Question

This is probably a shot in the dark, but does anyone else use Fortis as their document management solution? We’re currently trying to use their web services platform to interface with the system and we’re running into some trouble.

After a document is scanned in using a scan station, we’re trying to use the DocumentRenderPDF web service method to retrieve the document in PDF format and display it to the user. For some reason, the conversion from the native TIFF format to PDF is failing. This same conversion works just fine if you use the edit station software.

I did some digging, but documentation is largely non-existent. It’s like staring into a brick wall. To get answers we’ll have to pay Westbrook to investigate their own bug >:|

One more note, I did find a web service method called IsOptionInstalled and an option called PI_OPTION_EXPORTCONV. It came back as not installed, but there’s no documentation on what this feature actually means, if it’s related to the PDF conversion, or how to install it if it’s missing.

Answer 1

Alright, here’s how this ended up getting resolved. I don’t know if this will actually help anyone, but at least there will be something about Fortis on the interwebs.

After some more poking around, I discovered that there is a boolean request parameter called RenderAsMultipleFiles on the RenderAsPDF method. If this is set to False, we get the crashing behavior reported above. However, if this is set to True, then we get a separate PDF file for each page. As a workaround, I ended up using PDFSharp to squash all the pages back together for viewing.

Then, after discussing the issue with our Fortis contractor, we tried installing the Fortis web services on another machine. This resolved all issues and everything worked as expected.