetFiles(Directory.GetCurrentDirectory(), 
                                                               "spf-*.pdf"))

                        File.Delete(file);

                    // ** If nothing is specified then read the first PDF file.

                    string[] sourceFiles = Directory.GetFiles(Directory.GetCurrentDirectory(), 
                                                               "*.pdf");

                    if (sourceFiles.Length > 0)

                        sourceFileName = sourceFiles[0];

                    else

                        Console.WriteLine("Please specify a document to split.");

                        Console.ReadKey();

                        return;

                else

                    sourceFileName = args[0];

                byte[] sourceFile = File.ReadAllBytes(sourceFileName);

                // ** Open the service and configure the bindings

                client = OpenService(SERVICE_URL);

                //** Set the absolute minimum open options

                OpenOptions openOptions = new OpenOptions();

                openOptions.OriginalFileName = Path.GetFileName(sourceFileName);

                openOptions.FileExtension = "pdf";

                // ** Set the absolute minimum conversion settings.

                ConversionSettings conversionSettings = new ConversionSettings();

                // ** Create the ProcessingOptions for the splitting task.

                ProcessingOptions processingOptions = new ProcessingOptions()

                    MergeSettings = null,

                    SplitOptions = new FileSplitOptions()

                        FileNameTemplate = "spf-{0:D3}",

                        FileSplitType = FileSplitType.ByNumberOfPages,

                        BatchSize = 5,

                        BookmarkLevel = 0

},

                    SourceFiles = new SourceFile[1]

                        new SourceFile()

                            MergeSettings = null,

                            OpenOptions = openOptions,

                            ConversionSettings = conversionSettings,

                            File = sourceFile

};

                // ** Carry out the splittng.

                Console.WriteLine("Splitting file " + sourceFileName);

                BatchResults batchResults = client.ProcessBatch(processingOptions);

                // ** Process the returned files

                foreach (BatchResult result in batchResults.Results)

                    Console.WriteLine("Writing split file " + result.FileName);

                    File.WriteAllBytes(result.FileName, result.File);

                Console.WriteLine("Finished.");

            catch (FaultException<WebServiceFaultException> ex)

                Console.WriteLine("FaultException occurred: ExceptionType: " +

                                ex.Detail.ExceptionType.ToString());

            catch (Exception ex)

                Console.WriteLine(ex.ToString());

            finally

                CloseService(client);

            Console.ReadKey();

        /// <summary>

        /// Configure the Bindings, endpoints and open the service using the specified address.

        /// </summary>

        /// <returns>An instance of the Web Service.</returns>

        public static DocumentConverterServiceClient OpenService(string address)

            DocumentConverterServiceClient client = null;

try

                BasicHttpBinding binding = new BasicHttpBinding();

                // ** Use standard Windows Security.

                binding.Security.Mode = BasicHttpSecurityMode.TransportCredentialOnly;

                binding.Security.Transport.ClientCredentialType =

                                                                HttpClientCredentialType.Windows;

                // ** Increase the client Timeout to deal with (very) long running requests.

                binding.SendTimeout = TimeSpan.FromMinutes(30);

                binding.ReceiveTimeout = TimeSpan.FromMinutes(30);

                // ** Set the maximum document size to 50MB

                binding.MaxReceivedMessageSize = 50 * 1024 * 1024;

                binding.ReaderQuotas.MaxArrayLength = 50 * 1024 * 1024;

                binding.ReaderQuotas.MaxStringContentLength = 50 * 1024 * 1024;

                // ** Specify an identity (any identity) in order to get it past .net3.5 sp1

                EndpointIdentity epi = EndpointIdentity.CreateUpnIdentity("unknown");

                EndpointAddress epa = new EndpointAddress(new Uri(address), epi);

                client = new DocumentConverterServiceClient(binding, epa);

                client.Open();

                return client;

            catch (Exception)

                CloseService(client);

                throw;

        /// <summary>

        /// Check if the client is open and then close it.

        /// </summary>

        /// <param name="client">The client to close</param>

        public static void CloseService(DocumentConverterServiceClient client)

            if (client != null && client.State == CommunicationState.Opened)

                client.Close();

Compile the application and run it either from the command prompt, with a path to the PDF file to split on the command line, or – if a PDF file is present in the executable’s folder – just run it.

Note that In this example we are programmatically configuring the WCF Bindings and End Points. If you wish you can use the declarative approach using the config file as well.

This new functionality is available as of version 5.2 of our software.

Splitting PDF Files using a SharePoint workflow and the Muhimbi PDF Converter

2011-10-27T11:59:00.001+01:00

Some time ago we introduced a facility in the Muhimbi PDF Converter for SharePoint to merge files using the User Interface, Workflow and Web Service calls. Naturally we have to support the ‘other side of the equation’ as well, resulting in the new PDF Split functionality described in this article.

This post shows how to use a SharePoint Designer Workflow to automatically split up an existing PDF file into multiple files containing 10 pages each. This is quite a common scenario for organisations that deal with massive documents who frequently split up these kind of files in batches of 100 pages to keep the files manageable. If your document is using a format other than PDF then make sure your use our Convert to PDF Workflow Activity first.

The SharePoint Designer Workflow Activity is named Split PDF. After adding it to your workflow you will see the following Workflow Sentence.

The workflow sentence is consistent with our other Workflow Activities (e.g. Converting / watermarking), and is largely self-describing. The following fields are available:

This document: The document to split up. For most workflows selecting Current Item will suffice, but some custom scenarios may require the look up of a different item. You may also want to check that the file type of the document is ‘pdf’ before trying to split it up.
This file: The name and location of the split files are stored in here. Leave this field empty to use the same folder and file name as the source file, but with sequential numbers added. However, you can optionally specify a path and / or filename template.
Path: Enter a path, including the Document Library and any folder names, to write the split files to. E.g. “shared documents/split files/”. You can even specify a different site collection by starting the path with a '/' (never start with 'http:'). When just specifying a path, without the file name, then make sure to use a trailing ‘/’.
File Name: The file name can be anything and allows the standard .NET string formatting facilities for numbering, e.g. 'split-{0:3D}' will use 3 digits for the sequential numbers starting at ‘split-001.pdf’. When splitting by bookmark then an optional {1} parameter can be inserted in the file name to include the name of the bookmark as well.
Number of pages / bookmark level: Specify if you wish to split based on the number of pages or the level of the bookmark.
Batch size: When splitting based on the number of pages then this parameter must be set to the maximum number of pages to include in each split file. When splitting based on the bookmark level then this parameter should contain the ‘depth’ at which to split. E.g. specify ‘1’ to split on top level chapters (Chapter 1, chapter 2, etc.) or a higher number to split at a deeper level (e.g. ‘2’ splits on Chapter 1, 1.1, 1.2, 2, 2.1 etc.)
Parameter ‘List ID’: The ID of the list the split files were written to. This can later in the workflow be used to perform additional tasks on the file such as performing a check-in or out.
Parameter ‘List Item IDs’: Unlike our other workflow activities, this parameter will return a string with ‘;’ separated values of the generated item IDs. This list can then be used by other (custom) activities, e.g. the ones created by our Workflow Power Pack, to process the individual files further.

For example let’s assume the following document:

Page 1: Contains chapter 1 and sections 1.1. and 1.2.
Page 2: Contains the last paragraph of 1.2 and all of chapter 2.
Page 3: Contains Chapter 3.

When splitting this document based on bookmarks using ‘1’ as the batch size then the following files will be created:

File 1: Contains page 1 and 2 as expected.
File 2: Contains pages 2 and 3 even though Chapter 2 is only really part of page 2. This is because there is no way to know if Chapter 2 runs over into page 3 or not.
File 3: Contains Chapter 3.

With all the theory out of the way, let’s create a simple example to split up PDF files in batches of 10 pages. .

Download and install the Muhimbi PDF Converter for SharePoint. Version 5.2 or newer is required.
Make sure you have the appropriate privileges to create workflows on a site collection.
Create a new workflow using SharePoint Designer.
Associate the workflow with the library of your choice. Do not tick any of the boxes next to the ‘Automatically start….’ options, we want to start this workflow manually. If you wish to run this workflow automatically then you may want to add an extra column to determine if a file has been split before, similar to the technique used in this post.
Design the workflow as per the following screen. In summary it does the following:
- Check if the file is in PDF format. Otherwise it cannot be split.
- The ‘split’ files are written to a folder named ‘Split Files’ so make sure this folder exists. e.g. "Shared Documents/Split Files/spf-{0:D5}.pdf”. You can leave our sample file name or merge the file’s name in using workflow lookups.
- Log the generated list of Item IDs to the workflow history.

Publish the workflow and create / convert / upload a PDF file in the document library. From the file's context menu select 'Workflows' and run your workflow. Depending on the size of the document the split files will be generated in a matter of seconds.

Announcement: Acquisition of SharePoint Audit Product Line by Idera

2011-10-03T13:00:00.001+01:00

Today is a very exciting day as we are announcing the acquisition of the entire Muhimbi SharePoint Audit product line by Idera. This is great news for all existing users of this product as Idera has an enormous amount of experience in the field of Audit and Security software. Muhimbi will continue to focus on the popular SharePoint PDF Conversion and Manipulation line of products.

Idera Announces New SharePoint Auditing Solution
Idera SharePoint audit Joins SharePoint enterprise manager to Provide
Comprehensive SharePoint Security, Compliance Solution

ANAHEIM, CALIF. – OCTOBER 3, 2011 – In booth #617 at the Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2011, Idera, a leading provider of Microsoft SharePoint management and administration tools, today announced Idera SharePoint audit™. Idera SharePoint audit is a comprehensive SharePoint auditing solution that captures and records all audit events, manages the audit data captured in a central repository and provides comprehensive reporting and analytics regarding who is doing what, when and where in a SharePoint environment.

Idera SharePoint audit and Idera SharePoint enterprise manager™ work hand-in-hand to provide an overall SharePoint security and compliance solution. Idera SharePoint audit enables administrators to simplify audit administration, automatically turning on auditing for new SharePoint site collections and configuring specialized auditing at the web application or site collection level. Leveraging proven technology acquired from Muhimbi, it collects the data needed to comply with regulations and data security requirements such as Sarbanes Oxley (SOX) and HIPAA. Idera SharePoint enterprise manager then ensures security standards are properly applied in SharePoint by remediating potential security or compliance issues.

“As we started to research what functionality we would add to our SharePoint product portfolio, a powerful SharePoint auditing solution that can audit activity across all versions of SharePoint with minimal performance impact rose to the top of the list,” said Wayne Washburn, Director of SharePoint Products at Idera. “We invite all SharePoint professionals to try SharePoint audit.”

In related news, Idera also announced SharePoint backup™ 3.1 and SharePoint diagnostic manager™ 2.6 today. To learn more go to http://www.idera.com/News/Press-Releases/ or visit Idera in booth #617 at the Microsoft SharePoint Conference where the company will be doing informative product demonstrations and hosting giveaways.

Pricing and Availability
Idera SharePoint audit is currently in Public Beta. To download a Beta copy, please visit www.idera.com/Products/SharePoint/SharePoint-audit/.

The product will be generally available in November and will be priced at $9,995 per web front end.

About Idera
Idera provides tools for Microsoft SQL Server, SharePoint and PowerShell management and administration. Our products provide solutions for performance monitoring, backup and recovery, security and auditing and PowerShell scripting. Headquartered in Houston, Texas, Idera is a Microsoft Gold Partner and has over 9,000 customers worldwide. To learn more, please contact Idera at +1-713.523.4433 or visit www.idera.com.

About Muhimbi
Muhimbi Ltd is the market leader for SharePoint based PDF Conversion, watermarking and security products with full support for InfoPath, AutoCAD, MS-Office, SharePoint Designer and Nintex workflows. Operating from St. Albans, United Kingdom, Muhimbi is working with hundreds of customers around the world to deploy their products in large as well as small SharePoint environments. To learn more, please contact Muhimbi at jritmeijer@muhimbi.com or visit www.muhimbi.com

Idera is a division of BBS Technologies, Inc. Idera, SharePoint audit, SharePoint backup, SharePoint diagnostic manager and SharePoint enterprise manager are trademarks or registered trademarks of BBS Technologies, Inc. or its subsidiaries in the United States and other jurisdictions. All other company and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.

###

Press and Analyst contact:
Carrie Ward, PR for Idera, 832-407-5347, carrie.ward@idera.com

Converting PDF document to PDF/A1b using the Muhimbi PDF Converter Web Service

2011-09-27T15:20:00.001+01:00

As Muhimbi’s range of PDF Conversion products, including the PDF Converter for SharePoint and the PDF Converter Services, now provide the ability to post process any converted document for output in PDF/A format, one obvious use for this brilliant new functionality is to convert regular PDF files to PDF/A format.

In this post we’ll provide a simple .NET sample that invokes our Web Services interface to carry out the conversion from PDF to PDF/A1b. The code is nearly identical to the code to convert and watermark a simple MS-Word file with the following exceptions. You can apply the same changes to the Java sample to make it do the same using that language.

openOptions.FileExtension is set to pdf.
conversionSettings.PDFProfile is set to PDFProfile.PDF_A1B.
The client.ProcessChanges() method is invoked rather than client.Convert().
All references to watermarks have been removed as they are not part of this sample.

Some minor clean-up has been carried out as well to make the code even shorter. After running the example the resulting file validates perfectly according to Acrobat X Pro.

Sample Code

Listed below is sample code to convert PDF to PDF/A. You can either copy the code from this blog post, download the Visual Studio Project or open the project from the Sample Code folder in the Windows Start Menu.

The sample code expects the path of the PDF file on the command line. If the path is omitted then the first PDF file found in the current directory will be used.

Download and install version 5.2 of the Muhimbi PDF Converter Services or PDF Converter for SharePoint.
Install the prerequisites and enable PDF/A post processing in the service’s configuration file as described here.
Create a new Visual Studio C# Console application named PDFA_Conversion.
Add a Service Reference to the following URL and specify ConversionService as the namespace

http://localhost:41734/Muhimbi.DocumentConverter.WebService/?wsdl

Paste the following code into Program.cs.

using System;

using System.Diagnostics;

using System.IO;

using System.ServiceModel;

using Watermarking.ConversionService;

namespace PDFA_Conversion

    class Program

     // ** The URL where the Web Service is located. Amend host name if needed.

     static string SERVICE_URL = "http://localhost:41734/Muhimbi.DocumentConverter.WebService/";

        static void Main(string[] args)

            DocumentConverterServiceClient client = null;

try

                // ** Determine the source file and read it into a byte array.

                string sourceFileName = null;

                if (args.Length == 0)

                    // ** If nothing is specified then read the first PDF file from the folder.

                    string[] sourceFiles = Directory.GetFiles(
                                                     Directory.GetCurrentDirectory(), "*.pdf");

                    if (sourceFiles.Length > 0)

                        sourceFileName = sourceFiles[0];

                    else

                        Console.WriteLine("Please specify a document to convert to PDF/A.");

                        Console.ReadKey();

                        return;

                else

                    sourceFileName = args[0];

                byte[] sourceFile = File.ReadAllBytes(sourceFileName);

                // ** Open the service and configure the bindings

                client = OpenService(SERVICE_URL);

                //** Set the absolute minimum open options

                OpenOptions openOptions = new OpenOptions();

                openOptions.OriginalFileName = Path.GetFileName(sourceFileName);

                openOptions.FileExtension = "pdf";

                // ** Set the absolute minimum conversion settings.

                ConversionSettings conversionSettings = new ConversionSettings();

                conversionSettings.PDFProfile = PDFProfile.PDF_A1B;

                // ** Carry out the conversion.

                Console.WriteLine("Converting file " + sourceFileName + " to PDF/A.");

                byte[] convFile = client.ProcessChanges(sourceFile, openOptions, 
                                                        conversionSettings);

                // ** Write the converted file back to the file system using the same name.

                string destinationFileName = Path.GetFileName(sourceFileName);

                using (FileStream fs = File.Create(destinationFileName))

                    fs.Write(convFile, 0, convFile.Length);

                    fs.Close();

                Console.WriteLine("File converted to " + destinationFileName);

                // ** Open the generated PDF/A file in a PDF Reader

                Console.WriteLine("Launching file in PDF Reader");

                Process.Start(destinationFileName);

            catch (FaultException<WebServiceFaultException> ex)

                Console.WriteLine("FaultException occurred: ExceptionType: " +

                                ex.Detail.ExceptionType.ToString());

            catch (Exception ex)

                Console.WriteLine(ex.ToString());

            finally

                CloseService(client);

            Console.ReadKey();

        /// <summary>

        /// Configure the Bindings, endpoints and open the service using the specified address.

        /// </summary>

        /// <returns>An instance of the Web Service.</returns>

        public static DocumentConverterServiceClient OpenService(string address)

            DocumentConverterServiceClient client = null;

try

                BasicHttpBinding binding = new BasicHttpBinding();

                // ** Use standard Windows Security.

                binding.Security.Mode = BasicHttpSecurityMode.TransportCredentialOnly;

                binding.Security.Transport.ClientCredentialType =

                                                              HttpClientCredentialType.Windows;

                // ** Increase the client Timeout to deal with (very) long running requests.

                binding.SendTimeout = TimeSpan.FromMinutes(30);

                binding.ReceiveTimeout = TimeSpan.FromMinutes(30);

                // ** Set the maximum document size to 50MB

                binding.MaxReceivedMessageSize = 50 * 1024 * 1024;

                binding.ReaderQuotas.MaxArrayLength = 50 * 1024 * 1024;

                binding.ReaderQuotas.MaxStringContentLength = 50 * 1024 * 1024;

                // ** Specify an identity (any identity) in order to get it past .net3.5 sp1

                EndpointIdentity epi = EndpointIdentity.CreateUpnIdentity("unknown");

                EndpointAddress epa = new EndpointAddress(new Uri(address), epi);

                client = new DocumentConverterServiceClient(binding, epa);

                client.Open();

                return client;

            catch (Exception)

                CloseService(client);

                throw;

        /// <summary>

        /// Check if the client is open and then close it.

        /// </summary>

        /// <param name="client">The client to close</param>

        public static void CloseService(DocumentConverterServiceClient client)

            if (client != null && client.State == CommunicationState.Opened)

                client.Close();

Make sure the output folder contains a PDF file.
Compile and execute the application. The converted PDF/A file will automatically be opened in your system’s PDF reader.

As all this functionality is exposed via a Web Services interface, it works equally well from Java and other web services enabled environments. Please note that you need the PDF Converter Professional add-on license in addition to a valid PDF Converter for SharePoint or PDF Converter Services License in order to use this functionality.

This code is merely an example of what is possible, feel free to adapt it to you own needs. The possibilities are endless.

PDF/A Support in the Muhimbi PDF Converter Services & SharePoint

2011-09-26T12:29:00.001+01:00

Muhimbi’s range of PDF Conversion products, including the PDF Converter for SharePoint and the PDF Converter Services, has provided some level of PDF/A support since the very beginning. We knew this was going to be important so we even built it into our web service’s object model. However, up until now (version 5.1), any request to output the file in PDF/A format was passed on directly to the underlying converter, which may, or may not, do a good job of sticking to the PDF/A standard (more on this subject below).

The converters that support this kind of output natively are:

MS-Word
PowerPoint
MS-Publisher
Viso
TIFF

This all all changes with version 5.2 of our software, which allows any PDF file to be post processed and converted to PDF/A-1b. More about this later, let’s have a look at the history, and reasons, behind the PDF/A standard first.

Over the last 20 years the PDF document format has grown from a relatively basic file type that displays information on screen as if it were printed on paper, to an all singing and dancing 3D, Audio / Video digital printing format. Although at the moment it is easy and free to download a viewer that can display the latest and greatest content, what about the computers used 50 years from now? Who knows, perhaps the holographic AppleMicroGoogle™ quantum computers we’ll be using by then won’t even understand the concept of embedded JavaScript, or no one could be bothered to implement it in the version of Acrobat Reader that was rewritten from the ground up after the Great Computer Failure of 2038. All kidding aside, the PDF/A standard was created to go ‘back to basics’ and use PDF for what it was originally intended for and give future computers and operating systems a remote chance of displaying a file’s content similar to how it was originally intended to look.

A good summary of the main aims and rules with regards to PDF/A can be found on the pdfa.org website.

What does PDF/A aim to achieve? PDF/A aims to produce files with static content that can therefore be visually reproduced completely precisely today and in many years time. Files that are subject to long-term archiving should work regardless of the device or operating system used. The future usability of PDF/A files must also be guaranteed in a manufacturer-independent manner – and this includes Adobe. PDF/A is a ‘complete’ format. This means that PDF files that comply with the PDF/A standard are complete in themselves and use no external references or non-PDF data. The PDF/A-1 standard is based on PDF/A specification 1.4, which means that it works within the technical scope of the functions available in Acrobat 5.

A range of rules must be observed when generating PDF/A files in order to meet the goals named above. For example, when generating PDF/A, it is important to embed all fonts and clearly specify all colors. Forms, comments, and notes are only permitted to a limited extent. Compression is allowed as a general rule, but LZW and JPEG2000 are excluded. Transparent objects and layers (Optional Content Groups) are not permitted. PDF/A uses rules for metadata that are based on XMP (Extensible Metadata Platform). Finally, a PDF/A file must identify itself as such.

Please note that you need the PDF Converter Professional add-on license in addition to a valid PDF Converter for SharePoint or PDF Converter Services License in order to use this functionality.

Muhimbi’s interpretation of the PDF/A-1b standard

As is generally the case with these kinds of standards, there are as many PDF/A validators as there are interpretations of the specification. The validator we use internally for testing purposes is the one that comes with Adobe Acrobat Pro X. I am sure there are stricter validators, but if Acrobat Pro says a document validates fine then I am sure there is a pretty good chance it can be opened 50 years from now.

In the screenshot below you can see the validation results of a PowerPoint file that was converted to PDF by the Muhimbi PDF Converter and subsequently post processed for output as PDF/A. As you can see it validates perfectly well.

PDF/A File generated by the Muhimbi PDF Converter

As you can see in the screenshot below, the same document saved by PowerPoint itself in PDF/A format does not validate successfully.

PDF/A File generated by PowerPoint

Clearly the file post-processed by the Muhimbi PDF Converter validates better, but that doesn’t mean that the one generated by PowerPoint cannot be displayed 50 years from now. The validator checks many rules including important ones such as font embedding, but also rules that are perhaps not so important like the fact that the Modification Date stored in the PDF is exactly the same as the one stored in the XMP meta-data.

Configuring the Muhimbi PDF Converter to use PDF/A

The Muhimbi PDF Converter relies on 3rd party software to carry out the PDF/A post processing step. Fortunately this software is free to download and install for both individuals and organisations. The actual use of the software is less than trivial, but our software takes care of all the complexities.

Installation of this software is optional and only required if you intend to carry out any PDF/A post processing. The steps are as follows:

If not already installed, install the Muhimbi PDF Converter for SharePoint version 5.2 or newer.
Download the latest GPL Release from the Ghostscript website. Depending on your hardware and operating system you will need to download either the 32 or 64 bit version. Muhimbi has tested the PDF/A post processing with version 9.04.
Install Ghostscript in a location of your choice on every server that runs the Muhimbi Conversion Service. If you accept the default location, or the default location on a different drive, then the Muhimbi PDF Converter will automatically detect Ghostscript’s file path.

Once Ghostscript has been installed you are ready to go, providing you access our Web Services based interface from your own software and the PDFA.PostProcessing configuration value discussed below is set appropriately (details for use with SharePoint can be found further below). Just set the web service’s ConversionSettings.PDProfile property to PDF_A1B and any converter that doesn’t natively support PDF/A output will automatically send the generated PDF file to the post processor. However, depending on your exact needs you may want to update a number of settings in the Muhimbi Conversion Service’s config file.

Open ‘Muhimbi.DocumentConverter.Service.exe.config’ in your favourite text editor. The file is stored in the same directory where the Muhimbi Conversion Service has been installed in. You can find a shortcut to this folder in the ‘Muhimbi Document Converter’ group in your start menu.
Change the following settings if needed:
- Ghostscript.Path: Leave the path empty to auto detect the path. When manually specifying the path include the executable as well, e.g. "E:\Program Files\gs\gs9.04\bin\gswin64c.exe"
- PDFA.PostProcessing: Not all converters are able to provide native PDF/A output. Use this setting to post process any generated PDF file. Valid values are 'All' (Post Process files generated by all converters, including the ones that are supposed to already support PDF/A), 'WhenNeeded' (Post process files for only those converters that do not support native PDF/A output) or 'None' (Do not post process files generated by any converters. This is the default option). Please note that these values will only be used if the output format is set to PDF_A1B, either in the web service call or via the global 'ConversionSettings.ForcePDFProfile' config value.
- PDFA.RasterizeTransparentContent: Define how transparent content is dealt with during conversion to PDF/A. The default setting (False) removes all transparency. If you wish to retain transparent objects then set this value to True, which will result in pages being rasterized resulting in considerably larger and slower PDF files.
- ConversionSettings.ForcePDFProfile: Override the web service’s ConversionSettings.PDFProfile value during conversion. Leave empty to use the setting specified in the web service call. Accepted values are members of the Muhimbi.DocumentConverter.WebService.Data.PDFProfile enumeration or an empty string. For example: 'PDF_1_5' (Use PDF Version 1.5) or 'PDF_A1B' (Use the PDF/A standard for long term archiving).
Restart the Muhimbi Conversion Service from the Windows Services Management Console.

If you don’t directly interact with Muhimbi’s Web Services interface, but rather use the SharePoint Front End functionality that comes with the PDF Converter for SharePoint, e.g. workflow activities or manual PDF Conversion, then you MUST set the ForcePDFProfile configuration value to PDF_A1B. Please note that that this is a global switch that forces all functionality provided by our product to output in PDF/A format. This may have side effects when applying PDF Security. In the future we will provide more granular support for those customers who rely on the SharePoint facilities that come with our products.

Sample code to convert PDF Documents to PDF/A using our web services interface can be found here. If you don’t wish to use Ghostscript, or if your organisation already uses a different PDF to PDF/A converter that you wish to integrate with, then please contact us.

Issues and limitations

At Muhimbi we like to under promise and over deliver, so interpret the following in that light. We prefer to be upfront about any issues you may encounter to prevent unexpected surprises at a later date.

At this moment in time we are aware of the following issues:

64 bit only: At this moment the 32 bit version of Ghostscript (9.04) contains a bug that may interfere with PDF/A output. As a result you will need to install the 64 bit version. In other words you can only run the entire solution successfully on a 64 bit machine running a 64 bit Operating System. It is expected that this bug will be fixed in the ‘post 9.04 version’ expected at the beginning of 2012.
Merged Documents: When documents are merged using the Muhimbi PDF Converter, and subsequently post processed for PDF/A output, then Acrobat’s validator shows the ‘CIDSystemInfo and CMap dict not compatible' validation error. It doesn’t happen for all document types and we are confident this message does not have any significant side effects.

There are other side effects inherent to the PDF/A standard that we can’t do anything about. For example, as transparency is not supported, any documents that use (semi) transparent objects may not look the same as the source document. Similarly, because fonts MUST be embedded in PDF/A-1b compliant documents, the resulting PDF file may be larger than expected, although in many cases you will find them to be smaller than the source file.

We love working with our customers and we’ll do our very best to solve any problems you may experience, so please drop us a line if you have any questions or require assistance.

Interestingly the various committees have already started work on PDF/A2, which aims to put everything back in that was stripped out of PDF/A-1b (3D Graphics, Audio, Video etc). To be continued….

PDF Converter Services 5.1 – Maintenance release

2011-09-13T13:27:00.001+01:00

Earlier this week we released version 5.1 of the PDF Converter for SharePoint, which ships with an improved version of our popular PDF Conversion engine. Today we are releasing an update to the standalone version of the Muhimbi PDF Converter Services that includes all new functionality and fixes including the ability to convert InfoPath 2010 forms that include external data connections.

A quick introduction for those not familiar with the product: The Muhimbi PDF Converter Services is an ‘on premises’ server based SDK that allows software developers to convert typical Office files to PDF format using a robust, scalable but friendly Web Services interface from Java and .NET based solutions. It supports a large number of file types including MS-Office and ODF file formats as well as HTML, AutoCAD and Image based files and is used by some of the largest organisations in the world for mission critical document conversions. In addition to converting documents the product ships with a sophisticated watermarking engine, PDF Merging facilities and the ability to secure PDF files. A separate SharePoint specific version is available as well.

Some of the main changes in the new version are as follows:

1304	New - InfoPath: Allow external data sources during PDF Conversion in InfoPath 2010
1429	New - InfoPath: Limit conversion of InfoPath attachments to just the active views
1359	Fix - InfoPath: Attachments are sometimes converted twice
1444	Fix - InfoPath: IP2010 still executes disabled 'Form Load' rule
1492	Fix - InfoPath: 'Busy' during conversion
1445	Fix - InfoPath: forms containing Ink controls do not convert
1355	New - Watermarking: Optimise memory use during watermarking
1473	Fix - Watermarking certain bitmap based PDF Files loses all content
1400	Fix - Watermarking: Special characters in MergeField values are not escaped for RTF watermarks
1383	New - Make automatic stripping of MS-Word templates optional
1427	New - Allow all conversion default values to be globally overridden in config file.
1453	Fix - Excel sheets with large OLAP cubes may fail to convert
1470	Fix - Protected MS-Word documents don't convert in Office 2010
1454	Fix - CAD drawing returns empty PDF
1206	Fix - HTML to PDF Conversion hangs on long pages
1419	Fix - PDF Files secured using the PDF Converter may cause problems with searching inside documents
1420	Fix - Image with large dimensions does not convert

For more information check out the following resources:

As always, feel free to contact us using Twitter, our Blog, regular email or subscribe to our newsletter.

Download your free trial here (8MB). .

PDF Converter for SharePoint 5.1 – PDF Merging using workflows & Nintex improvements

2011-09-12T11:02:00.001+01:00

It is difficult to capture all the amazing new functionality of the 5.1 release of our popular Muhimbi PDF Converter for SharePoint in a single subject line without exceeding the number of available characters, so I am afraid ‘PDF merging using workflows & Nintex improvements’ will have to do.

The list of new features is considerable but the main ones are as follows:

Watermark PDFs using Nintex Workflow and the PDF Converter for SharePoint.
Secure PDFs using Nintex Workflow and the PDF Converter for SharePoint.
Convert and Merge PDFs using Nintex Workflow and the Muhimbi PDF Converter.
Convert HTML to PDF using Nintex Workflow and the PDF Converter for SharePoint.
Convert and merge multiple PDF files using SharePoint Designer workflows.
InfoPath 2010 support for converting with external data connections.

For those not familiar with the product, the PDF Converter for SharePoint is a lightweight solution that allows end-users to convert common document types - including InfoPath, AutoCAD, MS-Office, HTML and images - to PDF format from within SharePoint using a friendly user interface, workflows or a web service call without the need to install any client side software or Adobe Acrobat. It integrates at a deep level with SharePoint and leverages facilities such as the Audit log, localisation, security and tracing. It runs on WSS 3, MOSS as well as SharePoint 2010 and is available in English, German, Dutch, French, Traditional Chinese and Japanese. For detailed information check out the product page.

In addition to the changes listed above, some of the main changes in the new version are as follows:

1425	New - Nintex: Add Nintex error handling facility to existing Convert Activity
1200	New - Nintex: Create Watermark Activity for Nintex Workflow
1199	New - Nintex: Create PDF Security Activity for Nintex Workflow
1424	New - Nintex: Create PDF Merge Activity for Nintex Workflow
1423	New - Nintex: Create HTML Conversion Activity for Nintex Workflow
1304	New - InfoPath: Allow external data sources during PDF Conversion in InfoPath 2010
1429	New - InfoPath: Limit conversion of InfoPath attachments to just the active views
1359	Fix - InfoPath: Attachments are sometimes converted twice
1444	Fix - InfoPath: IP2010 still executes disabled 'Form Load' rule
1492	Fix - InfoPath: 'Busy' during conversion
1445	Fix - InfoPath: forms containing Ink controls do not convert
1395	Fix - Filtering in SP2010 doesn't take the regional settings of current site into account.
1338	New - Filtering: Add support for checking if a user is in a SharePoint group.
1337	New - Filtering: New comparison operator 'is in list'.
1339	New - Filtering: Add support for filtering for the current user using '[me]'.
1336	New - Filtering: Add support for filtering for the current day using '[today]'.
1394	New - Watermarking: Move watermark handler to a new and separate SharePoint Feature
1355	New - Watermarking: Optimise memory use during watermarking
1473	Fix - Watermarking certain bitmap based PDF Files loses all content
1407	Fix - Watermarking: On SP2007 opening a PDF File and then cancelling it writes an error to the event log
1350	Fix - Watermarking: Opening PDF Files behaves differently with the Muhimbi handler installed
1417	Fix - Watermarking: Opening large PDF files fails
1428	Fix - Watermarking: Image watermarking using a variable path does not validate in SharePoint Designer 2010
1397	Fix - Watermarking: When a field code value is empty then the field name is displayed in the watermark
1400	Fix - Watermarking: Special characters in MergeField values are not escaped for RTF watermarks
1329	Fix - Watermarking: Conversion service merge fields are only supported in text watermarks
1328	Fix - Watermarking: Image watermark only supports resources from the current web
1187	New - New SharePoint Designer Workflow activity to allow PDF files to be merged
1385	New - Add limits to the number of files that can be merged
1383	New - Make automatic stripping of MS-Word templates optional
1371	New - PDF Merging - Allow field to be specified for sorting
1427	New - Allow all conversion default values to be globally overridden in config file.
1408	New - Add SharePoint auditing for the various PDF Operations.
1016	Fix - Update translations for all supported languages
1453	Fix - Excel sheets with large OLAP cubes may fail to convert
1201	Fix - Selecting a destination folder that does not exist will revert to the parent folder
1470	Fix - Protected MS-Word documents don't convert in Office 2010
1454	Fix - CAD drawing returns empty PDF
1374	Fix - PDF Merging - Using Calculated field as source for bookmarks shows the data type
1206	Fix - HTML to PDF Conversion hangs on long pages
1419	Fix - PDF Files secured using the PDF Converter may cause problems with searching inside documents
1420	Fix - Image with large dimensions does not convert
1260	Fix - Using a hyperlink to 'convert and download' a web page on an anonymous site is not possible

For more information check out the following resources:

As always, feel free to contact us using Twitter, our Blog, regular email or subscribe to our newsletter.

Download your free trial here (13MB). .

Watermark PDFs using Nintex Workflow and the Muhimbi PDF Converter for SharePoint

2011-08-18T16:12:00.001+01:00

Our popular PDF Converter for SharePoint started off as a a relative straightforward PDF Converter. As we really listen to our customers we have added a lot of functionality over the years resulting in a very complete feature set. One of the more powerful modules of the product is the integrated Watermarking Engine, which allows all kind of watermarks (Text, RTF, PDF, Images, Ellipses, Lines etc.) to be added to PDF files.

Support for SharePoint Designer, a Web Services API as well as a host of other watermarking functionality has been available for a while, but with the introduction of version 5.1 we are adding support for the popular, and rather brilliant, Nintex Workflow as well. In addition to the new PDF Watermarking Nintex Workflow Activity, we are also adding activities for PDF Security, PDF Merging as well as HTML to PDF Conversion.

Similar to all other Nintex Activities provided by Muhimbi, the Watermark PDF activity integrates with Nintex Workflow at a deep level. It supports SharePoint 2007 as well as 2010, allows errors to be handled and even supports integration with Nintex’ iterators to deal with multiple items and loops. For a comprehensive example and details about how to enable the Nintex Workflow integration see the blog post that discusses our generic Nintex PDF Conversion activity.

Watermark PDF files using Nintex Workflow 2007 and 2010 (Image watermark shown)

Building a full example workflow is out of the scope of this post as it is relatively simple. For details see our generic PDF Conversion for Nintex Workflow example. The fields supported by this Workflow Activity are as follows:

Destination Path: Enter the path to write the watermarked file to, either:
- Leave it empty to use the same filename (and path) as the file that triggered the workflow.
- A file name, without the full path, to write a differently named file to the same location as the source file.
- A relative path to a subsite / document library / folder, e.g. Shared Documents/Some Folder/Some File.pdf.
- An absolute path to a different site collection, e.g. /sites/Finance/Shared Documents/Some Folder/Some File.pdf.
Please make sure the path does not include the host name, e.g. ‘http://your site/…’.
Watermark type: A number of different watermark types are supported. Unlike our individual SharePoint Designer workflow activities, all watermark types have been rolled up into a single Nintex Activity. The functionality is largely the same so have a look here for more details. The following watermark types are supported.
- Text: Add a text based watermark with full control over the font type, size, style, rotation and field codes such as {PAGE}.
- PDF: Add the first page of another PDF file as the watermark.
- Image: Use a BMP, JPG, GIF, PNG, TIFF, WMF or EMF / EMF+ file as a watermark.
- RTF: Use RTF based text as a watermark.
- Ellipse: Add an ellipse based watermark.
- Line: Add a line based watermark.
- Composite: For complex watermarks, or watermarks consisting of multiple elements such as line AND text AND images use the Composite Watermark in combination with our XML based watermarking syntax.
PDF List ID: If you wish to carry out further actions on the watermarked PDF file, e.g. send it by email or perform a check-in, then you can optionally write the ID of the List the PDF was written to in a workflow variable of type String.
PDF List Item ID: Similarly to PDF List ID, the Item ID of the watermarked PDF file can optionally be written to a workflow variable of type Item ID (in SharePoint 2007) or Integer (in SharePoint 2010).
Source List ID & List Item: The item that triggered the workflow is watermarked by default. You can optionally specify the ID of a different List and List Item using workflow variables. Please use the same data types as used by PDF List ID and PDF List Item ID.
Error Handling: Similar to the way some of Nintex’ own Workflow Activities allow errors to be captured and evaluated by subsequent actions, all of Muhimbi’s Workflow Activities allow the same. By default this facility is disabled meaning that any error terminates the workflow.

Secure PDFs using Nintex Workflow and the Muhimbi PDF Converter for SharePoint

2011-08-17T16:34:00.001+01:00

One of the many advantages provided by the PDF file format is the ability to password protect files to make sure they cannot be opened by unauthorised users. Even more useful, in my opinion, is the ability to apply restrictions to PDF files to prevent users from copying its content or even sending it to a printer.

The Muhimbi PDF Converter for SharePoint has supported PDF Security for quite some time using SharePoint Designer Workflows, our Web Services based API as well as using our own Workflow Power Pack. With the introduction of version 5.1 we are adding support for the popular, and rather brilliant, Nintex Workflow as well. In addition to the new Secure PDF Nintex Workflow Activity, we are also adding Activities for PDF Merging, applying PDF Watermarks as well as HTML to PDF Conversion.

Similar to all other Nintex Activities provided by Muhimbi, the Secure PDF activity integrates with Nintex Workflow at a deep level. It supports SharePoint 2007 as well as 2010, allows errors to be handled and even supports integration with Nintex’ iterators to deal with multiple items and loops. For a comprehensive example and details about how to enable the Nintex Workflow integration see the blog post that discusses our generic Nintex PDF Conversion activity.

Secure PDF files using Nintex Workflow 2007 and 2010

Building a full example workflow is out of the scope of this post as it is very simple. For details see our generic PDF Conversion for Nintex Workflow example. The fields supported by this Workflow Activity are as follows:

Destination Path: Enter the path to write the secured file to, either:
- Leave it empty to use the same filename (and path) as the file that triggered the workflow.
- A file name, without the full path, to write a differently named file to the same location as the source file.
- A relative path to a subsite / document library / folder, e.g. Shared Documents/Some Folder/Some File.pdf.
- An absolute path to a different site collection, e.g. /sites/Finance/Shared Documents/Some Folder/Some File.pdf.
Please make sure the path does not include the host name, e.g. ‘http://your site/…’.
Open Password: An optional password that the user must enter in order to open the document. Please note that any password entered here is displayed in clear text to allow Nintex field references to be added.
Owner Password: An optional password that the user must enter in order to change the PDF restrictions. When specifying any PDF Restrictions then this password must be set. Please note that any password entered here is displayed in clear text to allow Nintex field references to be added.
Individual PDF Restrictions: Select the individual restrictions such as Disable Printing or Disable Content Copying.
PDF List ID: If you wish to carry out further actions on the secured PDF file, e.g. send it by email or perform a check-in, then you can optionally write the ID of the List the PDF was written to in a workflow variable of type String.
PDF List Item ID: Similarly to PDF List ID, the Item ID of the secured PDF file can optionally be written to a workflow variable of type Item ID (in SharePoint 2007) or Integer (in SharePoint 2010).
Source List ID & List Item: The item that triggered the workflow is secured by default. You can optionally specify the ID of a different List and List Item using workflow variables. Please use the same data types as used by PDF List ID and PDF List Item ID.
Error Handling: Similar to the way some of Nintex’ own Workflow Activities allow errors to be captured and evaluated by subsequent actions, all of Muhimbi’s Workflow Activities allow the same. By default this facility is disabled meaning that any error terminates the workflow.

Convert and Merge PDFs using Nintex Workflow and the PDF Converter for SharePoint

2011-08-17T12:09:00.001+01:00

The Muhimbi PDF Converter for SharePoint has been able to convert and merge multiple files / URLs into a single PDF file for some time, a facility used by many of our customers. Previously it was possible to use the SharePoint User Interface, our API and the Muhimbi Workflow Power Pack to control this merge process, but as of version 5.1 it is also possible to merge files using both SharePoint Designer and Nintex Workflow.

Version 5.1 of the PDF Converter for SharePoint adds Nintex Workflow versions for all existing SharePoint Designer based Muhimbi PDF Workflow Activities, including PDF Merging, applying PDF Security, applying PDF Watermarks as well as HTML to PDF Conversion.

Similar to all other Nintex Activities provided by Muhimbi, the Merging files to PDF activity integrates with Nintex Workflow at a deep level. It supports SharePoint 2007 as well as 2010, allows errors to be handled and even supports integration with Nintex’ iterators to deal with multiple items and loops. For a comprehensive example and details about how to enable the Nintex Workflow integration see the blog post that discusses our generic Nintex PDF Conversion activity.

Merge multiple files into a single PDF using Nintex Workflow 2007 and 2010

Destination Path: Enter the path to write the merged file to, either:
- Leave it empty to use the same filename (and path) as the file that triggered the workflow.
- A relative path to a subsite / document library / folder, e.g. Shared Documents/Some Folder/Some File.pdf.
- An absolute path to a different site collection, e.g. /sites/Finance/Shared Documents/Some Folder/Some File.pdf.
Please make sure the path does not include the host name, e.g. ‘http://your site/…’., See this post for details.
Source Files: This field specifies the list of documents to merge (and convert if needed). Each file must be specified on a new line and each line may contains three ‘;’ separated values:
- File Path: The path to the file, or URL, to merge. This may already be a PDF file, but if not – and the file format is supported by the converter – then it will be converted first. The path can be relative to the current site (e.g. Shared Documents/Some File.docx) or absolute (e.g. /sites/Finance/Shared Documents/Some Folder/Some file.docx). Nintex Workflow References are fully supported, which can be used to dynamically generated the path for the current file, e.g. {ItemProperty:FileLeafRef}. Some string manipulation to generate the exact path to the file may be needed. When specifying a file please make sure the path does not include the host name, e.g. ‘http://your site/…’. When converting a web page then the path MUST start with http:// or https://.
- Include Bookmarks: The source file may already include PDF Bookmarks, or may be able to generate such bookmarks as part of the conversion process, e.g. an MS-Word file. Specify true to copy these bookmarks to the merged PDF file, or false to strip out any bookmarks. This value is optional
- Custom Bookmark value: The Bookmark parameter (see below for details) can be overridden using the third parameter. Specify the content of the ‘top level bookmark’ for the file, specify "" to remove the bookmark for this document or don’t specify anything at all to use the value stored in the content specified in the Bookmark parameter.
Bookmark: In a way similar to the User Interface for the merge facility, it is possible to specify a name of the column, or any kind of Nintex Reference, which contents will be used to populate the PDF Bookmark for the merged document. For example, specifying Name or Title (using the appropriate Nintex Workflow lookup Syntax) makes it very easy to jump between the various sections of the merged PDF file.
PDF List ID: If you wish to carry out further actions on the generated PDF file, e.g. merge additional documents or perform a check-in, then you can optionally write the ID of the List the PDF was written to in a workflow variable of type String.
PDF List Item ID: Similarly to PDF List ID, the Item ID of the generated PDF file can optionally be written to a workflow variable of type Item ID (in SharePoint 2007) or Integer (in SharePoint 2010).
Source List ID & List Item: The item that triggered the workflow is merged by default. You can optionally specify the ID of a different List and List Item using workflow variables. Please use the same data types as used by PDF List ID and PDF List Item ID.
Error Handling: Similar to the way some of Nintex’ own Workflow Activities allow errors to be captured and evaluated by subsequent actions, all of Muhimbi’s Workflow Activities allow the same. By default this facility is disabled meaning that any error terminates the workflow.

Convert and merge multiple PDF files using SharePoint Designer workflows

2011-08-16T17:15:00.001+01:00

The Muhimbi PDF Converter for SharePoint has been able to convert and merge multiple files (including web pages) into a single PDF file for some time, a facility used by many of our customers. Previously it was possible to use the SharePoint User Interface, our API and the Muhimbi Workflow Power Pack to control this merge process, but as of version 5.1 it is also possible to merge files using both SharePoint Designer and Nintex Workflow.

This post shows how to use SharePoint Designer to create a workflow that automatically adds a cover page to a document whenever it is created or updated. If the document is not already in PDF Format it will convert the file as part of the merging process.

The SharePoint Designer Workflow Activity is named Merge Documents into PDF. After adding it to your workflow you will see the following Workflow Sentence.

The following fields are available:

These Documents: This field specifies the list of documents / URLs to merge (and convert if needed). Each file must be specified on a new line and each line may contains three ‘;’ separated values:
- File Path: The path to the file to merge or URL of web page to convert. This may already be a PDF file, but if not – and the file format is supported by the converter – then it will be converted first. The path can be relative to the current site (e.g. Shared Documents/Some File.docx) or absolute (e.g. /sites/Finance/Shared Documents/Some Folder/Some file.docx). SharePoint Designer Workflow Lookups are fully supported, which can be used to dynamically generate the path for the current file, e.g. [%Current Item:URL Path%]. In SharePoint 2010 always use forward slashes in your file path, see KB2529610. When specifying a file please make sure the path does not include the host name, e.g. ‘http://your site/…’. If you wish to convert web pages then the path MUST start with http:// or https://.
- Include Bookmarks: The source file may already include PDF Bookmarks, or may be able to generate such bookmarks as part of the conversion process, e.g. an MS-Word file. Specify true to copy these bookmarks to the merged PDF file, or false to strip out any bookmarks. This value is optional
- Custom Bookmark value: The this field parameter (see below for details) can be overridden using the third parameter. Specify the name of the ‘top level bookmark’ for the file, specify "" to remove the bookmark for this document or don’t specify anything at all to use the value stored in the column referenced by the this field parameter. For an example see the exercise below.
This File: An optional filename (and path) to write the merged document to. When not specified, the same name as the document that triggered the workflow will be used with a ‘.pdf’ file extension. Please make sure the path does not include the host name, e.g. ‘http://your site/…’., see this post for details.
This Field: In a way similar to the User Interface for the merge facility, it is possible to specify a name of the column which contents will be used to populate the PDF Bookmark for the merged document. For example, specifying name or title makes it very easy to jump between the various sections of the merged PDF file.
Variable: List ID: If you wish to carry out further actions on the generated PDF file, e.g. perform a check-in, then you can optionally write the ID of the List the PDF was written to in a workflow variable.
Variable: List Item ID: Similarly to List ID, the Item ID of the generated PDF file can optionally be written to a workflow variable.

OK, so that is the theory. Let’s create a sample to automatically add a cover page to each document. In this example we will use SharePoint Designer 2010, but the steps for SharePoint Designer 2007 are nearly identical.

Download and install the PDF Converter for SharePoint. You will need version 5.1 or newer.
If not already installed, download and install the free SharePoint Designer for your environment (2007 or 2010).
Make sure you have the appropriate privileges to create workflows on a site collection.
Create, or navigate to, the Document Library that will be used for this workflow and add a simple MS-Word file named cover page.docx. This file can really be in any format and if its content is static it is recommend to use a PDF file for this purpose so it doesn’t need to be converted repeatedly for every merge operation.
Open SharePoint Designer, open the relevant Site, create a new workflow, associate it with the Document Library used in step #4 and enable all Start Options to make sure the workflow is triggered when an item is created and updated.
Add a condition to check that the type property of the current item does not equal pdf. Otherwise the workflow will recursively trigger whenever the merged file is written to the same document library.
Add the Merge Documents into PDF workflow Action and click the these documents parameter.
Add a line for the location of the cover page, note that our Document Library is named Automatic Merging. There is no need to specify the optional Include Bookmark and Custom Bookmark values, although you can if you wish to.
The second file to merge is the one that triggered the workflow. Position the cursor on the 2nd line of the String Builder and click the Add or Change Lookup button. Select Current Item as the Data Source and URL Path as the Field from source. Click OK to close the Lookup for String window. We want to include the source document’s bookmarks so enter ;true at the end of the second line.

Your String Builder should now look similar to the screenshot under step #8. Click OK to accept the changes.
In this example we want the (merged) output file to use the same name and path as the source file that triggered the workflow, so there is not need to change the this file parameter.
Click the this field parameter and select the field you wish to use for the content of the PDF Bookmarks. In this example we’ll select Name.
We are all done, publish the workflow and add an MS-Word file with the content to merge to the Document Library. After a few seconds a PDF file will be created consisting of the cover page and the content. Open the PDF file and use the Bookmark pane to quickly navigate to the start of the 2 documents.

Convert HTML to PDF using Nintex Workflow and the PDF Converter for SharePoint

2011-08-15T14:48:00.001+01:00

One of the more popular features of the Muhimbi PDF Converter for SharePoint is the ability to convert web pages as well as HTML fragments to PDF format using the SharePoint User Interface, from your own code, or as part of a SharePoint Designer workflow. Although we have supported integration with Nintex Workflow for a while, we did not have a native Nintex Workflow activity to convert HTML to PDF.

That all changes with the introduction of version 5.1 of the PDF Converter for SharePoint, which adds Nintex Workflow versions for all existing SharePoint Designer based Muhimbi PDF Workflow Activities, including PDF Merging, applying PDF Security, applying PDF Watermarks as well as HTML to PDF Conversion, which we will discuss in this blog post.

Similar to all other Nintex Activities provided by Muhimbi, the HTML to PDF Conversion activity integrates with Nintex Workflow at a deep level. It supports SharePoint 2007 as well as 2010, allows errors to be handled and even supports integration with Nintex’ iterators to deal with multiple items and loops. For a comprehensive example and details about how to enable the Nintex Workflow integration see the blog post that discusses our generic Nintex PDF Conversion activity.

Convert HTML to PDF using Nintex Workflow 2007 and 2010

Destination Path: Enter the path to write the converted file to, either:
- A relative path to a subsite / document library / folder, e.g. Shared Documents/Some Folder/Some File.pdf.
- An absolute path to a different site collection, e.g. /sites/Finance/Shared Documents/Some Folder/Some File.pdf.
Always use forward slashes.
Source URL / HTML: Either a fully qualified URL of the page to convert or an HTML fragment.
Page Orientation: Specify if you wish to use Portrait or Landscape for the generated PDF file.
Username: By default all pages are requested by the conversion service using the account the service is running under. If that account has no privileges on the requested URL then specify an alternative user name in this field.
Password: The password associated with the optional user name. Please note that any password entered here is displayed in clear text to allow field references to be added.
PDF List ID: If you wish to carry out further actions on the generated PDF file, e.g. perform a check-in, then you can optionally write the ID of the List the PDF was written to in a workflow variable of type String.
PDF List Item ID: Similarly to PDF List ID, the Item ID of the generated PDF file can optionally be written to a workflow variable of type Item ID (in SharePoint 2007) or Integer (in SharePoint 2010).
Error Handling: Similar to the way some of Nintex’ own Workflow Activities allow errors to be captured and evaluated by subsequent actions, all of Muhimbi’s Workflow Activities allow the same. By default this facility is disabled meaning that any error terminates the workflow.

Reporting log-in and log-off events using the SharePoint Audit Suite

2011-06-24T14:01:00.001+01:00

In part 2 of our series about New features in Muhimbi SharePoint Audit 2.0 we are diving into another unique facility that tracks when users log-in to or log-off from a SharePoint Site collection, also known as Authentication Tracking.

Although this great new functionality works straight out-of-the-box, you may want to put some thought into configuring it in a manner appropriate to your organisation’s requirements.

This blog post shows what is involved in configuring and using the Authentication Tracking facility. Part 1 of this series, tracking and reporting field level changes, is available here.

Configuration

The Authentication Tracking facility doesn’t require much configuration. However, as SharePoint is a browser based solution, there is no such thing as a ‘log-off’ event. Instead the Muhimbi Audit Suite looks at a user’s activity, or rather a lack of activity, to determine if a user has logged-off. The default setting is to record a ‘log-off’ event after 30 minutes of user inactivity, but this can be changed (at the Web Application level) using the Configure Audit Log Crawler screen in Central Administration.

You will also need to enable the tracking of Authentication events. You can do this at the global Farm, individual Web Application or even at the Site Collection Level (For details about our hierarchical configuration system see the Administration Guide).

There is one big caveat associated with how we track Authentication events. As mentioned before, we determine these kind of events based on a user’s activity, specifically the audit events logged by the user. As a result you can’t just enable the Authentication Audit event without enabling at least one other Audit Event Type, otherwise there is no activity to track. The most frequently logged audit type is the View event so it is recommended to enable that event type alongside the Authentication Type.

Reporting

The ability to track Authentication events is great, but naturally you want to be able to report on this data as well. The standard Audit Query screen that ships with the Muhimbi SharePoint Audit Suite can be used, but if you are just interested in reporting Authentication Audit events then you can also run the stock Log in and Log out report from the Run Audit Reports screen.

After running a report the results are initially presented in a browser window. To get a better overview it is recommended to click the Export Audit entries to Excel link. By default this shows a report grouped by Date and User. However, it is also possible to change the grouping options, e.g. group just by User to get a quick overview of a user’s activity over time.

Naturally it is also possible to include all other Audit events in the same report to get a full overview of what the user has been doing exactly between logging in and logging out

This concludes the high level overview of Authentication Events. If you have any questions then feel free to contact us. If you wish to learn more then just download the Trial version or read the Administration Guide, you don’t even need to register.

PDF Converter Services 5.0 - New AutoCAD, TIFF and PDF Merging support

2011-05-27T13:33:00.001+01:00

Earlier this week we released version 5.0 of the PDF Converter for SharePoint, which ships with an improved version of our popular PDF Conversion engine. Today we are releasing an update to the standalone version of the Muhimbi PDF Converter Services that includes all new functionality such as AutoCAD and TIFF conversions as well as the ability to convert and merge multiple files.

The main new features are as follows:

If you can’t wait to give it a go then proceed straight to the download link at the end of this post. Read on for a full list of all changes and improvements.

New PDF Merging related classes of the Web Services Interface.

A quick introduction for those not familiar with the product: The Muhimbi PDF Converter Services is an ‘on premises’ server based SDK that allows software developers to convert typical Office files to PDF format using a robust, scalable but friendly Web Services interface from Java and .NET based solutions. It supports a large number of file types including MS-Office and ODF file formats as well as HTML, AutoCAD and Image based files and is used by some of the largest organisations in the world for mission critical document conversions. In addition to converting documents the product ships with a sophisticated watermarking engine, PDF Merging facilities and the ability to secure PDF files. A separate SharePoint specific version is available as well.

In addition to the changes listed above, some of the main changes in the new version are as follows:

1325	Fix - Improve watermark random positioning.
891	New - Add support for merging of documents to the Web Services Interface.
1014	New - Add support for converting TIFF files to PDF.
1051	New - Add support for converting AutoCAD files to PDF.
1230	New - AutoCAD Conversion - Add Greyscale and automatic recolouring options.
1262	New - AutoCAD Conversion - Add Configurable page margins.
1243	New - AutoCAD Conversion - Add support for Converter Specific Settings.
1244	New - AutoCAD Conversion - Add support for 3D based CAD drawings.
1212	Fix - Occasional RPC_E_SERVERCALL_RETRYLATER when converting InfoPath 2010 form.
1303	New - Add support for custom page sizes, margins and page orientation to the HTML converter.

For more information check out the following resources:

As always, feel free to contact us using Twitter, our Blog, regular email or subscribe to our newsletter.

Download your free trial here (8MB). .

PDF Converter for SharePoint 5 - AutoCAD, TIFF, Merging, Automatic Watermarking

2011-05-25T12:14:00.001+01:00

It is that beautiful time of the year again where the sun is shining, the birds are singing and new versions of the popular Muhimbi PDF Converter for SharePoint are released left right and center. I say ‘versions’, but it really is only one version, a major milestone, version 5.0!

The list of new features is considerable but the main ones are as follows:

Some of this new functionality can be seen in action in a webcast we recorded recently.

As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words so here you go. Links to more detailed information as well as a download of the latest version is available at the end of this post.

Result of a user specific watermark when opening documents

Converting and merging multiple files using the SharePoint User Interface

In addition to the changes listed above, some of the main changes in the new version are as follows:

988	New - Add support for user specific watermarks when a file is opened / converted.
1222	New - Allow watermarks to be applied when items are created / updated without needing workflows.
1257	New - Enhance watermarking merge code / field code syntax.
1325	Fix - Improve watermark random positioning.
891	New - Add support for merging of documents to the Web Service and SharePoint User Interface.
1014	New - Add support for converting TIFF files to PDF.
1051	New - Add support for converting AutoCAD files to PDF.
1230	New - AutoCAD Conversion - Add Greyscale and automatic recolouring options.
1262	New - AutoCAD Conversion - Add Configurable page margins.
1243	New - AutoCAD Conversion - Add support for Converter Specific Settings.
1244	New - AutoCAD Conversion - Add support for 3D based CAD drawings.
1212	Fix - Occasional RPC_E_SERVERCALL_RETRYLATER when converting InfoPath 2010 form.
1231	Fix - Add back Utility.GetSPFolder for use in custom scripts.
1303	New - Add support for custom page sizes, margins and page orientation to the HTML converter.
1307	Fix - Add support for selecting sub sites to SharePoint 2010 TreePickerDialog.

For more information check out the following resources:

As always, feel free to contact us using Twitter, our Blog, regular email or subscribe to our newsletter.

Download your free trial here (11MB). .

Converting and merging multiple files using the PDF Converter Services and .NET / C#

2011-05-16T17:40:00.001+01:00

In this post we’ll describe in detail how to invoke this new merging facility from your own code. This demo use C# and .NET, but the web services based interface is identical when used from Java (See this generic PDF Conversion sample)

This post is part of the following series related to manipulating PDF files using web services.

Key Features

The key features of the new merging facilities are as follows:

Convert and merge any supported file format (inc. HTML, AutoCAD, MS-Office, InfoPath, TIFF) or merge existing PDF files.
Apply different watermarks on each individual file as well as on the entire merged file (e.g. page numbering).
Apply PDF Security settings and restrictions on the merged file.
Optionally skip (and report) corrupt / unsupported files.
Add PDF Bookmarks for each converted file.
Apply any ConversionSetting supported by the regular conversion process.

Object Model

The Web Service method that controls merging of files is called ProcessBatch (highlighted in the screenshot above). It accepts a ProcessingOptions object that holds all information about the source files to convert and the MergeSettings to apply, which may include security and watermarking related settings. A Results object is returned that, when it comes to merging of files, always contains a single file that holds the byte array for the merged PDF file.

Simple example code

The following sample describes the steps needed to convert all files in a directory, merge the results into a single file and apply page numbering to the merged file using the built in watermarking engine. We are using Visual Studio and C#, but any environment that can invoke web services should be able to access this functionality. Note that the WSDL can be found at http://localhost:41734/Muhimbi.DocumentConverter.WebService/?wsdl. A generic PDF Conversion Java based example is installed alongside the product and discussed in the User & Developer Guide.

Start a new Visual Studio project and create the project type of your choice. In this example we are using a standard .net 3.0 project of type Windows Forms Application. Name it ‘Simple PDF Converter Sample’.
Add a TextBox and Button control to the form. Accept the default names of textBox1 and button1.
In the Solution Explorer window, right-click References and select Add Service Reference. (Do not use web references!)
In the Address box enter the WSDL address listed in the introduction of this section. If the Conversion Service is located on a different machine then substitute localhost with the server’s name.
Accept the default Namespace of ServiceReference1 and click the OK button to generate the proxy classes.
Double click Button1 and replace the content of the entire code file with the following:

using System;

using System.Collections.Generic;

using System.IO;

using System.ServiceModel;

using System.Windows.Forms;

using Simple_PDF_Converter_Sample.ServiceReference1;

namespace Simple_PDF_Converter_Sample

    public partial class Form1 : Form

        // ** The URL where the Web Service is located. Amend host name if needed.

        string SERVICE_URL = "http://localhost:41734/Muhimbi.DocumentConverter.WebService/";

        public Form1()

            InitializeComponent();

        private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)

            DocumentConverterServiceClient client = null;

try

                // ** Options and all settings for batch conversion

                ProcessingOptions processingOptions = new ProcessingOptions();

                // ** Specify the minimum level of merge settings

                MergeSettings mergeSettings = new MergeSettings();

                mergeSettings.BreakOnError = false;

                mergeSettings.Watermarks = CreateWatermarks();

                processingOptions.MergeSettings = mergeSettings;

                // ** Get all files in the folder

                string sourceFolder = textBox1.Text;

                string[] sourceFileNames = Directory.GetFiles(sourceFolder);

                // ** Iterate over all files and create a list of SourceFile Objects

                List<SourceFile> sourceFiles = new List<SourceFile>();

                foreach (string sourceFileName in sourceFileNames)

                    // ** Read the contents of the file

                    byte[] sourceFileContent = File.ReadAllBytes(sourceFileName);

                    // ** Set the absolute minimum open options

                    OpenOptions openOptions = new OpenOptions();

                    openOptions.OriginalFileName = Path.GetFileName(sourceFileName);

                    openOptions.FileExtension = Path.GetExtension(sourceFileName);

                    // ** Set the absolute minimum conversion settings.

                    ConversionSettings conversionSettings = new ConversionSettings();

                    conversionSettings.Fidelity = ConversionFidelities.Full;

                    conversionSettings.Quality = ConversionQuality.OptimizeForPrint;

                    // ** Create merge settings for each file and set the name for the PDF bookmark

                    FileMergeSettings fileMergeSettings = new FileMergeSettings();

                    fileMergeSettings.TopLevelBookmark = openOptions.OriginalFileName;

                    // ** Create a source file object and add it to the list

                    SourceFile sourceFile = new SourceFile();

                    sourceFile.OpenOptions = openOptions;

                    sourceFile.ConversionSettings = conversionSettings;

                    sourceFile.MergeSettings = fileMergeSettings;

                    sourceFile.File = sourceFileContent;

                    sourceFiles.Add(sourceFile);

                // ** Assign source files

                processingOptions.SourceFiles = sourceFiles.ToArray();

                // ** Open the service and configure the bindings

                client = OpenService(SERVICE_URL);

                // ** Carry out the merge process

                BatchResults results = client.ProcessBatch(processingOptions);

                // ** Read the results of the merged file.

                byte[] mergedFile = results.Results[0].File;

                // ** Write the converted file back using the name of the folder

                string folderName = new DirectoryInfo(sourceFolder).Name;

                DirectoryInfo parentFolder = Directory.GetParent(sourceFolder);

                string destinationFileName = Path.Combine(parentFolder.FullName, folderName + ".pdf");

                using (FileStream fs = File.Create(destinationFileName))

                    fs.Write(mergedFile, 0, mergedFile.Length);

                    fs.Close();

                MessageBox.Show("Contents of directory merged to " + destinationFileName);

            catch (FaultException<WebServiceFaultException> ex)

                MessageBox.Show("FaultException occurred: ExceptionType: " +

                                ex.Detail.ExceptionType.ToString());

            catch (Exception ex)

                MessageBox.Show(ex.ToString());

            finally

                CloseService(client);

        /// <summary>

        /// Configure the Bindings, endpoints and open the service using the specified address.

        /// </summary>

        /// <returns>An instance of the Web Service.</returns>

        public static DocumentConverterServiceClient OpenService(string address)

            DocumentConverterServiceClient client = null;

try

                BasicHttpBinding binding = new BasicHttpBinding();

                // ** Use standard Windows Security.

                binding.Security.Mode = BasicHttpSecurityMode.TransportCredentialOnly;

                binding.Security.Transport.ClientCredentialType =

                                                            HttpClientCredentialType.Windows;

                // ** Increase the Timeout to deal with (very) long running requests.

                binding.SendTimeout = TimeSpan.FromMinutes(30);

                binding.ReceiveTimeout = TimeSpan.FromMinutes(30);

                // ** Set the maximum document size to 40MB

                binding.MaxReceivedMessageSize = 50 * 1024 * 1024;

                binding.ReaderQuotas.MaxArrayLength = 50 * 1024 * 1024;

                binding.ReaderQuotas.MaxStringContentLength = 50 * 1024 * 1024;

                // ** Specify an identity (any identity) in order to get it past .net3.5 sp1

                EndpointIdentity epi = EndpointIdentity.CreateUpnIdentity("unknown");

                EndpointAddress epa = new EndpointAddress(new Uri(address), epi);

                client = new DocumentConverterServiceClient(binding, epa);

                client.Open();

                return client;

            catch (Exception)

                CloseService(client);

                throw;

        /// <summary>

        /// Check if the client is open and then close it.

        /// </summary>

        /// <param name="client">The client to close</param>

        public static void CloseService(DocumentConverterServiceClient client)

            if (client != null && client.State == CommunicationState.Opened)

                client.Close();

        /// <summary>

        /// This method creates watermarks for applying page numbers

        /// </summary>

        /// <returns>Array of watermarks</returns>

        private Watermark[] CreateWatermarks()

            // ** Create watermark container

            Watermark pageWatermark = new Watermark();

            // ** Set positioning to the lower right of the page

            pageWatermark.HPosition = HPosition.Right;

            pageWatermark.VPosition = VPosition.Bottom;

            // ** Set size

            pageWatermark.Width = "200";

            pageWatermark.Height = "20";

            // ** Create text object for the page numbering

            Text oddPageText = new Text();

            // ** No need to position the element in the watermark container

            oddPageText.Width = "200";

            oddPageText.Height = "20";

            // ** set content including field codes

            oddPageText.Content = "Page {PAGE} of {NUMPAGES}";

            // ** set font properties

            oddPageText.FillColor = "#ffff0000";

            oddPageText.FontFamilyName = "Verdana";

            oddPageText.FontSize = "10";

            oddPageText.FontStyle = FontStyle.Regular;

            //* set text alignment

            oddPageText.HAlign = HAlign.Right;

            oddPageText.VAlign = VAlign.Top;

            //** create array of watermark elements

            Element[] pageWatermarkElements = new Element[] { oddPageText };

            //** set elements of watermark

            pageWatermark.Elements = pageWatermarkElements;

            //* return array of watermarks

            return new Watermark[] { pageWatermark };

Providing the project and all controls are named as per the steps above, it should compile without errors. Run it, enter the full path to a folder that holds a couple of text files (PDF, Word, Excel, etc) and click the button to start the convert and merge process. The operation may take a while depending on the number and complexity of files in the folder.

Note that In this example we are programmatically configuring the WCF Bindings and End Points. If you wish you can use a declarative approach using the config file.

A more complex and full featured sample application is installed, with full source code, alongside the Conversion Service.

This new functionality is available as of version 5.0 of our software.

Converting and merging multiple files using the PDF Converter for SharePoint

2011-05-16T12:22:00.001+01:00

The Muhimbi PDF Converter for SharePoint has had the ability to convert multiple files starting with the very first version we released a number of years ago. However, each of these files are converted individually, which is great, but sometimes you want to carry out an extra operation such as merging those files into a single PDF file.

This functionality has been on our roadmap for a while, but we wanted to do it properly, so we have consulted a cross section of our customers to get a feel for how to implement merging in the best possible way. I think we have come up with a great solution that is easy to use while still providing plenty of options for power users.

For real power users and developers, merging can also be carried out via a web service call. A future version of the product will also come with native workflow activities to merge files. Until then you can merge PDF files from a workflow as described here.

OK, so let’s have a look at how PDF Merging works using the SharePoint user interface. Please note that the screenshots in this article have been made using SharePoint 2010, but it works equally well in SharePoint 2007.

The first step is to select which files to convert and merge. You can select individual files or an entire folder including sub folders. Don’t worry if you are not interested in merging all files, you can fine tune your selection during the merging process.

Once selected click the ‘Convert to PDF’ button to open our standard PDF Conversion screen. The default option is to convert all files individually, but clicking the ‘Merge Files’ option enables all merging related functionality as per the screenshot below.

You can specify the following options:

Select the field to use for bookmarks: If you wish you can automatically generate a PDF bookmark for each file that is merged. This makes navigating through the PDF file a lot easier. You can select any field defined on the document library or ‘– Empty – ‘ to skip the bookmarking process. The default field is ‘Title’, which usually contains the most descriptive data.
Enabled / disable documents: For each file you can specify if they should be included in the merged document or not. This can be very useful when selecting an entire folder to convert and merge.
Manually change bookmark text: Selecting a field to populate the bookmarks with will automatically generate the text for each file’s bookmark. However, if you wish you can manually change this value to anything you like. Please take into account that any manually entered values will be overwritten if you select a different bookmark field name.
Change sequence of documents: By default all documents are ordered by modification date, with the oldest one on top. You can change the sequence using the up and down arrows.
Include document bookmarks: Each source document may already have its own bookmarks, e.g. existing PDF Files or MS-Word headings. By default these are all stripped out, but if you wish you can select to merge the bookmarks as well. For each document they will automatically be moved to sit underneath any custom bookmark name specified for the file.
Change file name: As we are dealing with multiple files we cannot use the name of the source file to generate the destination file name. For the merged file we default the file name to the name of the folder the files are located in. If the files are in the root folder then we use the name of the Document Library. You can override the default generated name and select a different folder if needed as well.

Further operations such as applying watermarks and PDF security can be carried out as a post processing step using simple workflows.

This new functionality is included in the 5.0 release of our software.

Specifying filtering criteria when automatically applying watermarks in SharePoint

2011-04-22T10:42:00.001+01:00

In our previous posts we established that the new ‘Automatic application of watermarks when a document is opened’ functionality of the Muhimbi PDF Converter for SharePoint is the coolest things since…well…this stuff. Today’s post goes into more detail and shows how automatic watermarking can be taken to the next level by specifying search filters.

This is the final post in a three part series:

Applying user specific watermarks when a PDF document is opened in SharePoint.
Merging dynamic data into watermarks using the PDF Converter for SharePoint.
Specifying filtering criteria when automatically applying watermarks. (This Post)

Similar to the way SharePoint views can be filtered to only display certain list items, Muhimbi’s automatic watermarking facility allows filters to be created that determine which documents should be watermarked automatically, and which shouldn’t. The possibilities are endless, but some obvious examples are listed below to whet your appetite:

Apply watermarks to draft documents, but not to approved documents.
Always apply watermarks to a document created by a user from a particular domain or authentication provider (e.g. FBA)
Watermark a document, based on the current date, for embargoed documents.
Enable watermarks on all documents with ‘Confidential’ in the Title.
Apply watermarks to minor versions (e.g. 1.3) of a document, but not to major versions (e.g 2.0).
Only apply watermarks to certain content types.

Fortunately this powerful new functionality is very easy to use as you can see in the screenshot above. Each watermarking section comes with a separate Filter that contains the following fields:

Apply Filter: A simple check box that allows filtering to be enabled or disabled. When disabled, watermarks are automatically added to all documents.
Field List: A list of fields that can be used to apply filters on, e.g. Title, Author, Content Type, etc.. This is a ‘sanitised' list similar to the one displayed in SharePoint’s own View filter. Non sensible ‘for internal use only’ fields are automatically stripped out.
Comparison Type: Specify the kind of comparison to use, e.g. ‘is equal to’, ‘is greater than’, ‘contains’, ‘begins with’ etc.
Comparison Value: The value(s) to compare the selected field with. Full details are provided below.

It is in the Comparison Value field where things become interesting as all comparisons take the underlying type of the column into account. All common data types are supported, specifically:

Boolean: Accepts the following for True: True, Yes, -1, 1 and False, No, 0 as False.
Currency: Allows currency comparisons. Please use numbers only, do not specify the currency symbol.
DateTime: Allows date and time fields to be compared. As of version 5.1 you can enter [Today] (including the square brackets) to compare a date field to the current date, e.g. to apply watermarks to documents modified today. Similarly [Now] can be used to compare a field with the current date and time.
Lookup: Compare lookup fields, including lookups that may contain multiple values.
User: Compares fields that contain a reference to a user account, e.g. the Modified By field. Filters of this type expect a value recognised by the underlying Authentication Provider. This will usually be in the ‘domain\user_name’ format, but could also be ‘fbaprovidername:username’.
As of version 5.1 it is possible to enter [me] (including the square brackets) to evaluate the field against the current user. This allows, for example, watermarks to be added to all documents not created by the current user.
Single and Multiple choice fields: Allows single and multiple values to be matched, particularly useful with the ‘contains’ comparison type. Examples and details are provided below.
Numerical fields: Carries out numerical comparisons.
URL: Can compare fields of type URL.
Text: Any text field or custom field type that uses a text based representation.

Some additional notes of interest:

All comparisons are case insensitive.
The filter for the ‘Version’ field accepts the ‘[MajorVersion]’ and ‘[MinorVersion]’ values to distinguish between a major (1.0, 2.0) and minor (1.1, 1.2, 2.2) versions.
When filtering multiple choice / multi select fields you can specify multiple values. For example:
- "Brett;Ben" Contains "Ben" = True
- "Brett;Jeroen;Ben" Contains “Brett;Ben” = True
- "Brett;Jeroen" Contains “Brett;Ben” = False
- “Brett;Jeroen” is equal to “Jeroen;Brett” = True (The sequence in which values are specified do not matter)
If a field is deleted from a list after it has been specified in a filter then the filter will always equate to false resulting in the watermark not being applied.
It is not possible to specify a Filter for Insert events on a Document Library as the fields do not contain any values at this time. This is not a problem for inserting documents attached to a list.
When comparing fields that contain both Date and Time elements (e.g. the Modified Date) against such values as [Today] then please take into account that the value represented by [Today] does not include a time element. Therefore ‘Created Date = [Today]’ will never evaluate to true unless it is midnight. Instead use ‘Created Date >= [Today]’. For Date fields that don’t include the Time element, e.g. a birthday, this will not be a problem.

This concludes our series about automatic watermarking. If you have any questions or comments then feel free to leave a comment below or contact us directly.