Integrating Excel into a process

Use case

Now and again, we stumble about a process in which we need some kind of dynamic calculations. While sometimes these can easily be handled directly in WEBCON BPS we may also encounter situations, in which this is not possible. One of these can be a quality assurance process:

• Depending on the product type we have different checks to do
• The calculations vary greatly
• The business should be able to define these
• At the end of the process we need to generate a report with the result of the calculations and taken images.

Before I started, I wasn’t sure, whether I would need to create something. In the end everything was possible with the standard WEBCON BPS Actions.

• Demo
  • 0:00 Introduction
  • 0:15 Storing different Excel templates in dictionaries
  • 0:38 Selecting the Excel template to use in the process
  • 1:00 Adding images
  • 1:20 Result review
  • 1:35 Order information, Excel file and taken images are merged into a final document
• Process configuration
  • 2:20 Merging the documents
  • 2:43 Showing the attachment in the step
  • 3:10 Reading/writing the date from/to the Excel file
  • 4:00 Setting up the Excel file

Excel configuration

Reading / writing to an item list

Reading / writing an item list to an Excel file requires, that you format the range in excel as a Table. Then you can reference the Table in the Excel actions. The address is then mapped to the item list.

Mapping a formatted table to an item list.

Printing preparation

I’ve modified the Excel file, so that only the important information is printed.

1. Hide unimportant worksheets.

Unimportant worksheets are hidden

1. Set the printing area.

Hide the printing ara

You can verify whether the printing is setup correctly, when you click on the Preview action.

Check the printing with the preview action

You may need to enable the Preview Excel files as PDF.

Activate the preview of Excel files