Example of using ACIF to view and index documents

A communications company produces monthly telephone bills with a line data application. The company wants to make the billing application output available so that when a customer calls with a billing inquiry, the customer service representatives can view the bill in the same format on their workstations as the customer's printed copy. An example of the customer's printed telephone bill is shown in Example of a customer’s printed telephone bill.

Example of a customer’s printed telephone bill

This graphic replicates a customer's telephone bill, including the company logo of Mountain Communications. The text on the bill reads: Return this portion with your payment. William R. Smith 6240 Sunshine Canyon Drive, Boulder, Colorado 80000-0000 Make check payable to Mountain Communications Total amount due: $56.97 Date due: January 29, 1993 1 basic service $30.56 2 long distance charges $26.41 Total $56.97 A line of dashes is drawn across the replicated bill to separate the total amount due section from the itemized total section. The logo for Mountain Communications is displayed with this text: Bill date: January 11, 1993 Account number: 303-222-3456-68 Following the logo, this information is displayed: Previous bill $66.79 Payment $66.79 Adjustments $0.00 Past due disregard if paid $0.00 Thank you for your payment Current charges $56.97 Date due January 29, 1993 Amount due $56.97 This information is listed under the heading Summary of current charges: Residence service $25.07 911 surcharge $0.50 Customer access service $3.50 Wiring maintenance plan $0.50 Federal excise tax $0.50 State tax $0.49 Long distance charges (itemized below) $26.41 Under the heading Long distance charges, a table has these headings: item number, date, time, to place, to area number, minutes, amount. The table contains five rows. Row one: Item 1, December 11, 7:15 P.M.,. Loveland Colorado, 303 666-7777, 6 minutes, 82 cents. Row two: Item 2, December 16,9:16 A.M., Niwot, Colorado, 303 666-6666, 12 minutes, $1.66. Row three: Item 3, December 24, 9:32 P.M., Santa Barbara, California, 806 999-2222,32 minutes, $15.80. Row four: Item 4,December 25, 2:18 P.M., Las Vegas, Nevada, 702 888-7654, 15 minutes, $8.23. Row five: Total $26.41. The replicated bill ends with the words Page 1.

To meet the communications company's needs, you can use ACIF to do these tasks:

  • Convert the output from the line data application into a document format that can be used with the AFP Workbench Viewer.
  • Index the file to facilitate searching the file with AFP Workbench Viewer.
  • Retrieve resources so that all resources used in the bills are available at the workstation.

You do these tasks to view and index a telephone bill with ACIF:

  1. Examine the input file to determine what ACIF parameters are needed to view the telephone bill and whether literal values are expressed as character data strings or hexadecimal strings. See Examining the input file.
  2. Specify ACIF parameters. See Specifying ACIF processing parameters.
  3. Index the input data file for data retrieval. See Indexing data in the input file.
  4. Identify the locations of the resources that are used when the bill is printed. See Identifying the locations of the resources.
  5. Determine the form definition and page definition that is needed to format and print the bill. See Determining the form definition and the page definition.
  6. Run the ACIF job to create the output files. See Running the ACIF job.
  7. Concatenate the output files. See Concatenating ACIF output files.
  8. Access the document file from a workstation for viewing with AFP Workbench Viewer. See Accessing the document file for viewing.

In this section:

  1. Examining the input file
  2. Specifying ACIF processing parameters
  3. Indexing data in the input file
  4. Identifying the locations of the resources
  5. Determining the form definition and the page definition
  6. Running the ACIF job
  7. Concatenating ACIF output files
  8. Accessing the document file for viewing
Parent topic: Examples of using ACIF