11i Check Print Support Patch
Easing back into work mode after the Turkey and Black Friday - yes I was up at 3am in 20F (-7C) temperatures looking for a bargain ... madness!
I spoke to a few folks at OOW about check printing in 11i and how the AP team had released a patch to provide single step check formatting. Those of you in the know will know what I mean, for those of you that dont. Until this patch hit the streets and you wanted to use Publisher for formatting you had to run the format program via the AP user interface to get the XML data. Then go to the SRS forms to then submit the publishing program separately - not nice. There were ways around it - it meant some custom coding but it could be done. Thankfully there is now a standard patch available from metalink to solve this.
It does not wuite go as far as your users might like, they will not be able to pick a layout (template) at runtime but Im sure there is little need to change a format at runtime. Its all in the setup, once the program you are using to currently format checks is converted to generate XML, you then create a data defintion in Publisher Administrator and then upload your check template and your done. At runtime the AP process will apply the template to the check data for you and generate a PDF check output.
Here are the patch details available from metalink - the patch title is a little subtle so apologies if you have spent time looking for it.
4303528 11.5.10.2: XML Payment format does not use default template
Get it applied and check the readme for instructions and you're on your way!
