PDF Tools

Overview

Contains multiple Smart Services and Functions for interacting with PDF Documents.

Key Features & Functionality

Smart Services:

Merge PDF - Merges multiple PDF documents into a single document.
Extract PDF Pages - Extracts a range of pages from an existing PDF into a new PDF.
Fill PDF - Populates the fields of a PDF Form and optionally flattens it disallow further changes.
Create PDF Content - Allows text to be added to a PDF with control over the style, position, and angle. An existing PDF can be updated or a new one created from scratch.
Convert PDF to Image - Creates an array of images or a multi-page tiff from a PDF.
Compress PDF - Compresses the images in the PDF to make it smaller.
Un-protect and Copy PDF - Using the document password, create an un-protected copy of a protected PDF.
Convert Image to PDF - Creates a PDF starting from one or many images. It also supports multi-page tiff images.
Encrypt PDF - Encrypts an existing PDF with a password.

Functions:

Get PDF Metadata - Retrieves metadata on the PDF: page count, title, author, security, encryption, etc.
Get PDF Text - Retrieves the text content from a PDF.
Get PDF Form Fields - Retrieves the populated form field values of an unflattened PDF.
Get PDF Signature Fields - Retrieves the populated signature field values of an unflattened PDF.
Get PDF Bookmarks - Retrieves the list of bookmarks and associated page number in the PDF

Arun Kumar Ganesh over 3 years ago in reply to Arun Kumar Ganesh

Hi Druva Kota /

We are still facing this issue in our environment, Is there any fix recommended?
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Appian AppMarket over 3 years ago
v2.2.10 Release Notes
- Added bookmark extraction, refactored to gradle
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Arun Kumar Ganesh over 3 years ago in reply to Druva Kota

Hi Druva Kota,

Yes, the plugin was already available in the environments and we also have working processes using these smart services. We already tried deleting the cdt and the related smart services from the environment, but still we were not able to deploy this plugin.

We have also raised a support ticket for this issue and they asked us to update the cdt version in the plugin jar file. We tried to update the cdt version as suggested by this KB article, but we were not able to find the @Type annotation in the plugin code also we were unable to find the current version of the CDT.

Would you be able to help us resolve this issue? Please feel free to send us an email if you need any more clarifications.

cc:
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Druva Kota over 3 years ago in reply to Pratiksha Jain

Pratiksha, was this plugin previously deployed in your environment? If so, was the cdt "PdfField" every manually modified via XML?

There seems to be a conflict in the cdt version defined in the plugin and in your environment. I would recommend deleting that cdt from your environment, then re-deploying the plugin. See the bullet in the Edit section of the Data Type Plugin documentation, removing the conflicting cdt should allow the plugin to manually recreate a fresh cdt.
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The Cloud Guy over 3 years ago

We are experiencing this same error on-premise with Appian 20.4.215.0 using pdftools-2.2.9.jar
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Pratiksha Jain over 4 years ago

Hi Druva Kota,

This plugin is not getting deployed to our cloud environment [Appian Version 20.3].

Deployment Error:

2020-12-21 10:56:26,280 [ajp-nio-0.0.0.0-8009-exec-4469] ERROR com.atlassian.plugin.manager.DefaultPluginManager - There was an error loading the descriptor 'Fill PDF' of plugin 'pdftools'. Disabling. com.atlassian.plugin.PluginException: com.appiancorp.suiteapi.common.exceptions.AppianRuntimeException: com.appiancorp.process.admin.IncompatibleSmartServiceRegistrationException: The Smart Service Module was invalid: Illegal attempt to change the data type for smart service pdftools.FillPDFPauseOnError, input or output named PdfFields (APNX-1-4104-005)
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Mike Schmitt over 4 years ago in reply to Michael Chirlin

Michael Chirlin - thanks, any chance Appian might come up with a remedy for this issue on the plug-in side?

FYI i didn't see your reply initially since Community apparently doesn't want to notify me for basic replies here.
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Shikha over 4 years ago in reply to Mike Schmitt

Hi Mike,

Can you please tell me how do I configure fill PDF tool pluggin ? I need to create an editable form. Users will fill that pdf form with required values and submit. After submitting , we can download that newly edited pdf.
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Michael Farris over 4 years ago

We recently upgraded to 20.3 and this plugin was dropped from our environments. A suitable alternative for our use-case was the smart service named PDF Doc From Template. (Use a PDF template to populate data into and save as a PDF file in Appian)
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Michael Chirlin over 4 years ago in reply to ramyap826

This error will show up when there is a versioning issue with the plugin cdt. If you look in your tomcat-stdout logs you'll see the actual issue.

Support will point you to https://community.appian.com/.../kb-1097-illegal-attempt-to-change-the-data-type-for-smart-service-x-x-x-input-or-output-named-name-error-thrown-during-plugin-deployment
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