DocuWare integration with Microsoft Power Apps

An existing on-premise client (a government regulatory agency) has developed various applications for internal processes using Microsoft Power Apps. They also use DocuWare as the system of record to store their documents.&#160;<br> <br> One of their Power Apps is simply used to register incoming correspondence, many still on paper, others by email and usually printed. Items are given a control number, assigned a few fields (sender, date, subject) and then distributed to the pertinent area for handling.&#160;<br> <br> From then on, each area has its own processes. Several manage cases on paper and eventually the completed files are scanned into DocuWare. Automating these processes is desired over time nd may or may not involve DocuWare Workflow Manager. It is not licensed at this site.&#160;<br> <br> The immediate objective is to be able to store incoming mail in DocuWare from the incoming correspondence system and later to be able to retrieve documents stored in DocuWare from the correspondence system and subsequent systems.<br> <br> Storing documents will require copying a document to DocuWare with metadata pulled from the item being recorded in the correspondence system.&#160;<br> <br> Regarding communications and authentication, sInce Power Apps is a Microsoft 365 Cloud application and DocuWare is on-premise, will web services need to be developed and will webhooks be available? Maybe Power Apps provides OAuth 2 as used in email authentication with Microsoft 365.<br> <br> I think URL integration will work in this case as well as the REST API.&#160;<br> <br> Any guidance and comments will be welcome.&#160;

The Power Apps system is developed using the Model-driven, not the Canvas approach.&#160;

This page explains how to build a custom connector that user the REST API. It seems the way to go.&#160;https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/connectors/custom-connectors/<br> &#160;

Hi Pedro,

we have looked into this recently, and it is currently not possible to directly address the DocuWare REST API from the Power Platform. This is mostly due to the authentication at DocuWare which is currently based on cookies. For the Power Platform there is the need for oAuth 2 Authentication, but oAuth is not yet available for the DocuWare API.

Additionally you have to make the DocuWare On-Premises system open to the Internet to be able to communicate with it. All of this drives us to creating a connector on Power Automate for DocuWare Cloud only.

So, I think there should be some kind of different integration, maybe you can create index files using DocuWare Control (https://support.docuware.com/de-de/knowledgebase/article/KBA-36502) and save them on some folder which is synced locally and then DocuWare Import imports these documents. Also you could use Webhooks to send information from DocuWare to a webhook on the Power Platform and process it there. Maybe also an integration with AutoIndex will work. And maybe you will be able to use the API once DocuWare has oAuth 2 enabled, but this needs to be developed first.

Regards

Tobias Getz
Team Leader Product Management
DocuWare GmbH

Hello, Tobias. Thank you for the detailed response. We suspected the OAuth 2.0 authentication might be a problem but I hoped perhaps the user would be forced to log into the on-premise system each time a document was to be stored or once per session. Since that is not the case, I guess the dwcontrol route is appropriate. To you knowledge, is adding OAuth 2.0 to the API in the pipeline?<br> <br> We might also add a Cloud 4 DocuWare account and have the incoming documents go there and then synchronize with the local system. For search and retrieval from within Power Apps to the local system do you think URL Integration will work?<br> <br> Finally, when you indicate &quot;Also you could use Webhooks to send information from DocuWare to a webhook on the Power Platform and process it there&quot; are you referring to search and retrieval or also to storing documents?<br> <br> Regards.

Hello Pedro,

oAuth2 is in the pipeline, so in the future, this should work better.

If you are adding a DocuWare Cloud organization into the mix, that will make everything much easier. As I mentioned before, we are developing an connector for Power Automate and this could then probably be used also from the Power App platform.
or the specific question, yes, you could create URLs to your on-premises system from Power Apps and let users then click the links to open the result.

My mentioning of Webhooks was more for the idea, if you would like to send information from DocuWare to the Power App, maybe to update some status in the app or something similar. I think this depends heavily on what kind of functionality the Power App should provide.

Regards
Tobias Getz
Team Leader Product Management
DocuWare GmbH

Hi Tobias Getz

Can you already estimate when the Power Automate Connector will be available for DocuWare? I have a use case, where I want to trigger a workflow which sends an e-mail with an attachment to the client and he should be able to easily accept or decline the offer by pressing buttons. 
As I know the buttons are possible with Power Automate. I didn't find any obvious solution only with make.com for such a workflow. Without the buttons I could build it, but usability within the e-mail is key there.

Thanks for your information.

Kind regards,
Dario

Hi Dario Wieland,

a release date is really hard to estimate as we constantly see limitations and issues with Power Automate. On top of all the development the time needed for Microsoft approval is hard to estimate. We saw long response times in the past.
Overall I would not expect it in this first quarter of 2024.
Regards
Tobias Getz
Team Leader Product Management
DocuWare GmbH

The Power Automate connector available since June 2024 (only in DocuWare Cloud) creates many possibilities.   Perhaps we should discuss its use in a dedicated section.  These links provides basic information: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/connectors/docuware/ and https://help.docuware.com/#/home/94045/2/2.  If someone has other suggested references they will be welcome. 

As an example of a use case, we are storing in DocuWare documents that are processed in Adobe Acrobat Sign. Documents flow to DocuWare file cabinets and are indexed with a few fields. We need to capture additional metadata, however, and that is where we need help. 

Hi Pedro E. Gonzalez-Santini,

nice to read, this works out for you.

As DocuWare has a new Knowledge Center please find most up to date information here: Connector for Power Automate platform

Regards
Tobias Getz
Team Leader Product Management
DocuWare GmbH

Thanks Tobias. Yes, I am using the new Knowledge Center. I can now add metadata specific to the Acrobat Sign document being processed (for example, Account Number) by inserting two steps in the Power Automate flow. First a Compose Data operation and then an Initialize Variable. The variable is then used when storing the document in DocuWare.