VDocSDK - Introduction

Visiativ Software Development Kit

The VDoc development kit constitutes a set of graphical and configuration tools, of development libraries which improve and extend the functions delivered as a standard in the product.

VDoc delivers this documentation as a reference guide only. No technical support can be given,because the SDK requires combined and important skills.

Nevertheless, Visiativ Software provides suited training in order to master every point of this development kit. For more information, please contact Visiativ Software company.

Before starting using VDoc SDK, you should be introduced to :

Pre-requisites
Functional product objectives
Software development kit
Documentary references

Pre-requisites

This documentation is technical and assumes that the reader is familiar with the concerned products and peripheral technologies.

It especially addresses the jobs of consultants, project heads, developers and distributors taking part in the production of VDoc a in a Client environment.

Following are the technical pre-requirements:

Familiarity with script languages (Java Script);
Some notions of HTML, XML;
Experience in Java programming in server environment (Servlet);
Knowledge of JDBC;

Functional product objectives

VDoc lets companies design, deploy and manage enterprise processes based on forms. Its main goal is to improve their flexibility and productivity.

It allows quickly creating a process management application without programming. Its graphical modeling tool considerably simplifies the design and creation of the processes while keeping extension capabilities.

VDoc today offers the following elements:

a user friendly process design graphical modeling tool which guarantees the integrity of relations between all graphical elements;
Portlets integrated with VDoc EasySite and VDoc Portal modules, for managing activities, documents and applications access and for conducting search;
customised administration to allow application integration as an example through JDBC 2.0 connection;
Agents to guarantee expiry dates and sending intelligent mails depending on the type of event.

The following cases highlight the possible interactions between the VDoc elements and their associated actors in a simplified manner:

an administrator installs and configures the product on a machine.
a designer designs a process through the Web Designer and generates it in an application.
a functional manager sets the application processes by assigning people to the roles.
a user accesses applications and associated processes through the portal module and initializes the documents (requests).

For more information on using all these elements, refer to the documentation given on the installation DVD.

Software development kit

The VDoc development kit is organized on several layers:

customizable HTTP (URL) commands allow you to perform some processes such as creating documents;
a web application development framework (same as the one used by VDoc for creating its graphic interface);
categorized extensions and subscriptions that let you dynamically manipulate the documents and linked documents without forcing the latter to be stored;
opening of back-office code that lets you perform synchronous processes such as imports or exports from or to external databases.
programming interfaces (API) located at two levels that let you use and respect the VDoc business rules at the same time and on the other hand let you modify or override the behavior of some of these rules.

The development kit must allow developers to design existing processes and implement them as they were used in the company.

The company should not change its processes to adapt to the tool. The processes created with VDoc must reflect the company's processes and rules without changing the working habits.

With the Development kit you can carry out the following developments:

operate on graphical elements of VDoc screens (add new field types to the document, add a page in a cancellation wizard, etc.);
build application that requires a user interaction to simplify, extend or override standard behaviors (ex. creation of wizards).
operate on the routing of documents (assign roles, updating external systems during activation of manual step);
customize the display of the document (skin, location of elements, masking fields on loading);
use inter-field or inter-document subscriptions to avoid unnecessary typing of data (internal or external);
drive the processes (automatic change of step on a condition).
Finally, create process documents from third party applications (use of uWeb Services).

The use of SDK requires basic skills in Web technologies (HTML, XML) and adequate experience in the Java environment (+Servlet, JSP).

This manual gets into the following points:

The user views and interacts with document through Portlets and applications.
The designer deploys new processes by launching the generator through the Web Designer.
The developer can build specific solutions by either respond to the events triggered by VDoc or use the APIs to execute automatic treatments.
The administrator can implement external references and configure relations between VDoc elements. He can also deploy specific developments without modifying the product structure.