About KnowledgeLake
KnowledgeLake is a market leader in document imaging and capture products for Microsoft SharePoint based Enterprise Content Management (ECM) solutions. KnowledgeLake Imaging for SharePoint is a product that helps eliminate the costs and challenges of using paper products, as well as the limitations it puts on business processes. Build on Microsoft® SharePoint®, KnowledgeLake Imaging for SharePoint provides features that extend SharePoint ECM capabilities throughout your organization.
Part of the KnowledgeLake Imaging for SharePoint product is the new Silverlight Document Viewer that allows users to view PDF, TIFF, and Office documents directly from SharePoint without the need to download entire documents to individual computers. This viewer makes it possible to view thumbnails, rotate, zoom without ever leaving the web browser. In addition, users can view and/or edit SharePoint properties.
Requirements Scenario
KnowledgeLake has been seeking the ability to view Microsoft Office format since they build their first version of the document viewer in 2004. The main feature of this viewer is its ability to only show the user the pages they require to see by opening the document on the server and rasterizing individual pages as graphic files and sending them to the browser for viewing.
Solution Implementation
KnowledgeLake used Aspose.Words for .NET, Aspose.Cells for .NET and Aspose.Slides for .NET to enable viewing of Office documents in their Silverlight Document Viewer. KnowledgeLake has been an industry leader in providing document viewing technologies for SharePoint since 2003. With the development of their latest viewer using Silverlight, KnowledgeLake wanted to bring viewing to SharePoint to a new level. In order to accomplish this, a toolkit was needed that enabled rasterization, that is converting pages of Office documents into individual image files.
KnowledgeLake implemented Aspose.Words for .NET, Aspose.Cells for .NET and Aspose.Slides for .NET on its Imaging for SharePoint product moving the workload to the server. After a document is requested by a user on a client workstation, Aspose technology is used to break the Office document into separate images, page by page. Only the requested page is then sent as an image to the Silverlight application running in a browser on the client machine. This saves both time and bandwidth allowing the user to receive only what they need.
Using Aspose products, KnowledgeLake is now able to add support for viewing for .DOC, .DOCX, .XLS, .XLSX and .PPT file formats.
Benefits
With the addition of viewing Microsoft Office document formats, KnowledgeLake Imaging for SharePoint has completed the a Silverlight based Document Viewer for SharePoint to view virtually any document type that may be used inside SharePoint. Users of this product no longer will require large Microsoft Office formatted documents to be downloaded across networks before being able to see the pages of the document they require.
Future Implementations
KnowledgeLake plans on using many of the Aspose products to provide a Document Viewer for SharePoint 2010, add a new image and document formats, and allow for external annotations on any file format.
KnowledgeLake also plans to start implementing Aspose technologies on client software enabling more powerful Office document manipulation inside their suite of products.
Conclusion
KnowledgeLake based its decision to use Aspose product based on the speed the engine converted pages into images and the fast response we received from the technical support team when we ran into issues concerning the Aspose products. Using Aspose products KnowledgeLake plans to expand their products into additional markets and reach new users to provide a better ECM experience on Microsoft® SharePoint®.
Image 1:- Viewing a Microsoft Office Document with KnowledgeLake’s Silverlight based Document Viewer