About Control Systems
Since formation in 1982, Control Systems is providing and developing leading-edge technology document management solutions backed up by excellent, responsive service and support. We are highly specialized in accounting and payment solutions for public sites like universities and insecure print releases and document workflow solutions for corporations and administrations. Control Systems technology can be found in over 10,000 sites all over Europe and worldwide.
Problem
Control Systems started developing advanced document management software that can be found in various markets. In universities, schools, etc. (education market) the focus was set on payment for print outs and walk-up copies. In firms, offices, or administration (corporate market) the focus is set to security, convenience, and the possibility to chargeback cost. In both market segments, the demand to provide a service that shall allow printing most common document formats (Office, PDF, images, etc.) not only from stationary PCs but from any (mobile) device and from any place – inside and outside of an organization was rising dramatically.
Image 1:- Required Solution mockup
So the challenge was to develop a service that allows users to send print jobs from devices that natively do not support printing like e.g. iOS based devices.
Solution
Standard printing from a workstation PC is performed by processing a document with an appropriate driver according to the printer hardware. This works fine for operating systems that are designed to support printing (Windows, Linux, Mac). But mobile devices like phones or tablets often run OS like e.g. iOS that do not support printing at all. Therefore the process of converting documents into a print job needs to be done externally.
The idea was to send documents via e-mail or upload them via a dedicated user portal to the server. Then convert the original document to a print job file that can be sent to the printer.
CS development looked at quite a number of different tools before deciding for Aspose.Total for .NET. The trial was easy to implement and it showed us that we can go straight forward with the core development.
Image 2:- Document printing preview from iOS device
Aspose.Total for .NET easily fetched the mails from different sources, extracted attachments, and reliably converted them to the desired file formats for printing. In an ideal scenario, the solution shall support a wide range of supported file formats shall as per market requirements.
To provide “print on demand” functionality an App for iOS and Android enabled the users to select the jobs and the destination printer. A very convenient functionality has been the preview of the document allowing the user to identify the desired documents and avoiding unneeded printouts.
Next Steps
As Aspose.Total for .NET is a convenient feature-rich and easy to use, the development time can be reduced significantly. OCR and Barcode capabilities will allow us to step into new areas of document management solutions and to develop customized applications matching 100% of the customer’s requirements.
Summary
Control Systems choose Aspose.Total for .NET not only because it is easy to handle, but it handles most of the requirements. Aspose.Total for .NET will be a solid part of our development environment while allowing us to create the application in accordance with the market requirements.