What is SoftArtisans OfficeWriter Assistant?

What is the OfficeWriter Assistant?

SoftArtisans OfficeWriter Assistant is a client-side Active-X control which is provided with the Enterprise editions of SoftArtisans OfficeWriter products: OfficeWriterEE, ExcelWriterEE and WordWriterEE. The OfficeWriter Assistant is a complete HTTP client and file transfer engine. It can be used from Internet Explorer or from VBA Macros within your Office documents, allowing you to add rich client-side functionality to your OfficeWriter applications.

The OfficeWriter Assistant consists of dlls in a signed CAB file which you will place in a virtual directory on your server. The first time a user requests a page on your website with an <Object> tag pointing the OfficeWriter Assistant CAB file, the Active-X control will be automatically downloaded and installed on the client machine. The main XFRequest object and its sub-objects can then be manipulated through client-side script in your HTML page or from VBA in your Office documents.

What can the OfficeWriter Assistant do?

Control download behavior

When OfficeWriter streams Excel or Word files to a user's browser, the behavior on the client will be limited by the browser's capabilities and the configuration of the client machine. By streaming the files to the OfficeWriter Assistant rather than the browser alone, you can have more control of the client-side behavior of the downloads.

Here are some examples of issues which are resolved by using the OfficeWriter Assistant:
- Browser does not correctly interpret the filename included in the response headers. It gives the downloaded Excel or Word file the name of the .asp or .aspx page. Using the Assistant, the file will always retain the correct name.
- Known browser issue: Multiple Open/Save dialogs prompts pop up before the file can be opened.
- You wish to avoid an Open/Save dialog box completely, creating seemless transitions within your web application between web pages and the Excel or Word application. In your ExcelWriter or WordWriter code, you can set the file to open in the browser or in a new Excel or Word window. By default, if you are opening in a new Excel or Word window, the user will get an Open/Save prompt. Even when you have set the file to open in the browser, the user may get the Open/Save dialog box because of client-side security settings which require user confirmation before opening certain types of files. With the OfficeWriter Assistant, you can open the file in the browser or in the Excel or Word application without any user prompt.
- Using the browser alone, there is no way for your application to know when the document has been recieved on the client machine. Using the OfficeWriter Assistant, you can send confirmation to the server when the download is complete.
Post data or entire files back to the server

This allows you to use Excel or Word as a rich front-end for your web application. After the OfficeWriter-generated file is opened on the client machine, users can enter data or make other modifications to the file. The OfficeWriter Assistant (from VBA Macros) can post the modifications and/or the complete file back to the server. Update your database right from the Excel or Word document or store your user-modified files on the server for future use.