Four solutions for your PDF peccadilloes

[janiceg]

PDF stands for "Portable Document Format" and because of its portability and widespread use, ServiceNow provides the capability of exporting many different types of information to PDF such as reports, homepages, and Performance Analytics dashboards. (Note that before users can export homepages or dashboards to PDF, you have to activate the WebKit HTML To PDF plugin, as described in Activate WebKit HTML To PDF.)

When exporting to PDF, you might have encountered some issues in the following circumstances: Exporting a large amount of image data HTML fields not rendering properly Difficulty exporting a report if Display Grid is selected PDF exports of a Service Catalog item don't include custom variables

Here are some tips and workarounds for possible PDF problems.

Exporting a large amount of image data

Images are a special type of content and exporting a large number of images can cause problems with your system ranging from an export error to performance degradation or even possibly crashes. Try to export no more than 15 MB of images to a single PDF at a time.

HTML field data exports

Forms that contain HTML fields sometimes don't render properly when exported to PDF, and the raw HTML coding appears. To export the data properly, either select the Print Preview format or create a UI page with the desired look and then print or export to PDF.

Note that if you can upgrade, this issue was resolved in Fuji Patch 12 and Geneva Patch 3. For more information about HTML fields, see the documentation topic HTML Field Administration.

Exporting reports with Display Grid enabled

If you have the Display Grid option enabled when you create a report, an error occurs when you select Export to PDF and click Export. To avoid the error, save the report before exporting it. If that doesn't work, try to re-create the report, save it, and then export to PDF.

Service Catalog exports to PDF don't include custom variables

When exported to PDF, a Service Catalog Requested Item (sc_req_item) does not include the catalog variables that the user entered when exported. To include this information, click the gear icon and select Printer friendly version, and then print or export the form to PDF.

More fun with PDFs

• Check out Syed Faheem's post on PDF Generation in Geneva

• You can find some additional tips about working with PDF in the Geneva documentation:

  • Export a homepage or dashboard to PDF

  • Create a PDF page header footer template