How to attach report output (as PDF) to a work item

Your application can create a Portable Document Format (PDF) file from the output of a summary view or list view report and attach it as a file attachment to a work item.

This can occur automatically, through a flow, or on user request, through a flow action.

Attach report output without display

1. Create and test the summary view or list view rule.

2. Create an activity in your application's work class with three steps:

• Step 1 opens the list view rule or summary view onto the clipboard.
• Step 2 calls the standard activity Rule-Obj-ListView.ShowView. Set the Action parameter to Prepare.
• Step 3 calls the standard activity Rule-Obj-ListView.AttachAsPDF. See information below on parameters. The AttachAsPDF activity processes the clipboard pages produced by the ShowView activity into a PDF file, and saves the file as a work item attachment. (For summary view rules, the activities are Rule-Obj-SummaryView.ShowView and Rule-Obj-SummaryView.AttachAsPDF.)

3 . If you want the report output to be saved as an attachment automatically at a point in a flow, add a utility shape that calls this activity.

4. If you want the activity to run upon user request, create a local flow action that captures relevant parameters, such as those required by the list view or summary view report, as property values. Identify your activity in the After this action... area of the Action tab of the flow action.

5. Test.

Parameters

The Rule-Obj-ListView.AttachAsPDF activity accepts five input parameters:

• DefinitionPageName — The name of the clipboard page containing the list view rule.
• DataPageName — The name of a Code-Pega-List page that contains report output, produced by the execution of the ShowView activity.
• AlternateStream — Optional. Identify the Stream Name key part of an HTML rule that is to be applied to the contents of the DataPageName page before conversion to PDF format.
• PDFName — Identify a file name for the generated PDF file. Start the name with a letter and use only letters and digits, followed by a period and the file type suffix pdf.
• InsHandle — The internal key (pzInsKey property value) of the work item.

PDN Example

See PDN article 25635 Generating PDFs and attaching them to a work item or viewing them in a web browser.

Additional useful activities

These related activities (all Final rules ) are also available:

• Rule-Obj-ListView.ViewAsPDF — Using list view output present on the clipboard, produce a PDF version of the result. Send the PDF to the user as a file so the user can save the PDF file locally.
• Rule-Obj-SummaryView.ViewAsPDF — Using summary view output present on the clipboard, produce a PDF version of the result. Send the PDF to the user browser so the user can save the PDF file locally.
• @baseclass.HTMLToPDF — Convert an HTML document to PDF (as bytes, not a file).
• Code-Pega-PDF.View — Send a PDF document (as bytes, not a file) to a user browser.
• Code-Pega-PDF.AttachToWork — Attach a PDF file to a work item.

Internals

These facilities use the PublicAPI method getPDFUtils(), which calls upon JTidy, CSSToXSLFO, Apache FOP, and XSLT facilities to convert HTML to PDF.

Understanding work item attachments About List View rules About Summary View rules

Reports category