LiveDocx 2 – Are We There Yet?

by Lucas Mbiwe 31. January 2011 10:50

Hi all,

As you might have noticed, LiveDocx 2 is still in beta. Please be assured we are close. To put it in the words the of the X-Wing pilot who was shot down, before Luke finally bombed the death star to pieces: "Almost there…".

We still have to fix a few small bugs and sort out some issues with the PHP client. But the better part of the wait is over. Promise.

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Nested Blocks: A Sneak Preview

by Lucas Mbiwe 4. November 2010 18:47

Hi all,

thanks for bearing with us while we were heads down coding. The wait is almost over. Today we want to show you just a little bit of what will be possible when merging nested blocks.

For instance, take a look at this snippet of a simple template:

 

Nested blocks: template
 

Merged with some data, it results to this (snippet of a) document:


 
Nested blocks: merge result

 
We hope you like what you see. We certainly do!

Of course, we will keep you posted on any updates.

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Image merging with PHP

by Lucas Mbiwe 6. October 2010 11:45

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LiveDocx 2.0 beta is up

by Lucas Mbiwe 17. September 2010 16:47

Hi all,

As announced earlier, we have set up a beta of LiveDocx 2.0. The URL, of course, is:

https://api.livedocx.com/2.0/mailmerge.asmx

If you are accessing LiveDocx using PHP, you probably need the link to the WSDL:

https://api.livedocx.com/2.0/mailmerge.asmx?WSDL

The new feature in this beta version is image merging. What this means is that you can have merge fields in your template replaced with image files during the merge process. Please read the following section for a detailed description.

Image merging

Prior to merging, make sure you have uploaded the image(s) you want to merge to the LiveDocx  server. The following, new methods allow for image handling. They work just like their counterparts for template handling.  Please note that GetImageExportFormats() replaces GetImageFormats():

public void DeleteImage(string filename) 
public string DownloadImage(string filename)
public string[] GetImageExportFormats() 
public string[] GetImageImportFormats()
public bool ImageExists(string filename)
public string[][] ListImages() 
public void UploadImage(string image, string filename)

Image merging works with standard merge fields. The only thing special about them is their name. It must start with the prefix image: followed by an arbitrary identifier. Here's an example to demonstrate this:

{ MERGEFIELD  image:ImageID  \* MERGEFORMAT }

In the merge data, finally, you use this identifier to assign the image's filename to the field:

string[][] mergeData = new string[][] {
    new string[] { "image:ImageID" },
    new string[] { "mypicture.png" } }; 

Like usually, the actual merging is done by calling CreateDocument(). No suprises here.

If you assign an empty string or the name of a file that is not on the server, the merge field is removed from the template and nothing is merged. This comes in handy, e.g., when the template you are using contains image fields for merging company logos and you want to produce a document that will be printed on pre-printed stationery.

Updates via Twitter

Since the beta is under development, it is bound to change frequently. In case we have some short-term updates, we will inform you via Twitter. The ID to follow is @livedocx, and for tweets concerning the 2.0 beta we will use the hashtag #v2beta. Of course, you can use this to send us your feedback as well. So, please feel free to play around with the beta and let us know what you think.

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Paying tribute to the "beta" in our logo

by Lucas Mbiwe 13. September 2010 15:01

Wow,

Our last blog post has generated quite some response. Thank you for all the positive feedback!

We will be attending quite a few trade shows in the next couple of months, so it is a bit tricky to come up with a realistic release schedule. Therefore, we have decided to pay tribute to the "beta" in our logo and do things a little different this time.

Instead of keeping you waiting till at least the second half of October, we will roll out the features as we finish them. This will give you the chance to play around with the new features immediately and let us know what you think. The website will remain the same, until we have finished implementing all of the new features. This means you will have to completely rely on the service API for things such as image handling. However, we think this is a small price to pay.

Next stop: image fields

We are using LiveDocx ourselves in our company to generate quotes, invoices and such. Thanks to image fields, we can now use the same templates to generate documents without logos that are printed on pre-printed stationery and documents including all logos that serve as email attachments. Because of some special requirements this was not possible using sub-templates.

In the next couple of days we will release a beta of the new LiveDocx version including image merging. Of course, we'll provide you with the necessary documentation to get you started.

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Announcing new mail merge features

by Lucas Mbiwe 29. August 2010 22:50

Hi all,

 A few months have passed since we almost released LiveDocx 1.3. But while it has been quiet here, we were busy working on new features in the meantime. Now it is time to prepare our next release, and this is a sneak preview of what to expect of it.

Image fields

Many of you have asked about this, and we think we have found an easy and clean way of doing it. The next LiveDocx release will enable you to merge images into fields. No need for a new or special field type required. This new feature works with plain, old merge fields.

Nested blocks

A fairly advanced feature not everybody has a need for. But those of you who do miss it badly. Hence, you will be pleased to hear that the next LiveDocx release will enable you to merge nested blocks.

Formatted input

Last but not least, the next LiveDocx release will enable you to merge formatted text (HTML) into your templates. This opens up new possibilities in application design. You could, e.g., provide your users with a simple rich text editor or let them merge hyperlinks, which will work in the resulting PDF documents, of course.

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LiveDocx 1.0 and 1.1 will be discontinued on May 26, 2010

by Lucas Mbiwe 20. May 2010 16:36

Dear LiveDocx users,

We would like to inform you that as of May 26, 2010, LiveDocx 1.0 and 1.1 will no longer be available.

If you are still running any scripts or applications based on one of those versions of LiveDocx, please update them to use LiveDocx 1.2 before that date.

LiveDocx 1.2 will continue to run as before.

Thank you for using LiveDocx!

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LiveDocx 1.2 updated – no need for LiveDocx 1.3

by Lucas Mbiwe 20. May 2010 16:01

Great news, everyone!

While preparing LiveDocx 1.3, which we were developing solely as a maintenance release, the compatibility tests revealed that is was possible to run it as an update to LiveDocx 1.2 without any side effects for existing applications. Therefore, we chose to update LiveDocx 1.2 instead of having all of our users have to update their applications to a new version.

Enjoy LiveDocx!

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Change of plans

by Lucas Mbiwe 23. April 2010 17:13

LiveDocx 1.2 has been around for quite a while now. We think it's time for a new version. In fact, this thought is not new. Months ago, we thought about implementing and releasing LiveDocx 1.3 that should bring some small improvements. We have even given some hints in several forum posts and in some support emails indicating that the 1.3 release was imminent.

As you can all see, we have decided differently. This post is intended to give you some long overdue insight regarding our planning.

First things first

There has been a nasty bug in our server backend, which kept us quite busy for some weeks. The bug's existence became more and more apparent with the growing number of users accessing our services. We had to straighten out our priorities; making the current service more robust trumped releasing new features. Thus, we've put development on ice and went bug hunting.

Finally, we've been able not only to track it down, which alone was hard enough, but also to fix it. We have still some final testing to do to make absolutely sure the bug is gone, but it won't be too long before we apply the fix to our servers. We will inform you separately of the upcoming maintenance, of course.

Roadmap

As indicated in the introduction, this post means to give you an idea of what we are up to. Currently, we are working on two releases.

LiveDocx 1.3

The long promised version. This version is based on the above mentioned fix. Its sole purpose is to replace all previous versions of LiveDocx, 1.0, 1.1 and 1.2, all of which include the bug that has made our lives so hard for the past couple of weeks. LiveDocx 1.3 is completely backward compatible, so apart from swapping the old service URL with the new one, you shouldn't have to do anything to make it work with your existing code.

Obviously, the above means that shortly after releasing LiveDocx 1.3, we will discontinue the older releases. To make sure every user gets a chance to make the transition to the new version, we will send an email to every user and also wait an appropriate amount of time before we shut down the other versions.

LiveDocx 2.0

The long awaited features. Many users give us feedback regarding our service. Some of it is good, some of it not so much. We appreciate this. Feedback shows us what we have done right and also where there is room for improvement.

Regarding improvement, two features that users have constantly been asking for are nested merge blocks and formatted merge data. LiveDocx 2.0 will support these features. As the version number indicates, the interface will change—probably a lot. The new API is not finalized yet, we still have to figure some things out regarding cross-platform compatibility. For one, it's not always easy to use the built-in serialization of .NET data types, while at the same time remain, e.g., PHP friendly. Also, we are trying various authentication methods to reduce the number of API calls.

I am pretty sure we'll come up with a solution that will keep everybody happy. Of course we'll keep you posted.

Enjoy LiveDocx.

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Patch Monday: LiveDocx Server Update Policy

by Björn Meyer 6. January 2010 16:24

Finding a good day and time for installing patches or updates on a server is always tricky. After analyzing our service statistics, we figured out that patching on Monday morning at 5AM (Central European Time) creates the least impact.

Up until now, we patched our servers manually after extensive testing, but we decided to automate this process. As such, you may find degradation in performance or a potential interruption of service on Mondays at the announced time.

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