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Save a form as PDF within Workflow

  • 21 February 2017
  • 6 replies
  • 27 views
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Hello,

 

I have a List with the following business requirement. I am having a difficulty with #2 of the requirements.

 

1. User can save as many drafts as he wants. When rejected by Manager, User regains Edit Permission and can re-submit a new version of the form.

2. We don't need to keep any draft versions, but would like to keep the submitted versions of the form, so 1) the original version, and 2) the re-submitted version.

 

Form has "Save as PDF" option, and I was looking for a solution to automate it within workflow.

First, I thought of using versioning setting of SharePoint List, but found this rather saves every version per action (1 version when List columns are updated, 1 version when WF is logged. etc.)

Then I thought I could use "Office 365 delete previous version" somehow, but this action only applied to Document Type, and I could not use for my List.

 

Any suggestions are appreciated.

 

Kind regards,

-Naoko

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Best answer by praios81 21 February 2017, 08:21

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6 replies

P
Userlevel 4
Badge +12

Hello Naoko,

for the first part of your question I could imagine a state machine

The document could be edited as often as you want and go back and forth between approver and editor.

For converting a document to PDF you would need to use the "document generation" action. This one will let you convert documents to pdf.

Will that help you?

Kind regards,

Enrico

N
Badge +3

Hi Enrico,

Thank you very much for the comments.

My question was not clear, so I made updates.

My App type is List, not Document, so I'm afraid that these actions may not work (please correct me if I'm misunderstanding...!)

With my List app, #1 (User saving many drafts) is working properly using State Machine similar to your example.

I need a help with #2. I am sorry for the confusion!

-Naoko

P
Userlevel 4
Badge +12

Hello Naoko,

the first part will work both for lists and libraries as you already found out.

The document generation action is specific to document libraries though. Automating the builtin pdf creation is also not a very good idea as it would need a lot of programming and can easily break if the service is changing.

Would it be an option to create an item in a second list that only holds submitted items? The structure of the list is the same as your base list but whenever someone submits an item you create an item with the same properties in the secondary list plus a link back to the original element.

You could then modify permissions of that element to prevent it from being modified.

What do you think?
Kind regards,

Enrico

N
Badge +3

Hi,

I think that may be the only way to get it to work, although preparing two identical lists per workflow is not practical... :-(

Thank you!

- Naoko

A

HI there,

I have a specific list which uses approval workflow. Once the list item is approved I would like to Publish the Related information and form to library and create email with a .pdf version of the signed off list item included.

I too am looking for ability to Create a document, however I would simply want to automate the the "Print to PDF" facility of the Form.

Can i confirm this is not able to be triggered by a workflow?

Aran

mcamarco
Badge +3
looking for the same thing, please advise if you have found a resolution

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