Combining reports - possible?

Johannes_Nielsen

Hi

Running NAV 5.01

When printing a sales quote, we have a custom solution to construct the report as PDF and attach it to a new Email - ready to send to the Contact.

What we need is to have the Bill of Materials printed along with the quote. And sent via email.

I hav'nt been able to find a way to include an existing report in a report (combining them, to the BOM's are printed on the following pages of the quote).
Is that possible? - Or am I required to construct a brand new report with the sections I need? I would offcause like to avoid creating a new Report and simply reuse the existing reports.

--
Please note that running the reports seqentially one after another is not an option, since this is not supported by the custom PDF-Email solution. An email message is created already after Sales Quote has been run, and attaching further files is thus not possible.

einsTeIn.NET

Could you explain your PDF-Email solution a little bit. Which tools are used? How does it work?

I think it's not possible to combine two (or more) reports out of the box. But I know of a PDF-Email solution that is able to

• combine two or more print outs into one PDF (extend the no. of pages)
• put one PDF file into another (document in a document)
• attach two or more PDFs to one email

Johannes_Nielsen

einsTeIn.NET:
Yes, sorry.

The PDF/Email-solution is based on PDFCreator and some NAV logic from our Dynamics Partner.

When a report is printed using this, it is printed to a local PDF printer, configured to save the document as a PDF-file locally. An Outlook email message is activated, containing the Contacts email adress, and the PDF file is attached to the message.

This solution is used several places in NAV and choosing another PDF solution company wide is not an option, right at this very moment anyway.

But as you say, the solution might very lie in the PDFCreator software...

einsTeIn.NET

Do you know who is creating the outlook email? Is it NAV or is it PDFCreator?

PDFCreator is based on ghostscript, so I guess it is possible from a technical point of view. Maybe there are some restrictions because of the software design or the allowance of the producer. You should talk to your ISV and maybe also to a specialist of PDFCreator.

Johannes_Nielsen

NAV does the Email message and inserts the Email adress and attaches the PDF-file.


FYI:
(also, I forgot to add/explain that we are dependant on PDFCreator at the moment because PDFCreator is configured to run a ghost/VB Script that merges our Stationary and the NAV report.
This makes a more handsome PDF than NAV 5.01 is able to create on its own)

einsTeIn.NET

Yeah, I know of this stationary merge function as a part of ghostscript. And there is also a merge function to append / extend one pdf to another. You just have to know where you stored the first pdf that was created by the print of the Bill of Materials (and its name of course). So, I strongly believe it's possible but not without some customizations. I could only advise again to talk to your ISV.

FDickschat

With pdftk you can merge 2 or more separate pdfs into 1 before putting them into the mail. So the solution would be to print the reports 1 after the other. Inbetween rename the files so that they are not overwritten. Then start pdftk to merge them into one pdf file. \:D/ You could also use pdftk to add the watermark.

You can find a good overview of pdftk here: http://www.accesspdf.com/pdftk/

You might also want to take a look at this thread:
http://www.mibuso.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=39286

Johannes_Nielsen

Thanks alot guys, I will dig into that.

----
On a slightly related matter - if we were to replace the PDFCreator solution in the future:

Do you guys know if the newer version of NAV, 2009 SP1 and/or the Role based client, offer any improvement on the PDF/Email front?

einsTeIn.NET

Yes, in NAV 2009 there is a possibility to print a report to pdf in standard. But I never used it.

FDickschat

PrintToPDF in a report does only work in RTC, not in Classic. It's not possible to merge with a watermark so you will still need pdftk.

Johannes_Nielsen

FDickschat wrote:

PrintToPDF in a report does only work in RTC, not in Classic. It's not possible to merge with a watermark so you will still need pdftk.

OK, thanks for the info

David_Singleton

FDickschat wrote:

With pdftk you can merge 2 or more separate pdfs into 1 before putting them into the mail. So the solution would be to print the reports 1 after the other. Inbetween rename the files so that they are not overwritten. Then start pdftk to merge them into one pdf file. \:D/ You could also use pdftk to add the watermark.

You can find a good overview of pdftk here: http://www.accesspdf.com/pdftk/

You might also want to take a look at this thread:
http://www.mibuso.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=39286

Thanks for this, I had a similar requirement some time back I will take a look at this. :thumbsup:

einsTeIn.NET

Here are two more tools that are also able to do it...
pdfMachine by broadgun
qvpdf

PeterD

Never used it but PdfCreator should be able to combine reports. From it's help:

No processing at startup: When you use this setting, PDFCreator will start without processing any documents. You can manually start processing by going to the Document menu and selecting Print or by unchecking the Printer Stop option in the Printer menu. The setting is useful if you want collect some files first, then combine the files into one and create a pdf.

If I remember correctly I have seen something like this in automation too.