WorkZone PDF with policies

About policies

After installing WorkZone PDF Crawler, you can configure policies to define which documents are to be converted and in which priority.

You can specify which documents to convert based on the following criteria:

• Document state (for example, Draft, Locked, Archived)
• Document type (for example, Incoming, Outgoing)
• Document group (for example, Decision, Hearing, Complaint, Minutes)
• Case class
• Date of last change

You create and maintain policies in the dvs_policy table that you access through the ScanSQL program, adjusting the policies to the requirements and work flow of your organization, for example, setting up Crawler policies to convert documents based on their date:

• Convert all documents for the last year
• Convert all older documents – meaning documents older than one year.

You can also set up policies to convert documents based on:

• The on-going production of documents, for example the changed date > installation date so that users do not have to wait for the PDFs that they have requested.
• All archived documents (State=ARK|AFS) as a batch process for the purpose of delivery.

Policy priority

The highest priority is 0. You can assign as many priority values to the policies as you need, for example, 0, 1, 2,... 10, 11 and so on.

Setting policy priorities enables converting of important (high priority) policies first and relegates converting of less important (lower priority) policies later, when there may be vacant machine resources to convert documents of these policies - for example, certain document types (WorkZone Document types: DOK, EMBED, I and such) could be assigned a lower priority policy to ensure there are sufficient resources to convert more important documents from a higher prioritized policy.

Create a policy

To create a new policy, execute SQL similar to the following on the database that you want the policy to cover:

If the single quotes are empty '', there will be no restrictions as to which documents will be converted:

Field descriptions

Field	Description
policy_key	A key for the policy, for example, 1, 2, 3, and so on. The policy_key must be unique.
name	Name of policy, for example, PDF_of_Everything.
enabled	Enable or disable the policy. Possible values are J (yes) and N (no).
state	Indicates the state of the documents to convert. Possible values are UP, UÅ, UL, ARK, and AFS.
record_type	Defines the type of documents to convert. Possible values depend on the database setup, but typically include, for example, DOKUMENT (Document), I (Incoming), U (Outgoing), and so on.
record_grp	Defines which documents from which document groups to convert. Possible values depend on the database setup but typically include, for example, AFG (Decision), HØR (Hearing), KLA (Complaint), REF (Minutes), and so on. Note: To include only documents where record_grp has not been filled out, set the record_grp field to ‘=””’, that is an equal sign and two double quotes.
cutoff_date	Date and time expression to limit the amount of documents covered in a policy based on the date the document last was updated. The format is YYYYMMDD where YYYY: Year MM: Month DD: Day To cut off at May 4th 2015, use >20150504 (8 digits) as the cut-off or >=20150504 if you want to include the date. If you only want to convert the newest documents, insert today's date.
renderer	Indicates the format you want to convert to. Possible value is PDF.
priority	Defines which renditions to prioritize first.
case_class	Defines which documents from which case class (Danish: “sagsgruppe”) to convert. Possible values are the classes defined in the case classification scheme (Danish: “Journalplan”). The table below gives an overview of how you can use the case_class field.
days	Defines on which weekdays to run a policy. You specify weekdays by a list of numbers (Monday = 1,...., Sunday = 7) separated by a pipe "|", for example: 1|2|3|4|5 - Monday - Friday 6|7 - Weekend
hours	Defines the time to run a policy. You specify start and end time in 24 hours format with or without a leading zero and separated by "-". Allowed values are: [0-23] or [1-24]. You cannot set values to "0-0", or "24-24", and the value on the "right" must be greater than the value on the "left". Example: Working Hours 08-17 - Working hours 00-05 - Night hours 12-13 - Lunch Note: Start and end times are exclusive. In the Working hours example above, the policy will start at 8:00 and finish at 16:59.

You can add several values for state, record_type, record_grp, and case_class fields using the "|" symbol, for example, "DO|I".

Error-checking

In the current version, there is no error-checking at the SQL level, which means that errors in, for example, the search criteria will only be revealed at run-time. Furthermore, there is no error checking on the stated requirements. For more information, see Troubleshooting policies and Troubleshooting and tips.

Change a policy

You can update a policy through SQL. For example, you can disable the 'FixedPDFPolicy' policy by executing the following SQL:

update dvs_policy set enabled='N' where name='FixedPDFPolicy'

Schedule a policy

You can schedule when to run policy-based conversions by adding weekday and time filters to a policy, see the days and hours in the Field descriptions. For example you may want to run policy-based conversions outside work hours to avoid extra load on the servers.

Create a policy that converts documents of the record type UÅ and the record group DOK. The policy runs on Saturdays and Sundays from 8:00 to 24:00.

insert into dvs_policy (policy_key, name, enabled, renderer, state, record_type, record_grp, days, hours) values('1', 'Policy_1', 'J', 'PDF', 'UÅ', 'DOK', 'DO', '6|7', '8-24')

Update a policy named policy_1 to run on weekdays from 8:00 to 14:00.

update dvs_policy set days='1|2|3|4|5', hours='8-14' where name='Policy_1'

 

Create policies that ensure conversion during the night and early morning the next day, for example Sunday night and Monday early morning. It requires two policies.

The first policy ensures conversion from Sunday evening till midnight.

insert into dvs_policy (policy_key, name, enabled, renderer, state, record_type, record_grp, days, hours) values('2', 'NightPolicy_1', 'J', 'PDF', 'UÅ', 'DOK', 'DO', '7', '19-24')

The second policy ensures conversion from midnight till early Monday morning.

insert into dvs_policy (policy_key, name, enabled, renderer, state, record_type, record_grp, days, hours) values('3', 'NightPolicy_2', 'J', 'PDF', 'UÅ', 'DOK', 'DO', '1', '0-6')

Event-driven policies

Event-driven policies convert all documents to PDF as they are produced to facilitate distribution.

Field	Value
Document State	All
Record Type	All
Record Groups	All except DOPE (Agenda Module)
Class	All
Priority	2
Cut-off date	15th September 2011

SQL:

insert into dvs_policy (policy_key, name, enabled, state, record_type, record_grp, case_class, cutoff_date, renderer, priority)

values(1, 'PDF-Event', 'J', '', '', '<>DOPE', '', '>20110915', 'PDF', '2')

Batch-driven policies

Batch-driven policies convert all existing documents to PDF to facilitate distribution.

Field	Value
Document State	All
Record Type	All
Record Groups	All except DOPE
Class	All
Priority	4
Cut-off date	None

SQL:

insert into dvs_policy (policy_key, name, enabled, state, record_type, record_grp, case_class, cutoff_date, renderer, priority)

values(1, 'PDF-Batch', 'J', '', '', '<>DOPE', '','', 'PDF', '4')

Converts documents of the BIB type from the case class 10 to PDF.

Field	Value
Document State	Empty
Record Type	BIB
Record Groups	All
Class	10
Priority	3
Cut-off date	4th May 2011

SQL:

insert into dvs_policy (policy_key, name, enabled, state, record_type, record_grp, cutoff_date, renderer, priority, case_class)

values(1, 'p1', 'J', 'UÅ', 'BIB', '=""', '>20110504', 'PDF', '3', '10')

Converts documents of the BIB type from any class.

Field	Value
Document State	Empty
Record Type	BIB
Record Groups	All
Class	All
Priority	3
Cut-off date	4th May 2011

SQL:

insert into dvs_policy (policy_key, name, enabled, state, record_type, record_grp, cutoff_date, renderer, priority, case_class)

values(1, 'p1', 'J', 'UÅ', 'BIB', '=""', '>20110504', 'PDF', '3', '')

Troubleshooting policies

The current version of WorkZone PDF does not have a user interface for entering and maintaining policies, and there is only little error handling when editing policies in SQL. Errors will be handled only at runtime, when the WorkZone PDF Crawler tries to fetch and interpret the policies.

There are two possible types of errors:

• One or more of the fields in a policy are not in a format which the WorkZone PDF Crawler can interpret.

If you write M&M* as a criterion, it matches all documents with an M in the corresponding field because & is a SOM operator. This is probably not what you intended.

• The WorkZone PDF Crawler interprets the policy but not in the way you intended it to.

The last type of error is revealed only by the number of documents that are converted. You may experience that too few or too many documents are converted.

See issues and workarounds in Troubleshooting and tips.