Manually Generating UnityPop Files

[Matt_Savigear]

One of the most useful things about DocPop is the ability to manually generate the format outside OnBase without having to somehow use the API to get the link. This allows third party systems to publish DocPop links to documents in OnBase simply by knowing the path to the server and a couple of keyword values - from these a "templated" approach can be taken to produce working URLs.

Unity Pop seems to have a limitation which prevents this - the <Signature> tag. If you empty or remove this tag, the upop file refuses to work, but this means that we need to hit OnBase for a upop file for every document we want to have access to. Fine for small volumes, but a problem for high volume applications where this would generate performance problems and require more complex two-way communication structures to be set up.

So, given the rest of the XML is easy to generate, is there a way of bypassing the requirement for this internally generated signature, or some straightforward method for generating it to remove the reliance on a Unity API connection?

[#2]

Matt,

The signature tag is a way to protect against tampering with the file.  It is a security feature that guarantees a user cannot change an existing upop file to point to a different document.  There is no way to disable it or circumvent it.  The only way to create upop files is through the API so that the signature can be properly created.  Forcing the creation of the upop files through the API also allows us to add features without braking users that were manually creating files using an outdated format.  The concern about performance hitting OnBase is unwarranted because the API does not require you to do any sort of query or otherwise use OnBase.  You just give it an itemnum (dochandle) and it creates the upop file for you.  The overhead is minimal, assuming of course that you have an itemnum and don’t need to search for it.  

If you want to create upop files for a batch of files, I would instantiate the API objects once and call the upop creating method repeatedly for each itemnum you have.  Doing this will minimize any existing overhead.

Thanks for the question!

Radu

[Matt_Savigear]

Hi Radu - thanks for the update.

This does lead to an additional issue for folks who have the Unity server and want to do this: They need to spring for the Uniity Integration Toolkit which is not a cheap item simply to generate the links and for which they may have no other need. Is there a way around this (other than setting up some kind of workflow process and using the Unity Automation license)?

Matt.

[Scott_Johnson3]

Radu

Are there examples in the SDK?  Also, on a related question, can you generate unity pop into workflow like the one that will open the web base workflow? 

Scott

[Kevin_Perron]

All,
The signature is not required. There is an app server config setting that removes the need for the signature.




This allows us to send links or for systems to generate "template" based links. We use AD authentication so this will log a user directly into Unity and display the results.

--KP