An integration appliance tool from STG that manages data flow between Laserfiche and some other application such as accounting, HR, purchasing or insurance management. The only requirement for UNiT to work with the other application is that the application have the ability to execute a command (CMD) line process or macro executable.

UNiT (UNiversal integration Translator) is an integration appliance tool from STG that manages data flow between Laserfiche and some other application such as accounting, HR, purchasing or insurance management. The only requirement for UNiT to work with the other application is that the application have the ability to execute a command (CMD) line process or macro executable.

This process can be best shown in the example of Microsoft Excel where a simple macro is written to retrieve a number out of a column of numbers based on some criteria in the spreadsheet. The macro is executed usually by a combination of a CTL and some other keystroke. The number in the column in this case represents an invoice number. The macro in essence is executing a UNiT executable which in turn picks up the invoice number as a parameter and passes it to Laserfiche in terms of a search criteria. This brings up an independent window that has the document(s) associated with that invoice. When the user is finished with the Laserfiche window, they just close the window and continue on.

The Excel macro of course represents an application that has a command line/macro internal structure. Typically this is referred to as a command line interface. It is unproductive for the user to switch back and forth between Laserfiche and their mainstream application, so the advantage of UNiT is the user stays in their application all day (i.e. accounting) and only views documents in a separate Laserfiche window when necessary. Depending on the capability of the user’s application determines how the command line is executed, but many applications have multiple mouse/keyboard button configurations than make it very easy for the user to pull up Laserfiche at a keystroke without the user really knowing it is Laserfiche in the background.

UNiT has a wide variety of configurations that can tailor what actions it takes in Laserfiche. UNiT is not limited to any number of parameters, so can receive and act upon as many parameters as the application would like to pass. UNiT uses a configuration file that can be user configured if there are additional requirements for UNiT at a later date or the required parameter list changes. A typical UNiT configuration file might look like:

localhost/* LF Server */
Arcturus/* LF Repository */
Accounting/* LF template name */

PO Number/* LF Template field*/
Date/* LF Template field*/
{[%(Template)]:[%(Field1)]=”%(Param1)”} /*Search in template field 1 for parameter 1 that was passed into UNiT */
{[%(Template)]:[%(Field1)]=”%(Param1)”}&{[%(Template)]:[%(Field2)]=”%(Param2)”}/*Search in Template Filed 1 and Template Field 2 for Parameters 1 & 2 that were passed into UNiT */
{LF:Name=”%(Param1)”, Type=FD}/* Search through LF document names for parameter 1 passed into UNiT */

UNiT also supports web based applications in a similar fashion but is handled through a slightly different structure since command line interfaces do not exists in web based applications.