LiveCycle Tutorial

Adobe LiveCycle ES2 Sample Application

In this tutorial sequence, we will create processes for an enterprise/organization to automate the form design workflows. Workflow involves Designers designing forms; QA testing forms; and Form Requesters approving them. This sample application can act as an infrastructure at an enterprise setting with slight modifications to the configuration settings for the services in the application.

Today, in this short screencast, I will briefly explain the use cases, workflows/processes, tools we employ, and services we use to build the processes. I will follow up this blog with other screencasts explaining in detail about each service used in the application.

LiveCycle Google Documents Connector

LiveCycle ES2 allows developers to build their customized service oriented components extending features beyond their inbuilt components. Using Adobe LiveCycle ES2 Java API, we can build services that are suitable to our business needs. As part of my research work, I created a Google Docs Connector.

This Google Docs Connector will take Four inputs that includes Google User Name, Password, Document you want to upload, and title of the document. Connector validates the user against the credentials supplied and authorizes to upload the file to the Google Documents.

Once the connector service uploads the document, you can see the document by logging on to Google Docs.

Working with Email Start Points

I have been wondering how the Email Startpoint would work for many months now until last Sunday evening after fighting out hangover whole morning. There aren’t many resources or samples out there in the Internet about Email Startpoint. So I thought I could share a sample application that uses Email startpoint and writes a string in tmp directory.

Requirements:

Email Server, LiveCycle Server, Workbench, etc.

Configuration:

Email startpoint requires POP3 and SMTP configuration parameters of your email server. If you do not have access to an Email Server you can download an open source Email Server (http://www.hmailserver.com/) and follow the instructions provided in their documentation to configure your email server. Create an email account for our LiveCycle server to connect to the Email Server using hMailServer Administrator.

To create an email account on hMail Server, log on to the hMailServer Administrator and navigate to Domains section in the hierarchy. Click on Add button and give a domain name “r3tek.com”. Again click on Add button in the Accounts section under the “r3tek.com” domain you created and provide the required details.

After creating an email account, gather the following details for configuring our Email startpoint (Please see the image below):

1) Inbox Host: localhost

2) Inbox Protocol: pop3

3) Inbox Port: 110

4) Inbox Time Out: 60

5) Inbox User: vanam413@r3tek.com

6) Inbox Password: *******

7) SMTP Host: localhost

8) SMTP Port: 25

9) SMTP User: administrator

10) SMTP Password: password

11) Send From: (optional)

12) SMTP SSL Enabled: (optional)

13) POP3/IMAP SSL Enabled: (optional)

Process Design:

Create a LiveCycle application in workbench, TestEmailStartPoint , with a process “EmailSProcess” that has both Email and Programmatic Start points. Double click on the Email start point and provide the details you gathered from the Email Server. Now to write a string to a file in a directory, drag and drop abstract activity and define it with Write String Service Operation. That’s it. We have created a simple application that uses an email start point and writes a string to a file in the file system.

Test:

To test this process, open the hMailServer Administrator and navigate to Server sendout under Utilities and provide the details as shown in the image below. After clicking “Send”, navigate to the file system location that you have provided in the Write String service operation. You can see the File that LC created and the string in it.