The Electronic reporting framework is not getting any Preview features in 10.0.45. Two new features are available for you to Enable in Feature management, while at the same time several features are now On by default. Three features are now Mandatory. Additionally, there was one bug fix related to the ER.
New features
In-app PDF conversion for configurable business documents (CBD)
This feature has been long in the making. Starting from 10.0.29 where the feature Utilize application resources to perform CBD documents conversion from Word to PDF format enabled users to to convert generated Word documents to PDF locally by using application server resources. This feature lacked one important thing: it didn’t provide local conversion of Excel documents to PDF. You could still use the conversion outside of the current Finance instance. In this scenario, the document would be sent outside of the instance to the conversion service, which would then return the converted document. This approach had several limitations, one was that the PDF conversion was available for cloud deployments while on-premise environments required online connections, the other was that there was a number of pages limit for a generated PDF document set to 300.
Community wanted improvements and the next iteration came with 10.0.43 where the feature In-app PDF conversion for configurable business documents was put in Preview. This meant that users who had the Utilize application resources to perform CBD documents conversion from Word to PDF format feature enabled, received a deprecation warning to use a new feature.
Utilize application resources to perform CBD documents conversion from Word to PDF format’ feature is announced for deprecation. It is replaced with ‘In-App PDF conversion for Configurable Business Documents (CBD)’ feature. We recommend to enable the ‘In-App PDF conversion for Configurable Business Documents (CBD)’ feature in Feature management.
In 10.0.45 In-app PDF conversion for configurable business documents is out of Preview and available to users as a stable feature. This ER feature enables in-app PDF conversion of CBD in Word and Excel formats, utilizing AOS resources, thus eliminating the need for external conversion services. This also ensures that users experience better performance and reliability. Other advantages with this feature are that there is no number of pages limitation for the output PDF document, the input Word document can contain a large number of content controls*, and for on-premise deployments, there is no need for internet connectivity.
Large number of content controls refers to the issue tracked as 647877, where the BDM service was failing due to a large Word document converted to PDF using the BCS service.
Suppress forced batch job retries on failure for Electronic reporting
Nothing much to add with this feature. It does what it says. When it is enabled, further batch job retries are suppressed for failed Electronic reporting jobs. The topic of retry mechanisms and batch retries is a bit too wide for me to cover in this article. I can only say that many customers felt what it means to have multiple emails sent to the same addresses as a result of batch retries. This feature keeps you in control of the Electronic reporting jobs output.
On by default features
Validate obsolete elements of Electronic reporting data sources
You can validate every configured ER model and model mapping component at design time. The validation aims to prevent runtime errors and, in certain scenarios, even suggests the fix. When this feature is enabled, the obsolete elements of Electronic reporting data sources are validated during configuration validation so the configuration can be adjusted to address the issues.
Enhanced access to labels of the ascendent Electronic reporting data model
When you are designing an ER solution, you can derive their own ER data model component from one of the provided data models. In this derived data model, you can then add your own ER labels and use them in ER formats (given that it is using that data model as the data source). You can then derive your own ER format component from the one that is provided by selecting the derived ER data model.
This feature, available from 10.0.28, enables enhanced access to labels of the ascendent ER data model to access labels of an ascendent ER data model in derived ER format components. This will happen even when the ER data model which is selected for the derived component differs from the one that was used in the base component. In case of the same label name in the derived and its ascendent components, user translation of the label is used.
Enable support of Document routing agent running as a service
Document routing agent can run in two modes:
- as a desktop application
- as a Windows service
Printing to network printers is possible only when DRA is running as a desktop application. When DRA is running as a Windows service, the PDF documents won’t be sent directly to the printer. Instead, they will be stored in a target folder.
Support for DRA running as a service was brought in 10.0.32 as a Preview feature, and it is On by default in 10.0.45.
Apply the Language preference parameter to the ‘File name’ expression
Using the FOLDER and some types of FILE components in the ER format, you can specify how an outbound file is generated, so you can name the generated file by configuring the ER expression for the File name parameter of the component. You can also use labels in this configured expression. File name parameter is by default language agnostic, meaning that the text of all labels found in the expression is exposed in the default En-US language during runtime execution.
From version 10.0.28, this feature enabled you to enable dynamic computation of the file names based on the selected language preference parameter. In 10.0.45, the feature is now On by default.
Run Electronic reporting import of manually uploaded documents in batch
The feature provides the possibility to run the Electronic reporting (ER) framework model mapping for importing manually uploaded documents in batch. This feature was initially introduced with 10.0.25 while in 10.0.45, it is being transitioned to On by default.
Forcing to use for data parsing only cell data types that are defined in an Electronic reporting format
By default, when you run the format to parse an inbound Excel file, ER tries to detect the data type of each cell. In some cases, there might be an incorrect data type detected and causing incorrect data conversion or a runtime exception. This feature has been introduced in version 10.0.25, which, when enabled, forces the ER framework at runtime to use the data conversion data types that have been specified for each cell component in the Data type field on the Format tab. In 10.0.45, this feature has been promoted to On by default.
Cache the preferred language of the current user for Electronic reporting runs
This feature will help you improve performance when you configure an ER format component to generate a report in your preferred language, or when you import an inbound document where the content is parsed by your preferred language. This is also true for format components that contain multiple references to labels in ER formulas and bindings, and validation rules to generate user messages in your preferred language. In 10.0.45, it is now On by default.
Mandatory features
Accelerate Electronic reporting ER labels storage
Labels that are residing in the ER configuration are stored in the application database. This feature enables you to use a new schema for storing labels. The new schema is designed to accelerate label access during editing and execution of the configuration, which improves performance. Only labels that are created or imported after enabling this feature will be stored using the new schema. For the labels that were created or imported before enabling this feature, you need to run a manual conversion that will store them using the new schema.
Minimize memory consumption by storing datasets at Electronic reporting reports runtime
This feature reduces the size of cached application data by storing only the values of fields that are used for report’s generation during an Electronic reporting (ER) format execution. In 10.0.45, this feature is mandatory.
Optimize datasets memory consumption at Electronic reporting reports runtime
This feature reduces the number of cursors for fetching application data by releasing cursors as soon as they become unnecessary, not at the end of the current session of an Electronic Reporting (ER) format execution.
Bug fix
Incomplete Error Message When Populating XML Files With Unsupported Symbol
Tracked as Issue 976626, this issue was addressed by the MS engineering team and thus marked as Resolved.
When attempting to populate an XML file with an unsupported symbol, the GER system throws an error that only displays the unsupported symbol. From a user perspective, it would be much clearer to show the entire text that the system is trying to write into the XML file. This way, users can better understand the context and source of the text.