ARIS Connect: how to make an attached file available on a report

Last activity on October 1, 2023 - 11:21 4.7k Views 1 Reply Reports & Macros

Pedro Guerrero on July 11, 2018

Hello everyone

My customer asks me if it's possible to print an attached file in a report when running a report in a model. I tried to do it from both ARIS Connect and ARIS Architect without success.

I would like to check the feasibility of that. Here's what I did on my own with an example. I first took this model from the Unified Motor Group database

Then selected the attribute Documentation on the Human Resources box and uploaded a test file (.docx)

I had no results so I uploaded the same file on the ARIS Repository

But at the time of running reports, I got the same results (no attached file is considered for the output file)

Is it feasible? is it possible to get the attached file on a final report when running a report?

Thank you in advance for your help

Best regards

Pedro.

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1 Reply

Kay Fischbach on July 20, 2018

is it possible to get the attached file on a final report when running a report?

Yes, it is possible to inline the content other documents in the report result. HOWEVER:

It requires in depth Javascript and ARIS Script knowledge
it's requires a little bit of tinkering
I have no idea at which point to insert the code snippet I can give you into the "Generate job description" report, simply because that's not a report with whose structure I'm familiar
It only works with the original output format being doc, docx, rtf, odt, pdf and plain text AND the document you want to inline being rtf, doc/dot or docx
The file to inline has to be at some place the ARIS server (where reports are executed) can reach, like a public working directory for example. Storing the file at some place that requires special access permissions, permissions which the server usually does not have, will produce errors

Here is what I've put together, really just quickly coded this, no trying things and catching exceptions (report context: can only be executed with objects > functions. Should work with other objects that have the link attribute too though):

var nLocale = Context.getSelectedLanguage(); //need that to read the attribute value of the link attribute
var selObjDefs = ArisData.getSelectedObjDefs(); //just to get what we work with
var p_output = Context.createOutputObject(); //create a new output object
p_output.DefineF("Standard", "Arial", 11, Constants.C_BLACK, Constants.C_TRANSPARENT, Constants.FMT_LEFT, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0); //Define a standard output format

main(); //no need to clutter the global name space

p_output.WriteReport(); //write the report at the end of the script

function main(){ //the main method
    p_output.OutputLnF("Beginn inline", "Standard"); //Write a line to show that we are still in the original output object
    p_output.OutputLnF("", "Standard"); //and an empty line
    for each (var oneObjDef in selObjDefs){ //for each object

        var documentPath = oneObjDef.Attribute(Constants.AT_DOCUMENT_LINK_1, nLocale).getValue(); //obtain the file path that was written into the Document Link 1 attribute
        
        var byteArray = java.nio.file.Files.readAllBytes(java.nio.file.Paths.get(documentPath)); //Create a byte array with the file from path just obtained
        
        var docVal = Context.getOutputObject("tmp.docx",byteArray); //create a second output object, with the byte array as the content
        docVal.SetDistFooter(p_output.GetDistFooter()) //Set up the new output object to be just like the original one
        docVal.SetDistHeader(p_output.GetDistHeader()) //""
        docVal.SetBottomMargin(p_output.GetBottomMargin()) //""
        docVal.SetTopMargin(p_output.GetTopMargin()) //""
        docVal.SetLeftMargin(p_output.GetLeftMargin()) //""
        docVal.SetRightMargin(p_output.GetRightMargin()) //""
        
        p_output.InsertDocument(docVal,true,true,Constants.INSERT_DOC_REMOVE_TOC_AND_PAGEBREAK); //inline the second output object into the first one
        docVal = null; //remove any trace of the second output object with the next garbage collection
        
    }
    
    p_output.OutputLnF("End inline", "Standard"); //Just to show that we are back in the main output object
}