Transaction Reports Billable APIs

AEM Forms provides several APIs to submit forms, process documents, and render documents. Some APIs are accounted as transactions and others are free to use. This document provides a list of all the APIs that are accounted as transactions in a transaction report. Here are a few common scenarios where a billable API is used:

  • Submitting an adaptive form, HTML5 Form, and form set
  • Rendering a print or web version of an interactive communication
  • Converting a document from one format to another
  • Flattening a dynamic PDF document
  • Generating a Document of Record
  • Merging an interactive PDF document with another PDF document
  • Using the assign task step and doc services steps of AEM Workflows
  • Using adaptive form within an adaptive form

Billing APIs does not account for the number of pages, the length of a document or form, or final format of the rendered document. A transaction report divides the transactions into two categories: Documents Rendered and Forms Submitted.

  • Forms Submitted: When data is submitted from any type of form created with AEM Forms and the data is submitted to any data storage repository or database is considered form submission. For example, submitting an adaptive form, HTML5 Form, PDF Forms, and form set are accounted as forms submitted. Each form in a form set is considered a submission. For example, if a form set has 5 forms, when the form set is submitted, transaction reporting service counts it as 5 submissions.

  • Documents Rendered: Generating a document by combining a template and data, digitally signing or certifying a document, using a billable document services APIs for document services, or converting a document from one format to another are accounted as documents rendered.

NOTE

Transaction Reports UI displays three categories: Forms Submitted, Documents Rendered, and Documents Processed. Both Documents Rendered and Documents Processed are accounted as Documents Rendered.

Billable Document Services APIs

Generate PDF Service

API

Description Transaction report category Additional Information
createPDF Creates Adobe PDF from supported file types. Documents Processed
createPDF2 Creates Adobe PDF from supported file types. Documents Processed
exportPDF Converts Adobe PDF to supported file types. Documents Processed
exportPDF2 Converts Adobe PDF to supported file types. Documents Processed
exportPDF3 Converts Adobe PDF to supported file types. Documents Processed
htmlFileToPdf

Creates PDF from HTML pages.

Documents Processed
htmlToPdf Creates PDF from URLs pointing to an HTML page. Documents Processed
htmlToPdf2 Creates PDF from URLs pointing to an HTML page. Documents Processed
optimizePDF Optimizes PDF to reduce file size by stripping unnecessary metadata without affecting the quality. Documents Processed

Distiller Service

API

Description Transaction report category Additional Information
createPDF
Creates Adobe PDF from supported file types. Documents Processed
createPDF2 Creates Adobe PDF from supported file types. Documents Processed

Document of Record Service (DoR Service)

API

Description Transaction report category Additional Information
render Invokes the specified render method to generate a document of record using provided parameters. Documents Processed

Output Service

API

Description Transaction report category Additional Information
generatePDFOutput Merges data and templates to create a PDF document. Documents Processed
generatePDFOutput Merges data and templates to create a PDF document. Documents Processed
generatePDFOutputBatch Merges data and templates to create a set of PDF documents. Documents Processed The generatePDFOutputBatch API combines a form template with a record and generates a PDF. When you process a batch of records, the transaction reporting service counts each record as a separate PDF rendition.
You can use the getGenerateManyFiles flag to combine multiple renditions to single PDF file. Irrespective of the status of flag, the service counts each record as a separate PDF rendition.
generatePrintedOutput Converts XDP and PDF documents to PostScript (PS), Printer Command Language (PCL), and ZPL file formats. Documents Processed
generatePrintedOutput Converts XDP and PDF documents to PostScript (PS), Printer Command Language (PCL), and ZPL file formats. Documents Processed
generatePrintedOutputBatch Converts a set of XDP and PDF documents to a set of PostScript (PS), Printer Command Language (PCL), and ZPL file formats. Documents Processed The generatePDFOutputBatch API combines a form template with a record and generates a PDF. When you process a batch of records, the transaction reporting service counts each record as a separate PDF rendition.
You can use the getGenerateManyFiles flag to combine multiple renditions to single PDF file. Irrespective of the status of flag, the service counts each record as a separate PDF rendition.

Forms Service

API

Description Transaction report category Additional Information
renderPDFForm Renders PDF Form from XDP templates. The XP templates are created in Forms Designer. Documents Processed
exportData Extracts data from a PDF Form or XDP templates Documents Processed

Convert PDF Service

API

Description Transaction report category Additional Information
toImage Converts a PDF document to a list of image documents. Supported image formats are JPEG, JPEG2K, PNG, and TIFF. Documents Processed
toPS Converts a Flat PDF file to PostScript format using the options specified in the option spec. Documents Processed

Barcoded Forms Service

API

Description Transaction report category Additional Information
decode Decodes all the barcodes in a Document object and returns an org.w3c.dom.Document object that contains data that was retrieved from the barcode. Documents Processed

Assembler Service

API

Description Transaction report category Additional Information
invoke Executes the specified DDX document and returns an AssemblerResult object containing the resultant documents. Documents Processed The following operations are not accounted as transactions:
  • Creating packages or portfolio
  • Stitching multiple XDPs
invoke Executes the specified DDX document and returns an AssemblerResult object containing the resultant documents. Documents Processed All the input file formats that PDF Generator, Forms, and Output services support, Assembler service supports all those formats as output file formats.
toPDFA Convert a specified document to PDF/A using the options specified. Documents Processed
NOTE
  • The invoke API of the assembler service can internally call a billable API of another service depending on the input. So, the invoke API can be accounted as none, single, or multiple transactions. The number of transactions counted depends upon the input and the internal APIs invoked.
  • A single PDF document produced using assembler service can be accounted as none, single, or multiple transactions. The number of transactions counted depends upon the supplied DDX code.

PDF Utility Service

API

Description Transaction report category Additional Information
convertPDFtoXDP Converts a PDF document into an XDP file. In order for a PDF document to be successfully converted to an XDP file, the PDF document must contain an XFA stream in the AcroForm dictionary. Documents Processed

Billable Data Capture APIs

All the submission events of adaptive forms, HTML5 Forms, and form set are accounted as transactions. By default, submission of a PDF Form is not accounted as a transaction. Use the provided transaction recorder API to record a PDF Forms submission as a transaction.

Adaptive Forms

Use Case

Description Transaction report category Additional Information
Submitting an adaptive form Submits an adaptive form to configured submit action. Forms Submitted
  • Successful submissions account for single or two transactions. The number of transactions counted depends upon the type of submit action used for submission. For example, sending PDF through email submit action accounts for two counts of transactions. One transaction for form submission and another for PDF generated using the Document of Record (DOR) service.
  • Using the adaptive form within an adaptive form (Adaptive form formset) accounts only single transaction. You can have any number of adaptive forms within an adaptive form.

HTML5 Forms

Use Case

Description Transaction report category Additional Information
Submitting an HTML5 Form Submits an HTML5 Form to submit URL configured in the form. Forms Submitted

Form set

API

Description Transaction report category Additional Information
Submitting a form set Submits form set to the submit URL configured in the form set. Forms Submitted
  • Using the adaptive form within an adaptive form (Adaptive form formset) accounts only single transaction. You can have any number of adaptive forms within an adaptive form.
  • Every form in an HTML5 Forms form set accounts as a separate transaction.

Billable Interactive Communication and Form-centric AEM Workflows on OSGi APIs

Assign task and document services steps of Form-centric AEM Workflows on OSGi and all the renditions of interactive communication and are accounted as transactions. Previewing an interactive communication on the author instance and previewing on the publish instance using Agent UI are not accounted as transactions. If a workflow step accounts a transaction and the workflow fails to complete, the transaction count is not reversed.

Interactive Communication - Web Channel

API

Description Transaction report category Additional Information
Rendering a web channel Opens the web version of an interactive communication. Documents Rendered

Interactive Communication - Print Channel

API

Description Transaction report category Additional Information
render (convert to PDF) Generates the PDF version of an interactive communication. Documents Rendered

Form-centric AEM Workflows on OSGi

Use case

Transaction report category Additional Information
Submitting an Assign Task step Forms Submitted
Submitting a workflow application startpoint Forms Submitted
Submitting an interactive communication (Print Channel) from the Agent UI to a workflow Documents Rendered

Recording billable APIs as transactions for custom code

Actions like submitting a PDF Form, using Agent UI to preview an interactive communication, using non-standard form submission, and custom implementations are not accounted as transactions. AEM Forms provides an API to record such actions as transactions. You can call the API from your custom implementations to record a transaction.

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