SharePoint Workflow working with PDF documents

Question

We’re trying to lessen the amount of clicks to approve a PDF in a workflow. With Word docs in Word 2007, you have the Workflow task bar at the top of the application so when you are viewing the document, you can approve or reject it from there. Our issue is that we need this functionality for PDF documents. Do you know of a way to be able to view/approve in one easy task rather than having to view PDF in acrobat and then returning to SharePoint (or the email) to edit the task? I researched this but only found this post: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/sharepointworkflow/thread/728c2e34-9031-4a27-b9c9-6625af2547e3/

Not very useful. Do you have any solutions? Do know if a custom solution could be coded so it’s an easier process for the Executives?

Answer 1

I know you can get a PDF writer for Word, so perhaps you can get a PDF viewer too? It stands to reason that if this is so then you can also keep the exsisting workflow approval bar in Word for your PDFs.

Answer 2

You would have to write a plug-in for whatever viewer is used for PDFs. This could be Adobe Reader (6, 7, 8, 9), Adobe Acrobat (6, 7, 8, 9), Foxit, Okular, Ghostscript, SumatraPDF, Inkscape, etc.

Can you control your environment and guarantee everyone will be using the same viewer? Is one or two clicks worth the trouble of writing custom code for one of these viewers?

Answer 3

You could use something like iTextSharp to embed an "approve" and "reject" link in the document itself which, when clicked, would call a web service that would flip a flag in SharePoint. This would mean that the resulting PDFs would have those links permanently, but depending on your workflow that might not be an issue. For example if the executives only look at the PDF once and then throw it away, you could probably give them embedded links that won't be in the final version of the file.

Answer 4

You could write your own workflow that sends a custom email which contains the link to an approval form, where they can 1. view 2. approve/reject the document.

That way the user have 3 clicks:

1. Open the form
2. Open the document
3. Approve the document

It's the same problem for people still using Office 2003 - so very valid problem.