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Image Enable an Application

by | Nov 28, 2016 | Development, Integration

docMgt is a powerful document management system that provides robust indexing and viewing of information. However, to realize the full power of docMgt, the data and documents need to be shared as parts of other processes. In this post we will discuss one way to image enable other applications so you can show documents hosted in docMgt from within other applications using a hot key.

Example

For sake of this example we will assume you have no programmatic control over the application you wish to image enable. This means we need to be able to externally extract the data necessary to pull up the proper image. To do this we will leverage an open source application called AutoHotKey. AutoHotKey is an application that allows users to monitor hot keys, extract application data, send keystrokes, start applications, automate indexing and more. Please refer to this AutoHotKey refefence for more information.

After we extract the information from the application, we then need to open a specific docMgt URL to view the document(s) being requested.

Implementation

To implement an integration you will need a copy of AutoHotKey installed and an AutoHotKey script created to grab the data from the application and send it to docMgt. We are attaching an example to this blog post for you to test. Here are the steps you need to follow to be able to test this:

  1. Download and install the latest version of AutoHotKey.
  2. Download and unzip this example ZIP file.
  3. Unblock the ZIP file then extract it for use.
  4. Run (double-click) the Test.ahk file to have AutoHotKey load it into memory.
  5. Run the TestApp.exe program to load a test application.
    • This test application is taking the place of the real third party application that you might wish to image enable.
    • This application requires .NET 4.5.1 or higher to run.
  6. With the test application open and active, press the CTRL-S keys to scrape the value from the screen and view the sample document from the https://demo.docmgt.com site.
    • In order to view the images you will need to log into docMgt when prompted. You should use demo/demo to log in.
    • Once you are logged in you won’t be asked again until you close your browsers or log out.

I hope you enjoyed this example. If you are interested in more possibilities of AutoHotKey you need only review the AutoHotKey site and forums.

If you need help image enabling a third party application please contact your docMgt representative.