Accessing Livelink Excel files from within an Excel spreadsheet

[grochon]

Hello,

We currently have a master excel spreadsheet that, when executed, accesses (ie: opens and reads) other excel documents within a specific sub-directory. Code within the master spreadsheet combines all the data from the disparate files into one final report, which is then stored in a third sub-directory. This is all currently done within the Windows file system.

We'd like to maintain this functionality, but we'd like to use Livelink instead of Windows.

What I would appreciate learning is:

1. Is this possible, and if so, how much work is involved?

2. Can you access a document via Excel by using the document's Livelink address (ie: Livelink/EDM (online)/student.xls), or will one need to derive the document id from the Livelink database?

Any assistance or information pointing me in the correct direction would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

 

[appnair]

The correct answer is no and the incorrect answer is yes.
Livelink is a document management system so it needs some intermediate service(s) to manage interim electronic data.
Once you create a excel file for eg in your computer and load it into livelink,the llserver in all probability won't even have excel,livelink as you correctly identified,gives it an llobjid and puts it into its tables and external file store as the case maybe.It is given a version number '1' to boot.As people add versions to it they are downloading this file and adding it back,The processing is still happening in your local computer.Once the edits are made you use the 'Add Version' func and voila the document is managed for you
Enter WEBdav,Now this is a protocol something like http that makes these revisioning mechanisms on webservers seem seamless,even though the work is still performed by the local computer having excel in it ,after the work is done,webdav enabled edit session,it will ask you to save and upload the changes or discard the cahnges.To the untrained eye it looks like livelink is performing the functionality.
I suggest that you try your edits on a webdav enabled livelink system(9.5) for sure and see how it goes
If it works calling the excel sheet might be as easy as a livelink URL with the excel sheet opened.



Well, if I called the wrong number, why did you answer the phone?
James Thurber, New Yorker cartoon caption, June 5, 1937

 

[grochon]

Thanks for the prompt reply. I'll look into WEBDav or the SDK as potential solutions.

 

[Zappos]

Did you have any luck with this? We are in a similar situation where we have numerous spreadsheets in LL which have links. They were originally imported into LL from a directory structure. Naturally the links are now broken. I understand that WebDAV can resolve this but at considerable cost if you only need it for that functionality. Does anyone know of another method to maintain the link?

 

[grochon]

Hello,

Like you, we don't have the budget to purchase the SDK or WebDav at this time, so we implemented a simple work-around that includes using the 'Download To Desktop' functionality. For this to work, however, you need to ensure that all required (ie: linked) documents are within the downloaded directory structure, and you will also need to alter any hard-coded paths in the Excel spreadsheets themselves. It's not the best solution, but one that our users can live with for now.

Another solution that was examined (but deemed too expensive to research/build at this time) was to create a function that could be called from within the Excel spreadsheets that would translate a livelink document name to it's actual (ie: physical) location on the LL server. The assumption is that once you have this information you can copy the .dat file (programmatically) from the LL server to the Windows file system and the links should work properly. As I mentioned, we didn't actually do this (apart from building the function that would return the LL server .dat file and path), so whether this would actually work or not is another issue. In theory it will, but at what cost (ie: time and money)?

Hope this response helps in some way. Good luck.

Thanks,

Greg