2022.2

thissolutionisneitherportablenorcompletelycentralizedsinceitreliesonthecharacteristicsofthe
specificsystemonwhichitisimplemented.
TheConnectServerhasitsownFileStorewhichitusesfortransientfiles.ThisFileStoreismanaged
bytheCleanupservicewhotakescareofremovingobsoletefileswhenthosefilesarenotmarkedas
permanent.Thisgreatlyreducestheamountofadministrationrequiredtomanagethefiles.Wefigured
thatsincethereisalreadyaFileStoreandRESTAPIcallstoconnecttoit,whynotturnthatintoan
accessiblefeatureforcustomerimplementations?
WithConnect1.8,theWorkflow8.8toolimplementsthreenewtasksthatallowyoutoUpload,Down-
loadandDeletefilesintheConnectFileStore.
Filescanbemarkedaspermanent,inwhichcasetheCleanupservicewon’ttouchthem.Thefilescan
stillbeaccessedthroughtheRESTAPI,whichmeanswebportalscouldpotentiallyaccessthefilesdir-
ectlywithouthavingtogothroughaWorkflowprocess.Thefeatureisthereforecentralizedandport-
ableasitdoesnotrelyonanyspecificlocationorfolder.(SHARED-57617)
Generating all contents using JSON instead of data records
Anumberofcustomerworkflowsinvolvegeneratingnewversionsofdocumentsbasedontheoriginal
onecreatedbyConnect.Forinstance,aDeliveryNotemightcomebackwithadjustedquantitiesoncer-
tainlineitems.Oraweb-basedstatuspagemightneedtogetupdatedwithadditionaldata.Howeverin
manycases,theoriginaldatamuststillbeleftuntouched(forreprints,forinstance).
Thetraditionalapproachtorecreatingthedocumentwouldbetogenerateanewsingledatarecordwith
thenewdataandperformtheusualdatamapping/contentcreation/outputcreationoperations.
However,thatmeansthedatarecordsareduplicatedinthedatabaseandtheentireoperationtakes
slightlylongerthanitcould.
AsofConnectWorkflow8.8allConnect Create ContenttaskshavetheoptionofusingaJSONstring
astheirdatasourceinsteadofrelyingonthemetadatageneratedfromadatamappingoperation.
ThisfeaturebuildsonthesamekindofimprovementthatwasimplementedinConnectWorkflow8.7
withtheCreate PDF PreviewtaskthatprovidedlightningfastPDFCreation.Thenewfeaturemakesit
mucheasiertocreateWeborEmailstatuspagesthataredeliveredalmostinstantly.(SHARED-
51086/55414)
Converting XML to JSON and JSON to XML
XMLisalreadyoneofthemostpopulardataformatsusedwithConnect.Inmanyimplementations,
mostnotablyweb-basedones,XMLisusedtotransferorupdateinformationbackandforthbetween
ConnectandWorkflow.However,usingXMLmeanstheDataMappermustbeinvolvedeachtimethe
datachanges,whichimpactsperformance,especiallywhenallyouwantistoupdateaStatusweb
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