How to call OnBase Web API from a .Net Web application.

[Vamsi_Mumaneni]

We are implementing a Web application where we need to call OnBase API inside our application to send documents to OnBase.

Our idea is to use OnBase application to store documents that users upload from the web application.

I need to know how to make a Web API call to OnBase.

what parameters we need to pass.

Thanks

[ptam · Accepted solution]

Hi Vamsi,

I highly recommend that you look into the Web Services Publishing module.  It will allow you to use point-and-click creation of standard SOAP or REST web services to provide access to OnBase functionality in third-party applications.  Here is a link you can use to find out more about it: 

www.onbase.com/.../

Thanks

Paul

[ptam · Accepted solution]

Hi Vamsi,

I highly recommend that you look into the Web Services Publishing module.  It will allow you to use point-and-click creation of standard SOAP or REST web services to provide access to OnBase functionality in third-party applications.  Here is a link you can use to find out more about it: 

www.onbase.com/.../

Thanks

Paul

[Alex_French]

Hi Vamsi,

At Dartmouth College we have written, and are gradually expanding, what we call  the "RESTful OnBase Interface", or "ROBI".  It is a light-weight, relatively generic way for other custom or customized applications to interact with OnBase.

We reviewed information about Web Services Publishing about a year ago, and didn't think it would meet our needs on several fronts.  My vague memories say that weak points included the GUI configuration process becoming cumbersome as our usage scaled up, questions about deployment and migration between environments, questions about integration with different authentication models we need, and the limited authentication model breaking useful history.

Our solution was ROBI, a relatively simple .NET Web API application using the Unity API to expose a small, simple surface of  OnBase access.

ROBI can work with direct connections from a user's browser (SSO integration or NT auth), or a connection from a server (as the user via SSO, or as a service account).  When the connection is made as a service account, ROBI can create custom history entries indicating that an action was performed on behalf of a specific user.

ROBI is generally generic, allowing a user or service account to take any action they have permissions to perform through the API, but was setup with some thought about where we could add easily configurable limitations if desired.

Right now ROBI allows document creation and retrieval, keyword retrieval, keyword updates, and document deletion.  It is expected to grow gradually based on different integration needs, e.g. in the near future we'll be implementing document queries.

So far we have found the general design to be easily usable by other development teams interacting with OnBase, as long as they're basically familiar with RESTful web services.

The actual coding involved wasn't huge, and wasn't particularly complicated, if you're familiar with RESTful design, with .NET in general, with the Unity API, and with the .NET Web API framework.  I was doing a lot of learning in some of those areas as we went.

Dartmouth is lucky to have Enterprise licensing.  Without that, some of the same work would have to be re-architected and might be impossible to build while respecting Hyland's licensing.

Feel free to reach out to us (alexander.f.french@dartmouth.edu) if you'd like to discuss more.

[Alex_French]

Courtney Smith's point is important.

The solution I described may be hugely over-complicating things.

[Courtney_Smith1 · Accepted solution]

Vasmi,

If you are simply trying to use the Unity API within your Web Application that can be done by obtaining the Unity Integration Toolkit License. This is a database license that is used to connect to the OnBase Application Server from a custom Application outside of OnBase.