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Status Not under consideration
Workspace IBM i
Categories IBM i Access Family
Created by Guest
Created on Jul 1, 2021

RELATED IDEAS

Automatically display a PDF document on the screen after creating the PDF in an interactive 5250 session.

Due to environmental restrictions namely security, we cannot give the users in the plant access to the IFS to see and display PDF documents.

What we need here and this is required for many reports, is to somehow open the PDF programmatically from a 5250 session immediately after the program has created the report. The report will be converted to a PDF in the IFS.

We need a command to execute that will retrieve the last spool file/PDF and open the PDF without the user needing to go to any other screens or sessions.


Use Case:

Reports have been created as AFPDS documents with lines, boxes and other formatting.

These documents are only visible by printing to a printer or converting to a PDF and opening the PDF document.

In most cases, there is no need to print the document.

The example would be to automatically open the PDF document immediately after creation something like rendering a html document without the user need to press any buttons or select a number of options to see the PDF.


Idea priority High
  • Guest
    Reply
    |     Jul 9, 2021

    Thank you for submitting your Request For Enhancement. After evaluating your submission, the decision at this time is to not provide this support.
    The user program is better suited at determining what to do with the PDF and when.

  • Guest
    Reply
    |     Jul 6, 2021

    To add to SmjBradshaw's comments, you can do this today with the following commands (either in a CL program or in RPG via the QCMDEXC API):
    RTVNETA SYSNAME(&SYSNAME)
    STRPCO PCTA(*NO)
    MONMSG MSGID(IWS4010)
    CHGVAR VAR(&PCCMD) VALUE('explorer.exe "\\' *CAT + <- double quote before the \\
    &SYSNAME *TCAT &pdfpathfilename *TCAT '"') <- single quote, double quote, single quote after the last *TCAT
    STRPCCMD PCCMD(&PCCMD) PAUSE(*NO)

  • Guest
    Reply
    |     Jul 3, 2021

    Hi

    I agree with Bob, suggested way of doing this.

    You could even launch this url automatically using the strpco functionality
    https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/i/7.4?topic=ssw_ibm_i_74/cl/strpco.htm

    Steve

  • Guest
    Reply
    |     Jul 2, 2021

    This is a great request but does require a Retrieve last SPOOLED file API or command that is aware of various things such as SQL Server Jobs and QPRTJOB Server Jobs (which the current interfaces do not respect).
    You could create a web link (URL) to the PDF and place it onto the 5250 screen for the end-user and then instruct them to click on it (links do work on green screen). But nothing I'm saying here is to deter IBM from created this RFE feature as it would be beneficial--just trying to help solve the issue "today".

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