Declined
Last Updated: 23 Sep 2014 13:30 by Brian Stanek
Brian Stanek
Created on: 27 May 2014 16:47
Type: Feature Request
7
Telerik Reports producing PDF Forms
We use Telerik reports for many different things.  We generate reports, letters, mailings, excel documents and forms or applications.  Our applications can either be blank or pre-filled or completely filled with information from the user.  Now I realize that you can say that all of these are forms of reports, but I would submit that is only partly correct.  I tell people that Telerik reports is a way for me to produce output that can be electronically distributed or printed.  While that is a definition of a report, I think it can go a bit further.

If you think about PDF forms and what they are, they are a report that allows the user to add additional information and send back to the customer.  I do realize that some features of PDF forms allow for scripting that can automatically submit, and there is a lot of other capabilities that moves PDF forms outside the realm of basic report generation. That being said, the ability to set a parameter in a report whereas the fields are replaced with basic text input PDF fields would be a huge advantage for Telerik.  I could see them opening up the forms generation market for this product.

While I have no input into your roadmap and, as a former Product Architect for a software development firm, I fully understand scope creep and keeping product focus, I would love to see:
1) a parameter export to PDF that converts the fields (everything that has a Fields.XXXX keyword somewhere in the value property) to PDF form text fields without adding data.  I would set the length the same way you set the horizontal length of the field on the report.
2) a parameter on a field item that says this field cannot be converted into a form field and must have data.
3) a parameter on reports indicating that when generating PDF form fields, that X number of rows are generated for the detail section.
4) if a field value is too complex or if the report is too complex, I would just fail over to a blank value.
I realize there are a lot of capabilities in PDF forms, but I tried to keep my wish list confined to the basics that would allow for easy additions to support advanced capabilities post report generation.

All this being said, I have communicated to my customers that Telerik is not going to support PDF form fields and we have an upcoming meeting to discuss this requirement.  I have a lot of resources, time and money invested in the development of Telerik reports and it is a concern that I may have to remove Telerik reports from our solutions because of a need to support this PDF capability.  We have reports on multiple different platforms and I feel that Telerik Reports is one of the best in terms of use on many different styles of applications. But since I am a firm believer in using as few technology vendors as possible (and only want a single reporting solution), I am concerned about having to re-architect our solution reporting infrastructure to remove Telerik reports.
2 comments
Brian Stanek
Posted on: 23 Sep 2014 13:30
I understand your position.  At the same time, as we investigate this requirement, we will have to look at other reporting options and determine if we want to continue with Telerik reports or move to a new solution.  We have found that Telerik reports meets all of our needs except for this one, but if we are required to change a majority of our reports to PDF Forms, we will need a new solution.  We are a small IT shop with a medium sized businesses and maintenance of two different reporting solutions is not desirable.
ADMIN
Iana Tsolova
Posted on: 23 Sep 2014 12:42
Hi Brian,

Just like you said, PDF forms are a bit out of the scope of Telerik Reporting. That is why I will mark the feature request as declined here.

However the rest of your thoughts and use cases description are also true and valid. So we will not just forget about it, but have it in mind probably for a separate product in future.

Best,
Iana