Application setup: output jobs

Output jobs

Output jobs aka output formats are adapls and/or Word templates, or adapls and/or XSLT stylesheets, or Excel templates that are used to print data from marked records in a specified way (selected fields in a specific layout). All the output jobs that you specify for a data source will be listed in the File > Output formats menu in Adlib and in the Output formats dialog in Axiell Collections.
Collections supports Word templates with the .docx extension, it supports output adapls using the wordcreatedocument function (to print to a .docx template), it supports output adapls using print and output statements, it supports output formats which have been specified as a combination of an adapl and a .docx template, it supports XSLT stylesheets and XSLT+adapl combinations and it also support Excel .xlsx templates as output formats. Word templates with the .dot or .dotx extension are not supported.

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XSLT stylesheet - For creating any type of report, simple or complex, one or more XSLT stylesheets may be put to use. XSLT (Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations) is a standardized language (an XML variant) for converting an XML document to a differently structured XML document or to a document in another format, for instance an HTML or text document. During transformation, the data from the original XML document can also be processed in other ways. Moreover, XSLT has programming language characteristics like constants and functions.
Collections stores records as XML and when you execute an XSLT output job, this XML is passed on to the stylesheet which converts the XML to the desired format: this target format would need to be HTML if it concerns an output format (Collections will actually print or display the generated HTML page). Which XML type (unstructured or grouped) must be generated by Axiell Collections, can be set per XSLT Output job in the XML type option.
Collections XML is formatted according to the adlibXML.xsd (an XML Schema Definition). The most important thing you need to know about that XML format is that only the XML tags of the three highest levels have been defined, namely: adlibXML (root tag), recordlist (may occur only once), record (may occur indefinitly). Further, there is a diagnostic tag on the level of the recordlist, which contains metadata. The structure of a Collections record itself is not defined in the schema definition because this differs per database and XML type. It's easy though, to obtain an example of the generated XML, by exporting a few marked records to an Unstructured or Grouped XML file from your Collections application. The main advantage of the grouped type over the unstructured one is that it becomes easier to process repeated occurrences of grouped fields. In unstructured XML, all fields and field occurrences are just listed in one long list inside the <record> node, whilst in grouped XML, fields are grouped within a field group node (if a relevant field group exists in the data dictionary) and that field group node is repeated for each field group occurrence. Whenever you create an XSLT stylesheet for unstructured XML, which must be able to collect field data per field group occurrence, you have no choice but to always count the “position” of every processed field occurrence because that’s the only way to retrieve the other fields from the same position. In grouped XML on the other hand, there’s no need for such a workaround because every field group occurrence is contained within its own field group node. Matching an XSLT template to a field group node automatically provides access to all grouped fields with the same occurrence number (in other words: at the same position).
Further note that XSLT 3.0 and earlier versions are supported from Collections 1.14: only XSLT 1.0 was supported before that. Of XML, both version 1.0 and 2.0 are supported, and XSLT 1.0 can be used in an XML 2.0 document if needed.
More information about using XSLT for Axiell Collections can be found in the separate Programming XSLT stylesheets for Adlib and Axiell document.

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Adapl - For creating advanced reports, for which pre-processing of data is necessary, the Axiell programming language ADAPL can be used as well as XSLT. Current Collections applications all use ADAPL programs, but if you feel that the non-standard nature of the Axiell proprietary ADAPL programming language limits the maintainability of your output formats, then you may choose to build your output formats in XSLT. However, in combination with a Word template or XSLT stylesheet, any complex calculations, manipulations of field contents, etc. will usually have to be managed by an adapl. Any data output by adapl to be used by an XSLT stylesheet must always be present in one of the fields of the currently processed record, so if you'd like to print some compiled or calculated data you'll have to put that in fields which you've defined as temporary fields in the relevant .inf. Output adapls for Collections that do not use Word templates or XSLT stylesheets, will also have to manage the layout of the data to be printed, with PRINT and OUTPUT statements. And PDEST can be used to specify the output file type.

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Word template - Microsoft Word can be used by Axiell Collections very conveniently for creating mailings, labels and documents in which the company style of an organisation is very important. For this purpose, default Word templates can be edited to enable printing of Collections data with such a template. Documents that are created this way, can be saved, printed or sent through e-mail.
You can set up all available Word templates as output formats if you like or let users select an appropriate template on-the-fly. Only for label templates it is really necessary to set up the Word template as an output format. See the online Collections Help for more information about creating a Word template output format.

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Adapl and Word template - To use this combination, you can choose to set both an adapl and a Word template in the properties of an output job, in which case a Word document is filled with data after the adapl for pre-processing the record data has been carried out, or just set the adapl and no Word template, in which case the Word template must be called from within the adapl. The difference to the print result is that if you generate Word documents from within an adapl, you can choose if and when to call the template, while setting the template in the output job properties means it will be called automatically every time after processing a record with the adapl.
In both cases, the adapl should not contain any PRINT or OUTPUT statements.

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Excel templates - From Collections 1.16, you can use Excel documents with field references as output format templates, similarly to how you can with Word templates. Just create a new Excel workbook and add field references in a single row. You can use field tags or English field names and you can also enter fixed texts to function as column labels if you want. For example:

ExcelTemplate1

You can print a specific occurrence of a field (just like in Word templates) by specifying the occurrence number in square brackets behind the field tag, e.g. <<OB[1]>>, or you can print all occurrences of a field by not specifying an occurrence number, e.g. <<OB>>. Multiple occurrences will be separated by line breaks, but together in a single cell.
In the resulting .xslx document, rows won't automatically expand vertically to show all occurrences of fields, so if you left the row height in the template to a single line, you'll only see one occurrence of each field by default, even if a cell actually contains multiple occurrences. In the resulting document in edit mode you can fix that by selecting the rows with the field data - click the first desired row number and then Shift-click the last desired row number - and then double-click a line separator in the row number column (where the row expand icon shows).

Of image fields, referenced by e.g. <<FN[1]>>, a thumbnail of the image will be inserted: the height or the row which contains the image field reference will determine the height of the inserted thumbnail. The aspect ratio of the images will remain intact. That thumbnail size will also be the definitive size, so you can't enlarge the image in the resulting document by enlarging the row height afterwards. (Actually, you can enlarge a thumbnail by selecting it in the cell and dragging it to a larger size, but you'll keep the low resolution so the enlarged image doesn't look very nice.)

Of enumerative fields, the user-friendly translation in the current interface language will be printed.

Numerical values will be printed with the default database decimal separator (usually a dot) and without and thousands separators so that Excel can interpret those numbers correctly as numericals.

You can implement formulas in your template to do automatic calculations with the integer or numerical data that is printed to the resulting .xslx document. There are some things to take into account when using formulas:
- A calculation will only be executed once you put the document in edit mode and/or after you edit a number and press Enter.
- If you want, you can add thousands separators by right-clicking the column header for a column with numbers and select Format cells in the pop-up menu: use the options on the Numbers tab.
- Excel can only do calculations on numbers if any decimal character in numbers is the decimal character set in Windows or in Excel itself. In Excel, open Options > Advanced and see the Use system separators option to check which decimal separator and thousands separator are currently being used. You can change it here if desired.
- Any cell containing a formula doesn't move down with the printed records, so do not place a formula in the same column as a field reference. Instead, place it in an otherwise empty column or on a separate work sheet.

You cannot create an adapl+Excel template output format currently, so you can't have printed data pre-processed by an adapl.

Your template can be set up as a regular "Normal page" output job in the data source of your choice. In the Output formats window it will be displayed with its own icon to distinguish it from the other output format types.

A user can also upload a template on the fly (just like with Word templates) by clicking the ellipsis button next to the Find document template entry box in the Output formats window: in the File upload window the user must then browse to the relevant folder and select the desired .xlsx template to use. By default the file type drop-down list in the right bottom corner is set to the new All supported types (*.docx, *.xlsx) option, but if you'd only like to see .xlsx templates right now, you can set it to *.xlsx if you want.

FindDocumentTemplateBox

On printing, a new .xlsx document will be generated and saved in the user's \downloads folder, so nothing is actually printed yet. The user can open the document from their \downloads folder, put it in edit mode, edit it if necessary and still print it if desired.

ExcelTemplate2