About PBI
PBI specializes in risk management, compliance, communications, and outreach programs that drive performance and positively impact the bottom line. Our executive team has more than 100 years of combined experience in a variety of industries and disciplines bringing a
wealth of knowledge, excellence, and innovation to all of our services. Driven by state-of-the-art technology solutions, we integrate the many facets of business, risk, compliance, and management to achieve the best results for our clients.
Problem
PBI has a need to generate thousands of merged Word documents yearly. The data source is our proprietary CRM system which allows users to requests merged documents for large groups of records. In addition, the business needs the ability to modify the templates on a constant basis in a familiar tool such as Microsoft Word.
The PBI development team was struggling with Microsoft Word Automation. The issues included:
- The requirement to have Microsoft Word installed on the server
- Word Object Model has a limited method of overloads and a lack of consistent online examples. For example, it’s not possible to directly perform a mail merge using a System.Data.DataTable as the data source in Word Automation
- Performance limitations
Solution
We evaluated Aspose.Words for .NET product and was immediately impressed with the robust programming API and performance. We were immediately able to create mail merged Word documents with little effort. In addition, the time taken for merged documents to be generated using Aspose was significantly faster than using Word Automation.
The screenshot below shows a side by side comparison of how we could perform a Word mail merge using Word Automation compared to Aspose.Words for .NET. The relative sections of the code are circled in blue.
Image 1:- Word Automation vs Aspose Mail Merge
The Aspose.Words for .NET offers the following advantages:
- Microsoft Word does not have to be installed on the server
- Aspose programming model is concise and easy to understand
- Improved Performance
Performance:
We ran a performance comparison of executing a mail merge using Aspose vs Word Automation. There is a significant performance difference:
Image 2:- Time (sec) to merge database records into a mail merge template, Aspose vs WordAutomation
For example, to perform a mail merge of 3,000 records, Word Automation took over 26 seconds, compared to Aspose completing the merge in 2.5 seconds!
PBI performs thousands of mail merges every year. The amount of time savings that we gained from increased performance in document generation, saved our team many hours of time each year.
Experience
Finding a solution
We utilized Aspose.Words for .NET free trials prior to purchase. The free trials were an excellent resource to allow us to evaluate the tools and compare to Word Automation. It didn’t take long after using the trial that we knew this was the right tool for us.
Implementation
Aspose.Words for .NET and Aspose.Cells for .NET are extremely fast and easy to implement. Our developers are no longer concerned with Office Automation and our network staff does not have to maintain Office installations on the servers.
Next Steps
We currently utilize Aspose.Words for .NET and Aspose.Cells for .NET throughout our proprietary software applications. These components have saved significant development time and processing time and allowed us to integrate Microsoft Office document features into our applications in a quick and efficient manner. We are currently evaluating additional Aspose
products such as Aspose.PDF for .NET and Aspose.Email for .NET.
Summary
PBI would absolutely recommend Aspose for the excellent .NET components. In addition, Aspose maintains an active knowledge base and support forum. We discovered answers to all of our questions using these resources.
Sean Diamond
VP of Software Development
Risk Compliance Performance Solutions