Printable Workflow Summary
- Seth Petry-Johnson
- Peter Fasano
The “Printable Workflow Summary” was introduced in 10.8.0.
SysAdmins: see also Enabling the Printable Workflow Summary feature and the original design docs
This feature is not supported in self-hosted environments without additional effort and/or an AWS account.
Overview
The “Printable Workflow Summary” allows an administrator to produce a PDF file that summarizes an entity in the system. This PDF contains a list of selected data attributes and embedded copies of uploaded files that can be converted and inserted into the PDF.
The “Printable Workflow Summary” is available to all Workflow Types.
Sample Use Case
An example use case is Complaints. In the Complaints use case, members of the public can file complaints against licensed Practitioners. This typically kicks off an investigation process that researches the merits of the complaint generating a large amount of evidence in the form of witness statements, documents, and photos.
Once the investigation is complete, a group of administrators and legal counsel meet to review the findings and rule on what remediation is necessary.
The “Printable Workflow Summary” supports this process by providing a single document that contains information about the complaint and copies of the supporting evidence in a single PDF file that can be printed or shared electronically. This approach eliminates the need for the legal counsel to have access to LearningBuilder, and also supports boardroom scenarios where live access to the Internet is not available.
Example File
A sample file, taken from the TRAINING database, is attached here.
Feature summary
Summary table
Information about the primary entity (e.g. the Complaint) is displayed in a data table, similar to an Overview popup within LearningBuilder, using the “offline Html” rendering of each Attribute. It supports all Attribute types with a useful read-only representation.
Embedded images and documents
The generated PDF will contain embedded copies of Upload attributes as well, such as images and documents.
Supported file types
File type | Supported? | Notes |
|---|---|---|
Text file | Files are converted first to PDF, then merged into the summary file. Information in the margins (top ~0.5”, bottom ~0.5”) may be obscured by a standard header/footer that is added to the summary file after it is generated | |
PDF | ||
Word document |
| |
JPEG image | Scaled to fit in portrait landscape on Letter sized paper. | |
PNG image | ||
Scanned document |
| TIFFs are not supported at this time. Convert them to JPEG, PNG, or PDF first. |
GIF image | GIFs are not supported at this time. Convert them to a JPEG or PNG first. | |
Excel | Excel documents are not supported because they generally require human intervention to print nicely (e.g. adjusting margins, column visibility, etc). Have users upload a .PDF version of the printed spreadsheet instead. | |
Open Office files | Open Office documents are not supported at this time, pending feedback re: importance of this feature. Have users upload a version converted to Word or PDF instead. | |
Audio/Video files | Audio recordings or video files are not supported because there is no way to represent them on a printed page. Have users upload a textual summary, or log into LearningBuilder and access the files from there. |
If an unsupported file type is found or the system is unable to access the file of a supported file type, the summary file will contain the filename and a message that it was not supported or unable to be accessed.
Activity Container Attributes
If an Activity Container is included in the file summary, then a summary table and set of attachments will be included for each “contained” Activity.
Configuring a Printable Summary
There are two elements to the configuration:
Configuring the Entity View that controls the summary page
Configuring the Quick Action that produces the file
(optional) Configuring the email notification
Configuring the Entity View
At the top of the summary file is a table of data about the entity being summarized. This is controlled by the “Printable Summary” Entity View.
To configure the data that is included in your file:
Go to Admin → Workflows → (edit the relevant Workflow)
Edit the Entity Details
Add a “Printable Summary” Entity View in the desired Area
Configuring the Quick Action
To allow end users to access the printable summary, add a “Download PDF With Attachments” Workflow Action to all Workflow Steps from which the summary should be accessible. You can use custom visibility rules to hide the button if necessary.
Configuring the email notification
The notification email can be edited in Admin → Automations → Printable Workflow Summary Notification Template.
The default template is suitable for basic usage; customizing it is not required.
Generating and downloading the PDF file
Once the Quick Action (or normal Action) has been configured, the end user will be able to access it from LearningBuilder.
Triggering the “Download PDF With Attachments” action adds the request to a queue to be rendered and displays a status popup to the user. This popup can be closed; the user is notified by email (to their primary email address) when the file is ready.
The default content of notification email is very simple and contains a link to access the file from within LearningBuilder.
Following the link navigates the user back into LearningBuilder where they can download the actual file.
Managing the background queue
If a user says they didn’t get their notification email, what do I do?
Use the Sys Admin → Queue Management → Printable Workflow Summary Queue page to determine if the file was ever rendered or not. If the process errored, you can delete the item from the queue and have the user re-try.
Note that detailed logging information is available in CloudWatch, but not directly accessible within LearningBuilder.
Can I generate a summary file on behalf of a user?
Yes. If a user is having trouble generating a summary file, you can help them. However, you cannot forward the email notification to them.
The file download links are user-specific, so if you generate a file on behalf of a user, you will need to download the actual PDF and send them the file directly.