Prambanan IT Services

Completing the conversion to PDF implanted in our client, we have developed a system to stamp electronic and digital signatures in PDF files contained in different documents in Windchill. When a user creates the documents from Document Templates defined in PDMLink, they have as primary content MS Office documents created from different templates that are common for documents of a same type within a same product or project in PDMLink.

This way, we can define the exact positions in which to print electronic and/or digital signatures of the different users who comprise in the validation process of each one of those documents. Once the primary content is converted to PDF, the system stamps the electronic and/or digital signature of the user who has completed the task, on the PDF file contained in that document. This stamping is made transparently to the user, so he/she only needs to press the “Task Complete” button in his tasks, and in case of approval its signature (previously scanned) is printed in the primary content that is in PDF format.

The result are PDF files that contains the signatures of the creator and the reviewers of the document through their process in Windchill, being able to include name, user identifier, date and hour of the validation, and even a watermark of the company, that in the case of our client is the logo of its organization.

This process is running in production system since the beginning of 2005.

Distinction between electronic signature and digital signature:

• Electronic signature

An electronic signature is a stamp of a scanned signature as an image in the PDF file.

• Digital signature

The digital signature is applied to the pdf through a Digital Certificate. In the case of our client, those certificates are generated through a PKI, and from a root  digital certificate of the organization of our client. In addition, in the case of including an electronic signature, we add the digital signature like visible signature within the PDF, in the same area occupied by the electronic signature. This way, the properties of the digital certificate as well as its validity are accessible over the scanned image of the electronic signature of a concrete user.

We have implemented a PDF conversion service in the Workflows developed for one of our customers.

The users create documents in PDMLink from Document Templates that have MS Office files as primary content. When the creator has edited his document, the Workflow process moves it through the approval process of the different reviewers. But before the reception of the document to te reviewers, the process converts the MS Office file contained as primary content to PDF. From this point, the primary content of the document is a PDF file, and the origianl MS Office file is stored as an attachment of the PDMLink document, to be restored as primary content if the creator needs to modify its document (if any of the reviewers rejects it).

The PDF conversion is performed in a different Windows server, so it converts all the details in the MS Office documents as indexes, hyperlinks… and the process does not overload the Windchill servers. This conversion service is in the production environment of one of our customers since 2004, and we have been updating and improving it continuously to have a stable system.

At the moment, most of the documents created in this customer (except CAD documents) have this PDF conversion in their Workflow processes, and one of its principal benefits is the reduction of the files size, helping the users to share information with customers and suppliers. Another advantage of the PDF format is the capability of opening the contents on platform independent web browsers.