ACTIVEDOCS or MICROSOFT TECHNOLOGIES for DOCUMENT AUTOMATION Prepared by: Nick Chivers Director of Product Marketing Audience: ActiveDocs Evaluator Abstract: A comparison of the Document Automation capabilities of ActiveDocs and a collection of Microsoft® technologies. OVERLAND PARK LONDON AUCKLAND BRISBANE Southcreek Office Park 199 Bishopsgate Level 6, 27 Gillies Avenue 192 Ann Street 7301 West 129th Street London Newmarket, Auckland 1023 Brisbane, QLD 4000 Suite 160 EC2M 3TY Post: PO Box 289 Post: PO Box 604 Overland Park, KS 66213, USA United Kingdom Auckland 1140, New Zealand Paradise Point QLD 4216, Australia Ph +1 913 888 1999 Ph +44 20 3290 1788 Ph +64 9 520 5650 Ph +61 7 3040 6616 [email protected] | w ww.activedocs.com ACTIVEDOCS OPUS OR MICROSOFT TECHNOLOGIES FOR DOCUMENT AUTOMATION Copyright Information in this document is subject to change without notice. Companies, names, and data used in examples herein are fictitious unless otherwise noted. 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All rights reserved. i ACTIVEDOCS OPUS OR MICROSOFT TECHNOLOGIES FOR DOCUMENT AUTOMATION Contents 1 Introduction ...................................................................................................................1 2 ActiveDocs.....................................................................................................................3 2.1 ActiveDocs Document Automation ....................................................................................3 2.2 Technology Base .............................................................................................................3 3 Microsoft Technologies .................................................................................................4 3.1 The Open XML Document Format.....................................................................................4 3.2 Open XML SDK ...............................................................................................................4 3.3 Microsoft SharePoint ........................................................................................................4 3.4 Word Automation Services ...............................................................................................4 3.5 Microsoft InfoPath and Forms Server ................................................................................5 3.6 Microsoft Word ................................................................................................................5 4 Document Automation Features ....................................................................................6 4.1 Modular Design ...............................................................................................................6 4.2 Template and Snippet Design in Microsoft Word ................................................................6 4.3 Design Management, Version Control, and Publishing Control ............................................8 4.4 Security and management of user access .........................................................................9 4.5 Web interface for Document Creation and Management .....................................................9 4.6 Wizard-driven browser-based interactive document creation ...............................................9 4.7 Server-side Document Assembly .................................................................................... 10 4.8 Document and Answer storage ....................................................................................... 11 4.9 High-performance scale-up and scale-out capability ......................................................... 11 4.10 Managed document delivery through multiple channels .................................................... 12 4.11 A well-defined programmatic interface for document generation ........................................ 12 4.12 Integrated support for multiple workflows ......................................................................... 13 5 Conclusion................................................................................................................... 14 Copyright © ActiveDocs TM Limited. All rights reserved. ii ACTIVEDOCS OPUS OR MICROSOFT TECHNOLOGIES FOR DOCUMENT AUTOMATION EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 1 Executive Summary This paper compares ActiveDocs with a collection of out-of-the-box Microsoft Technologies with a view to explaining why ActiveDocs is a cost effective and less risky way of building maintainable Document Automation Solutions for the enterprise. ActiveDocs is made possible by a large number of enabling technologies found in Microsoft Office and Server products. Creating an enterprise-class Document Automation solution is only possible with significant development resource and choosing ActiveDocs over using Microsoft Technologies comes directly down to a Buy-versus-Build decision. To build such a solution should only be attempted by organizations with significant Microsoft Office Development expertise and a project timeline and budget which can accommodate the Development effort required. Copyright © ActiveDocs TM Limited. All rights reserved. 1 of 15 ACTIVEDOCS OPUS OR MICROSOFT TECHNOLOGIES FOR DOCUMENT AUTOMATION INTRODUCTION 2 Introduction There is a simple concept at the heart of Document Automation which is usually expressed as “template + data = document”. Implementing Document Automation in an enterprise environment requires attention to every aspect of that concept. Template development and maintenance must be supported by a secure and robust environment that encourages a modular approach to reduce redundant and repetitive content. The environment must balance responsiveness with risk mitigation. Responsiveness because government regulations and other external drivers cannot wait; risk mitigation because your organization’s legal teams (and perhaps marketing, and management, and...) won’t thank you for publishing changes to sensitive information unless they can see it and approve it first. Data must be easy to capture or made securely accessible for document generation, to impose validation, to eliminate unnecessary data transcription, and to mitigate the downstream risks associated with inaccurate transcription and other errors. Interactive document creation with the Document Automation solution must be an attractive, accessible, secure, and easy-to-use option for end users, who will otherwise fall back into error-prone and potentially ruinous practices such as cut-and-paste from old documents, or creating poorly branded documents from scratch. Programmatic document creation should be fully supported using open standards such as web services without necessitating different template design methods. Post-creation document processing such as approval, finalization, variable formatting, and flexible storage and delivery options, should be supported. The purpose of this document is to compare the Document Automation capabilities of ActiveDocs and a collection of Microsoft® technologies which includes: Word & other Office applications SharePoint Word Automation Services InfoPath The Open XML standard and the Open XML SDK Copyright © ActiveDocs TM Limited. All rights reserved. 2 of 15 ACTIVEDOCS OPUS OR MICROSOFT TECHNOLOGIES FOR DOCUMENT AUTOMATION ACTIVEDOCS 3 ActiveDocs 3.1 ActiveDocs Document Automation ActiveDocs is a purpose-built Document Automation solution which has evolved from experience with hand-coded automation in Word templates, to the development of a business-user-oriented Desktop product to perform the same tasks, and two generations of truly enterprise-grade Server-based suites. ActiveDocs is a complete integrated package for creating and using document Templates, providing: Modular Design Design in Microsoft Word Design Management, Version Control, and Publishing Control Security and management of user access to templates and documents Web interface for Document Creation and Management A structured, interactive, web-based document creation interface – the ActiveDocs Document Wizard – which is dynamically and automatically created from each template on demand Document and Answer