Assembling documents

The assemble documents feature can be used to automatically construct new documents based on the rules set in the assembly configuration.

A user must have a license for a FileHold viewer level 2 or 3 in order to use the assemble documents feature. This feature is only available in the FileHold Desktop Application (FDA) or via the FileHold API. Any supported file types can be used to merge documents together; they do not have to belong to the same file type. The file types that are supported are those file types supported by the FileHold level 2 or 3 viewer.

With the assemble documents feature you can:

Create standalone documents
Merge documents together. When merging documents, bookmarks are added to the PDF for each file when merging files with document assembly. The bookmark name is the document name.
Append and prepend documents
Use converter templates to populate certain field information (similar to the workflow covert to PDF feature)
Output documents to PDF 1.5, PDF/A-1a, or PDF/A-1b
Order the documents for assembly
Rename the newly assembled document
Create new documents for the FileHold library
Check in as new version of an existing document
Create a temporary document for viewing
Apply PDF security options
View the assembled document in the FileHold viewer post-assembly
Initiate a workflow post-assembly
Initiate a Courier transmission post-assembly
Add watermarks from templates or custom. Up to three watermarks can be used per document.
Place merge tags into documents.

There are cases where it may not be possible to create a fully compliant PDF/A document depending on the source document(s). Simple text documents and image files will normally convert without trouble, but if full compliance is required you should consider validating a sample of documents with a validation tool before converting a large number of documents.

For files containing HTML content such as .html or .msg, Google Chrome is required to be installed on the FileHold server in order to be able to view or assemble the files.

Documents are placed in queue and assembled on the FileHold server. A scheduled task “FH process batch jobs” can control how often the batches are run. By default, the scheduled task runs every 10 minutes.

Renaming a document in "Do not merge" mode is allowed when only one input document was selected. If more than one document is selected, the document name and metadata for the assembled document is taken from the first document selected.

Renaming and ordering of the documents is allowed in “Merge all documents to one” mode. The metadata for the assembled document is taken from the first document in the document order list.

With the Assemble feature is is possible to apply a single merge template where two or more documents are combined into one. In this case the various system and metadata fields will be combined as follows:

Identical values will be merged to one.
Different values will be listed with a comma and space separating each value.
Empty values will match any value. All values must be empty in order to give the empty response.

Due to the number of variables with the assemble documents feature, it is recommended that customers test the feature with their own documents in their FileHold environment. Note that larger number of documents or larger file sizes will take longer to assemble or may fail. See the Performance guidelines for more information.

If using rare fonts in documents, the FileHold server requires that font for proper rendering documents in the FileHold viewer or assemble documents. This issue is especially related to XML-based documents like HTML or DOCX which do not include used fonts in their body.

Users can see their jobs in the Batch jobs report in the FileHold Desktop Application or in the Web Client > Administration reports > Batch jobs. See Batch jobs report for more information.

Once the job has completed, the user receives an “Assemble documents batch job ready” email with links to the batch job details or open the document in the viewer if the option was enabled in the job settings.

To assemble documents

Select the documents that you want to assemble. They do not have to be the same file type but are supported by the FileHold viewer.
Do one of the following:

Right-click and select Publish As > Assemble to PDF.
Click Assemble in the toolbar.

In the Input tab, select one of the following options:

Do not merge documents – This option is enabled if only one document is selected.
Merge all documents into one – This option is enabled if more than one document is selected.

If the Merge all documents to one option was selected, click … in the Order Documents field to set the order of the documents for the merging.

In the Order documents window, enter the output document name. Note that the newly assembled document copies the metadata from the first document in the list.
In the Order column, click in the row to set the order of the documents.
Click Close when done.

Click Next.
In the Output tab, select one of the following options:

Create new document(s) – Click … to select a library location for the document.
Create temporary document(s) for viewing – Opens the document in the FileHold viewer. Documents can be modified in the viewer prior to saving.
Check in as new version – To check the input documents as a new version, leave option as “Input document”. Alternatively, click … to select a document from the Checked Out Documents list.

In the Output file format field, select one of the following options:

PDF
PDF/A-1a
PDF/A-1b

Creating a PDF/A file as output does not guarantee that arbitrary input files will produce a compliancy level that meets any specific compliancy requirements. We suggest testing this output against your PDF/A compliancy requirements.

Click Next.
In the Assembly options tab, enter the following options:

Append page(s) from template – Click … to select a document version from the library.
Prepend page(s) from template – Click … to select a document version from the library.
Process tags in input documents – Select the check box if the input documents contain tags that should be processed. Tags allow information to be inserted into a document. See Using Template Tags when Assembling Documents for more information.
Set the template opening tag delimiter – Enter the opening tag delimiter for the PDF converter template. By default, this is [[.
Set the template closing tag delimiter – Enter the closing tag delimiter for the PDF converter template. By default, this is ]].
Set the template tag field delimiter – Enter the field delimiter. By default, this is |.

Click Next.
In the Watermarks tab, do the following:

Select a watermark template for the Top, Bottom, or Center of the document. Watermark templates are created by an administrator. Watermark templates are available if the optional workflow feature has been purchased.
Create a custom watermark. See Creating custom watermarks for more information.

In the PDF options tab, select any of the following options:

Allow printing – Allows printing of the document. Enabled by default.
Allow high resolution printing – Allows high resolution printing. Enabled by default.
Allow changing the document – Allows changing the document. Disabled by default.
Allow content copying – Allows copying the content. Enabled by default.
All content accessibility enabled – Allow accessibility software to use the document contents. Enabled by default.
Allow document assembly – If this is disabled, inserting, deleting or rotating pages, or thumbnails is prohibited. Disabled by default.
Open password for main documents – Specifies the password required for opening the encrypted PDF document. This can be left blank.
Open password for embed documents – Used with the "embed" merge tag. This prompts a user to enter a password it they attempt to open an embedded document.

The PDF options may appear different in the resulting assembled document security properties in for example, Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Click Next.
In the Actions tab, select any of the following options:

Open finished document(s) in viewer – Select the check box to view the newly assembled documents in the FileHold viewer.
Initiate workflow – Select the workflow template name from the list to initiate a workflow post-assembly.
Initiate Courier transmission – Select the Courier template from the list to initiate a Courier transmission

Click Next.
In the Summary tab, review the selected options. Click Previous to change any of the settings.
Click Assemble.
A message “Assemble document(s) (job number) job has been successfully initiated appears. The job status, queued time, batch job name, and user name is displayed.
To cancel the assemble job, click Cancel job.
To pause the assemble job, click Pause job.
To review the job settings, click Details.
After the processing is complete, click Complete user actions to view the document in the FileHold viewer.
To close the window, click Close.

To view the document assembly job

Right-click on a document that was included in the PDF assembly and select Publish As > Open batch job.
One of the following actions may occur:

If the batch processing has completed, the document will open in the viewer if the option was enabled in the job settings.
If the batch processing has not completed, the Batch job manager opens where you can cancel, pause, or view the details of the batch job.

Click Close.

Creating custom watermarks

Users with the document assembly feature can create a single ad-hoc custom watermark. Up to 3 watermarks (custom and templates - one per position) can be used with document assembly.

To create a custom watermark template

Select the documents that you want to assemble. They do not have to be the same file type.
Do one of the following:

Right-click and select Publish As > Assemble to PDF.
Click Assemble in the toolbar.

In the Watermarks tab, click Edit custom watermark .
In the Edit custom watermark screen, design the watermark:

Select the Position: Top, Center -45°, Center, Center 45°, or Bottom.
Select the Font style.
Select the text size in pixels .
Select a colour for the text . Select a colour from the colour picker or enter a Hex colour value.
Select a colour for the background . Select a colour from the colour picker or enter a Hex colour value. Click Clear for a clear background.
Select a justification: full, left, center, or right.
Select an opacity in percent % .
Enter the content for the watermark. For example, “DRAFT – DO NOT COPY”. Tag fields can be used to insert certain FileHold content. See Merge tags for more information.
Using the Margin area, determine the position for the watermark. The position of the watermark is relative to the margin, so if using “Top’ position it is the top margin, not the top of the page unless the margin is 0. Inches or centimeters (cm) can be used.

Click OK.
To remove the custom watermark, click X in the Watermarks tab.

Performance guidelines

With a small number of documents, a large number of pages does not significantly affect performance.
Assembling files with the .pdf extension takes less time than .docx. The need to convert files from .docx to .pdf extends the processing time (operations takes at least twice as long),
Assemble time increases with the number of files about twice for 20/10, 50/10, 100/10 (number of files/number of pages) documents. For 200/10 the time is significantly longer, the process becomes slower.
Creating a very large number of documents separately (using the ’do not merge’ option) takes longer than combining the same number of documents (using the ‘merge all’ option).
Turning on tag processing does not always increase the time needed to perform an operation.
Selecting the 'merge all documents' option for 500/10 (number of files/number of pages) will cause an error regardless of other settings ('tags processing enabled' or 'disabled') and the file format (.docx or .pdf)
Assembling documents greater than 1GB in size may fail.

Using merge tags with document assembly

Merge tags can be strategically placed within a Microsoft Word document to insert information into the assembled PDF document. Information such as metadata field values, system information, and workflow information can be inserted into the newly generated document.

Merge tags can also be used to build the contents of a document using merge tags. Documents can be linked, embedded, or expanded in the source document. The tags can link to other documents into FileHold using their FileHold ID. For closed items, embedded documents or embedded and password protected can be added. Text from one document can also be inserted directly into the template document.

Merge tags can also be used with watermarks to insert information into the assembled PDF document. Information such as metadata field values, system information, and workflow information can be inserted as a watermark into the newly generated document. Tags can be used in watermark templates and with custom watermarks.

The ability to link metadata and system values using merge tags to document properties in a Microsoft Word document is available. When the document is assembled, the current metadata values are displayed in the resulting PDF.