Working with Hyperlinks, Bookmarks, Checkboxes, Barcodes Leave feedback

This section describes template tags used to generate and insert different types of elements, such as hyperlinks, bookmarks, checkboxes, barcodes, into reports dynamically.

You can insert hyperlinks to different types of documents: word-processing documents and emails, spreadsheet and presentation documents. The following subsections show some tag syntax differences applied to each document type.

You can insert links to bookmarks using the link tags. The syntax of a link tag is defined as follows:

<<link [reference][text]>>

Here, a mandatory reference parameter defines either an URI, which represents a hyperlink to an external resource, or the name of a Bookmark within the same document. If a reference represents the name of a bookmark, then the corresponding link navigates to the documents bookmark.

An optional text parameter can be omitted. In this case a text from the reference parameter is used by default.

Have a note that a link tag cannot be used within charts.

For spreadsheet documents, the behavior of link tags is different. Here, a reference parameter represents a Cell or a Cell Range.

Some common use-cases are shown in the following table:

For Presentation documents, the behavior of link tags is also different. Here, a reference parameter represents a reference to a slide within the same presentation, defined by a “SlideN” string, where N is a slide number.

The following example demonstrates how to insert a link to a second slide of a presentation:

<<link ["Slide2"] ["A reference to a second slide"]>>

You can insert bookmarks to your Word-processing documents and emails using bookmark tags. The syntax of a bookmark tag is defined as follows:

<<bookmark [bookmarkName]>>content<</bookmark>>

Here, a mandatory bookmarkName parameter defines the name of a bookmark to be inserted.

You can set a Checkbox state to either checked or unchecked in your Word-based documents by taking the following steps:

1. Add a Checkbox content control to your document template.
2. By editing content properties of a Checkbox control, add a check tag to its title using the following syntax:

<<check [condition]>>

Here, a mandatory condition parameter of a boolean type, defines a condition upon which the value of the Checkbox is set to checked state.

You can generate and insert barcode images to your documents using a barcode tag. To declare a dynamically generated barcode image within your template, perform the following steps:

• Add a Textbox to your template at the required place.
• Set standard settings for the textbox.
• Specify a barcode tag within this textbox using the following syntax:

<<barcode [barcodeText] -barcodeType>>

Font settings that are used to render barcode image, including font name, size, style and color, are derived from the font setting of the corresponding barcode tag. Similarly, the barcode text alignment options are derived from the tag’s text alignment options. The background color of the barcode image is derived from the solid fill of the textbox containing the tag.

You can scale barcode symbols of a barcode image specifying the scale attribute as follows:

<<barcode [barcodeText] -barcodeType scale="scalingFactor">>

A scale attribute affects the width and height of a 2D barcode symbol and the width of a linear barcode symbol. The scalingFactor value represents the percentage of barcode symbol scaling.

You can also set the height of a barcode image applying the barHeight attribute as follows:

<<barcode [barcodeText] -barcodeType barHeight="height">>

The height value specifies the percentage of the overall barcode image height.

For example, to set the height of a barcode symbol equal to two-thirds of its overall barcode image height, you can use the following barcode tag:

<<barcode ["30734690"] -codabar barHeight="67">>

You can specify a barcode type with a switch within a barcode tag declaration.

The following example shows how you can dynamically generate a barcode image of a CODABAR type:

<<barcode ["736192"] -codabar>>

The result would look like as follows:

A list of supported barcode types is presented below: