About Irisnote
The goal of irisnote has been to provide an electronic notebook that empowers researchers and scientists today by accelerating discovery, eliminating experiment replication, and codifying institutional knowledge – all within a compliant environment.
Problem
irisnote looked for a scalable, efficient solution for converting between various document formats. The technology team at irisnote has been preparing products that allow internal and external users to collaborate on research and accelerate discovery. The solution being built allowed internal groups who had access to the products being prepared to easily share information for collaboration. However, irisnote noted that the ability to accelerate discovery was limited if any external groups who did not have access to the software or the products being prepared created friction in the sharing and collaboration environment. irisnote needed a solution and one that easily allowed any report preparer to convert Excel, Word, and PowerPoint files to PDF manually and publish them for others to see and collaborate on.
Solution
irisnote’s ideal solution was one where internal users of the irisnote product, which included the Aspose.Total for Java software, could prepare reports within irisnote without adding additional steps to convert different file types including Excel, Word, and Powerpoint file formats to PDF for sharing and collaboration. The Java components offered by Aspose are developer-friendly requiring a very small learning curve, clear documentation, and a simple set of APIs to integrate with our software. Since irisnote has a very user-friendly interface and builds software that emphasizes a high-quality user experience, it was important that this type of product also did well.
Experience
Finding a solution
irisnote obtained a 30-day temporary license for Aspose.Total for Java as well as temporary licenses to two competitors. We performed a 25-day evaluation with emphasis on the following categories:
- User Interface (UI)
- User Experience (UX)
- Features
- Licensing
- Enterprise-level Suppor
Implementation
irisnote spent 2 business days implementing all three solutions for a 25-day evaluation.
Outcome
irisnote evaluated Aspose.Total for Java and determined that their features and services including the enterprise-level support needed for their enterprise software was the right solution. Aspose.Total for Java not only provided this solution, but it also gave irisnote a means of creating dynamic reports, converting MS Word document formats, Open Office document formats and managing bar codes. Aspose.Total for Java provided a set of quick, easy to understand APIs that allowed developers to produce software while they saved irisnote significant time and money.
Our developers were able to integrate Aspose.Total for Java within two days of downloading the libraries and the Documentation has proved to be excellent. The APIs were simple, straightforward, and extremely powerful allowing us to add the ability to handle Excel® spreadsheets without the user having to launch Excel®, manage Word® formats such as .doc, .docx, ooxml, RTF and many more without issue. The PDF conversion was excellent and clean requiring little to no tuning. Screenshots below depict how well Aspose.Total for Java integrated with irisnote’s product, how we integrate bar codes, and how easy it was to find the convert to PDF function in the UI.
Figure 1: Aspose.Total for Java integrated into irisnote – UI shows “convert to PDF” function (.docx)
Figure 2: Aspose.Total for Java integrated into irisnote’s product with status “converting to PDF”
Figure 3: Notification that conversion completed. Resulting PDF shown with Aspose barcode
Next Steps
Our technology roadmap requires that we also move our focus to development in .NET as well as Java. As we approach the timeline for such development, we will be exploring Aspose.Total for .NET.
Summary
irisnote made the decision to implement Aspose.Total for Java as it met our objectives for having the most features that were deemed qualitative to our specific needs, had a clear API that was friendly, self-explanatory, easy to use, and allowed any developer to immediately start building software. Our engineering team was able to produce quality results in our own product build using Aspose.Total for Java within days of implementation.