Configuring the Office link

Before you begin    Compile a list of the Office property and field names used by your organization in cover pages, headers, footers, and so on. Note the Meridian property name (and property set name) that corresponds to each Office property that you want to synchronize. Also for each Office property, note whether it should be read or written, or both. In effect, determine which application should control the value of that property, Meridian or Office. When doing so, consider where the documents will originate from, imported from outside the vault (Office properties should be read) or created inside the vault with the aid of a wizard that prompts the user for document properties (Office properties should be written).

To configure Office property synchronization:

1. In Configurator, expand Environment in the configuration tree and select Application Link Settings. The settings for each link appear in property pages in the right pane.
2. Click the Office tab. The Office link’s settings page appears in the right pane.

3. Click the Edit button to modify the settings.

   Tip    To export the settings file to your computer, click the Export button. This can be useful if you would rather edit the file in your favorite text editor. You can then copy your changes to the Clipboard and paste them into Configurator.

4. Locate the section of the file that contains the document property that you want to synchronize, for example, [SummaryInf].

   Note    The property set section names are defined in the [PropertySets] section using the following syntax:

   <COMPropertySetName>/<FMTID >=<PropertySetName>, <ProgID>

   Under normal circumstances, the definition should not be edited. If necessary, only <PropertySetName>and its corresponding property set section name may be changed. For example, changing both occurrences of Custom to OfficeCustom.

5. For each document property, specify the Meridian property set and property name to which you want it synchronized.

   Note    

   • The numbers shown following the document property names are IDs that resolve the property mapping when the application is localized into multiple languages.
   • The Office link only synchronizes dates with Microsoft Office properties. The time is not synchronized even if it is stored in the Meridian property. For this reason, a text type property should be used in Meridian instead of a date type and the time value set using scripting.

   Tip    You can find the names of property sets and properties on the Properties page of each document type, as described in Creating and editing document types.

   Also specify a flag if the property should be read-only (RO) or write-only (WO). By default, properties are read/write. Use the following format for each property:

   <OfficePropertySet.OfficePropertyName>=<BlueCieloPropertySet.BlueCieloPropertyName>,<Flag>

   Note    Although Meridian internal properties can be synchronized to Office properties, you should never attempt to update internal properties or Access denied errors can occur. Flag all properties linked to Meridian internal properties as write-only (WO). Only write to Meridian properties in the Custom property set.

   If you want to synchronize a document property with a parent folder (routed) property, you must specify the folder type name from which to get the folder property as in the following example.

   <DocumentPropertyName>=<FolderTypeName:PropertySetName.PropertyName>,<Flag>

   And if you want to synchronize one document property with one of several possible routed properties, you must specify a unique identifier for each of the properties on the left side of the setting as in the following example.

   <DocumentPropertyName,ID>=<FolderTypeName:PropertySetName.PropertyName>,<Flag>

   The value of ID is insignificant but must be unique among all of the lines in the same section. Using this syntax, you can map the same document property to multiple folder types and the value will depend on the document’s actual parent folder. The following example uses three different folder types NewProject, UpgradeProject, and RepairProject.

   PROJECTNUM,new = NewProject:PSProject.ProjectNum,WO            
   PROJECTNUM,upgrade = UpgradeProject:PSProject.ProjectNum,WO            
   PROJECTNUM,repair = RepairProject:PSProject.ProjectNum,WO

6. Click OK to save your changes.
7. Test the link thoroughly by synchronizing each Office property. You can do this by changing the Meridian property values for a document in the vault and Office property values in the same document and confirming that the synchronization occurs that way that you expect. You can manually synchronize properties with the Meridian client applications as described in the BlueCielo Meridian Enterprise User’s Guide.

Property synchronization can significantly increase the time it takes to route a document to a different workflow state. This is due to the execution of the Office update process in the background. When routing multiple documents, the time is multiplied accordingly. This delay can be minimized with the RedrawFieldsOnUpdate setting in the [Settings] section of the Office application link configuration. The setting controls update of the visible fields in Office documents. By default (0), the synchronization is disabled.

Warning     When RedrawFieldsOnUpdate is disabled, users must manually synchronize properties with the buttons on the BlueCielo toolbar in the Office application in order for the document to reflect the values in Meridian. However, they must be careful to not accidentally overwrite more current values in the document with obsolete values from Meridian.