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 currently 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. This mode may be deprecated in the future. Thus, it is recommended to use the "Document Staging" mode mentioned next.
• Document staging: In this mode the documents are temporarily stored in the documents service. Using this mode offers additional functionality (see below).

Document Staging

• Created documents are stored in the service for a limited period of time.
• 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 and are described in the service description).
• 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 helps you to 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

• In order to print documents the AEB Cloud Printing Service needs to be installed. Once installed you can 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 and some other settings.

Remarks

• It is recommended to seek advice of an AEB expert prior to designing own documents.