About Nowhow solutions
Nowhow solutions AG is a small software development company located in Bern, Switzerland. Founded in 2001, the company specializes in the implementation of web-based business solutions mainly for the telecommunications and governmental market.
Challenge
Often our customers approach us with business requirements that are linked to the generation of Word or PDF documents. They require the solutions to be capable of gathering raw data from various sources (order management systems (SAP), Excel calculation tables, or even PDF documents) and transform that data into consolidated price information sheets and contract documents. Templates are used to generate uniform documents and to allow for customized layouts (CI/CD).
The Document Composer project (DOCO) was one of our projects that faced these challenges.
Solution
We realized DOCO as a web-based application using .NET technology. An intuitive user interface with a tree structure enables the users to choose from a selection of components. These are being used to generate price information sheets and contract documents (Word, Excel, PDF, PowerPoint).
The solution was deployed using the following ASPOSE components:
- Aspose.Words for .NET: Create new Word documents, merge complete or parts of a document, Convert Word documents to PDF, hide parts of a document and replace texts
- Aspose.Cells for .NET: read the order or calculate data from Excel, create new Excel sheets and populate them with data, create Excel charts
- Aspose.Slides for .NET: generate PowerPoint slideshows, delete slides form a template, include images (generated Excel charts), fill tables, and hide text elements
- Aspose.PDF for .NET: read data from PDF files
- Aspose.BarCode for .NET: generate QR-codes including customer, product & contract information, integrate QR-codes in contract documents
Experience
- We evaluated many products to create and manipulate some sample documents. However, most of the products we found either difficult to use, were buggy or lacking in features. The simple usage and the resulting output quality were finally the deciding key factors to go with Aspose.Total for .NET.
- The well-documented instruction manual and the robustness of the Aspose.Total for .NET components led to a straightforward integration into DOCO. This helped us cut on development time more than anticipated.
- If there were still questions, we could always rely on the Aspose support team for prompt and invaluable advice.
- Aspose.Total for .NET allowed for no-fuss continuous development of DOCO (e.g. adding QR codes). This enabled us to meet ever-growing customer needs.
- During the lifetime of DOCO, emerging document formats posed a risk. Frequent updates of Aspose.Total for .NET components, however, guaranteed that DOCO can support new document formats.
Next Steps
DOCO is currently in a maintenance/support & enhancement phase. At nowhow solutions AG, we will continue to use Aspose.Total for .NET to create and manipulate Word documents, PDFs, or slideshows. Now and in the future – in DOCO and in other projects.
Summary
Aspose contributed to the great success of DOCO. Therefore we recommend Aspose.Total for .NET components for creating, managing, and manipulating Word documents, Excel sheets, PDF’s or PowerPoint slideshows.
