Why Document Service

The Document Service consolidates the document management for your business. It covers the whole document life cycle, from the layout design, to the document creation, printing and archiving.

Document Preparation

The document service allows you to generate documents in two formats:

• PDF format (see also document templates).
• ZPL Printer language for optimized label printing.

General modes of the document service

The document service offers two modes:

• Ad-hoc documents: In this mode documents are not staged. Additional benefits, such as archiving are not possible. The archive itself is a different service, i.e. the document service is not a long term archive.
• Document staging: In this mode the documents are temporarily stored in the documents service. Using this mode allows additional functionality (see below).

Document Staging

• Created documents are stored in the service for a limited period of time (max. 35 days).
• Some document templates support manual data editing (HTML-based WYSIWYG editor embedded in the service).
• Upload of external documents, i.e. documents which have been generated by a 3rd party system (Upload restrictions apply).
• The individual documents can be marked by some reference tags of your choice for a better overview. It is recommended to use capital alphanumeric characters only in all these reference fields.
  • documentType represents the label of the document type, like e.g. "INVOICE", "PACKINGLIST" etc.
  • referenceType represents the label of a related business object type, like e.g. "SHIPMENT", "PACKAGE", "HANDLINGUNIT" etc.
  • referenceNumber represents an external reference number of the related business object, like e.g. "4711" (a shipment number), "16DE485100011122M7" (a MRN) etc.
  • Combining these fields together you can better identify and/or group your individual documents.

Document Archiving

The document service offers the functionality to archive documents in the AEB Content Storage for longer retention periods. The archive itself is not part of the service.

Document Printing

• Install the AEB Cloud Printing Service and connect your printers directly to the Document Service. You can then print the documents via the API.
• Print queues can be linked to a workstation configuration with predefined target printer.

Remarks

• Any process you intend to implement with the Document Service must be carefully planed and tested in cooperation with the AEB experts, particularly with regard to:
  • Expected data volumes and frequency of document creation.
  • Performance and memory consumption of the individual document creation.
  • Text localizations to multiple languages.
  • Customized document layout or completely customized documents (layout and data structure).