Comparison

The comparison job runs a single comparison of two documents. It is backed by the storage of the task owner and therefore similar to running a comparison in the "Comparison" module.

Configuration Options

The following options are available in the configuration:

Profile

The profile configures what to compare and which comparison to use. Every profile that is available in the 'Comparison' module can be selected here as well. If a custom profile should be used, it has to be created in the 'Comparison' module first. If the selected profile is no longer available at run time, then the first profile in the list will be used. In most cases this default is 'Text only'.

Documents

The document fields define the input for the comparison. Both fields have to be set to a valid URL or file path. In case an URL is set, the files will be downloaded to the user storage before the comparison is run. The user quota limits will be applied and may prevent a proper task execution. In case of a file path, the documents will only be referenced and do not count against the quota limit.

Export format

The Export Format defines how the job result will be presented and can be consumed by subsequent actions. The job can only provide one type of export at a time. The following export formats are available:

  • PDF - creates a side-by-side visual result of the comparison as PDF
  • Image - creates a side-by-side visual result of the comparison as page images
  • Report - creates an overview report along with an optional list of all differences
  • Text - creates a textual log file of all detected differences

Collapse equal pages (when printing)

This option will collapse the pages without differences in the output. It is recommended to use this option if the focus is on the differences only. When exporting to PDF or image the option will always affect the output. In case of an export as text or report this option will only have an impact on the result of the print action since text an report do not export the original pages.

Detailed differences

This option is only available for the Report export type. Enabling it will attach a textual list of all differences to the report PDF document.

Adds a header and footer to all pages showing the export date, file name and page number.

Scale to fit page (PDF only)

Scales to the input page to fit onto the output pages. It's recommended to use this option to avoid wrapped or clipped results.

Comment (PDF only)

If enable, all differences messages will be added as annotations to the resulting PDF file. These messages provide additional information about the differences but may slow down the PDF viewer application if there's a large number of annotations.

Embed System Fonts (PDF only)

Defines how references to local system fonts in the input files are handled when generating the export PDF files. If enabled, these fonts will be replaced by embedded default fonts like 'Helvetica'. This may change the visual appearance but will work on any system. If the option is disabled, only the font name will be written to the export file. This will an appearance alike to the input files but depends on the installed fonts on the displaying system.

Markup differences (PDF only)

Enables or disables the linking visualization of differences.

Tolerated differences condition

This condition is a required number of differences for the job to pass its result to the actions.

A simple use case would be an email notification in case of differences. For this scenario a tolerated differences value of 1 and an email action to only execute in case the condition is fulfilled should be configured.

Provided Placeholders

The comparison job provides several placeholders which can be used in actions:

Key Description
[comparison.document1] the file name of the first document pdf1.pdf for http://localhost/files/pdf1.pdf
[comparison.document2] the file name of the second document pdf2.pdf for http://localhost/files/pdf2.pdf
[comparison.profile] the name of the profile which was used to compare the documents Text Only
[comparison.exportformat] the selected export format PDF if PDF export was selected
[comparison.differences] the number of detected differences 12
[comparison.id] The comparison ID. This ID can be used to insert a link to the comparison into an email or notification. Please note that the comparison will only remain permanent when using the My Comparisons action. 79gfp0jrk2ze5bpsvjawsr2za