One of our current Active Wizard clients is making the move from the classic ActiveFlow component of the Active Wizard to the new Flex-based ActiveFlow component, for filling out their forms. The Flex ActiveFlow is based on our AWLite product and as mentioned in a previous post, allows for a streamlined interface that is more user-friendly and intuitive.

As part of this move to the Flex-based ActiveFlow, we had to account for the client’s custom functionality that they currently have within the ActiveFlow component. They have the ability to checkin and checkout their attached documents directly from the summary page, which avoids the need for their users to access Webtop or another client application solely for the purpose of editing a document.  They currently use a third-party applet to handle the checkin and checkout, but that’s always been something they’ve struggled with in terms of maintenance during upgrades, as well as general support. Therefore, this move gave them the opportunity to replace the applet with a solution that’s more efficient.

We proposed adding Flex-based checkin/checkout functionality against Documentum, to the ActiveFlow for them.  This would alleviate many of their maintenance issues since the only thing required on the client side, to run the Flex interface, is Adobe Flash Player which client machines usually already have. The Flex interface would be much more lightweight than their applet, and they wouldn’t need to worry about whether it’s supported or not when they upgrade browser or Java versions.

Below is a screenshot of what we’ve put together so far for them. This is the workflow documents page that will now appear at the end of each form as the last page if the form has workflow enabled. The page gives the user the ability to search for documents to attach to the form, and add one or more of the documents from the search results to the list of selected documents. Upon adding a document, a relationship is created between the form and the document. From there, a user could manage the documents by removing ones that they don’t want, which in turn would remove the relationship.

Clicking Checkout would bring up a Browse dialog box, similar to the type of prompt you get when doing a Save As in Microsoft Word or any similar desktop application. From here, the user would browse to the location they’d like to save the file to. After saving, they can navigate to that location and edit the file as they wish. After they’ve completed their changes, they can come back to this page in the form and click Checkin to bring up a dialog box similar to the one displayed when doing an Open in Microsoft Word. From here, the user would browse to the location of the file they want to use for the checkin. The default location would be the same location that the file was saved to. After selecting the file from the dialog box, the file would be checked into the repository. For a full demo of the checkin/checkout functionality in action, please visit our Learning Zone.

One of the other benefits of moving to our Flex-based interface is that the Flex ActiveFlow, unlike the classic ActiveFlow, is built on our OpenContent web services layer. This allows the ActiveFlow to be CMS agnostic, so if our client ever wanted to move from Documentum to Alfresco or SharePoint, they would have the architecture already in place to do so.

Please contact us for any questions regarding the Active Wizard and our Flex solutions.