Batch PDF processes

Running the conversion process

At this point, you can attempt a conversion! Still logged in as Admin, click on Manage – Batch PDF Conversion. Select the earliest and latest dates for those reports you would like considered, and select the relevant students from the list below. You can use the filters, and shift- or ctrl- clicks here. Click on the toolbar icon that looks like two pages with a cog. When you are prompted for credentials, enter the username and password for Account2 (remember you can distribute this if needed) and click OK.

You will see a popup detailing the conversion process, and when it is complete, a summary will be displayed.

If you are using this process it is advisable to also set the Role options for end-users to show only PDFs, thereby hiding the original documents from them.

Upload

If you would rather upload existing PDF documents to the SIMS Document Server, or other documents which you will then later convert to PDF, you should use then Upload tab. To perform the upload, you will need to have to hand a ZIP file containing all the documents to upload. Each document must have something in its file name which can identify a student, which can either be their UPN or Admission number.

On the Upload tab, click the Add button and browse to your archive file. When the files are uploaded to SIMS, they will be given the Summary you specify. It is good practice to name the uploads in a consistent and conventional way, so it is easy to pick out the files uploaded in this manner. Additionally, when choosing which documents Insight will display, you may need to specify a phrase which marks out the documents.

Select the field used to identify students, from either Admission number or UPN, and go on to define how this data is represented within the file name. You can choose from a character offset, where you know the data will be at a certain position, or by use of a separator character. For example if your file names follow the convention of REP001234FredBloggs.PDF, you would select a Character Offset of 4. If your file name looks more like Fred_Bloggs_001234.PDF, you would select a Separator character of "underscore", and a field index of 3, as the Admission number is in the third "block".

Click on the toolbar icon that looks like two pages with a cog to begin the upload.

You do not need to do the Word configuration if you only need to use the Upload feature, but if you later need to convert to PDF, it will need to be done.