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Generating and printing a PDF or RTF report using rules

As well as sending an interpretive report to an Online Information System, RippleDown can generate a PDF or RTF formatted version of the report according to the rules you have built in the corresponding project.

The output files will be stored in the interpretations directory (Communicator_pk_out) as specified in the settings file CommunicatorSettings.txt.

For reports in a simple PDF format, you can use the facilities described in Formatting a PDF report, and inserting graphics

For PDF or RTF reports with more complex formatting, use the facilities described in Report Items

To use either of these facilities for a particular project, you will need to create a workflow rule as follows:

  1. Create a workflow report section.
  2. For a case where you want to generate a PDF or RTF file, create a workflow comment in this section in the following case sensitive format:<DATA>
    <FILE> filename.pdf </FILE>
    <TEMPLATE> template.jasper </TEMPLATE>
    <PRINT> copies </PRINT>
    <GREYSCALE> greyscale </GREYSCALE>
    </DATA>

    where:

    filename is the name of the file to be generated. You will need to include variables in the file name so that each file has a different name. For example, filename could be the expression Surname append _ Given append _ append most recent episode append . pdf . This assumes that surname and given are attributes that always have a value in each episode. The file name cannot create folder separators or illegal characters; these will be replaced with spaces.

    .pdf is the file extension. For RTF format, use .rtf instead.

    template is the name of the template to be used when generating the report. This tag is optional and you only need to include it when you have defined a set of templates that will be run by a third party reporting engine, that is, for reports with more complex formatting.

    copies is the number of copies to be printed. A copies value of 0 means that the file will be generated but not printed. A copies value of more than 1 means that multiple copies will be printed.

    greyscale instructs the reporting engine whether the report should be printed in grey scale. A value of true means that the file will be generated in grey scale. A value of false or if this options is omitted will generate the report in color.

  3. Add the workflow comment to the report using the appropriate rule.
  4. Only one PDF or RTF workflow command should be specified for a given case.
  5. Since you have disabled the workflow report section, any workflow comments that are given for a case will not affect the auto-validation status of that case if the auto-validation is specified on a per report or per report section basis.
  6. If a case is autovalidated, the formatted output file will be generated as soon as that case and report is sent back the LIS.
    Otherwise, if the case is queued to the validator, the file will be generated once the report has been reviewed and approved.

Once you have built the rules to give these workflow comments, you can review cases in the Archive case list to check that the workflow comments are being given correctly. If you need to add, replace or remove a workflow comment, you can do this with rules in exactly the same way as for a reporting comment.

Note: Any XML data source sent to a reporting engine is archived to the normal case archive directory.

See also:

BMD PDF report generation

Formatting a PDF report, and inserting graphics

Sending an email using rules