This page outlines the revamp done for Header-Footer for Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and Outlook. While the changes have mostly been under-the-hood improvements to aid in future development, there have been a number of bug fixes and quality improvements as well.
In addition to outlining the new functionality, limitations and known bugs are detailed.
Word comes with the most features as it natively supports every type of visual marking we are adding to documents:
Headers
Footers
Watermarks
Sample Config:
"pageLayoutConfiguration": {
"alwaysShowPopup": true/false
"option": "allPagesExceptTitle"/"allPages"/"titlePageOnly"
"triggerPagesNumber": 3
} |
Note:
If this is not configured by default markings will be applied to all pages
In some cases, it may be necessary to ask the user for input (such as if the document has its own header, etc.) even when not configured.
"alwaysShowPopup" allows the user to show the popup always. It can be set to true/false
In Word there are 3 pop-ups that can be shown:
Visual Label Options: Here, the user can choose the type of header and footer they wish to apply, as well as if they want to set a watermark. The options for Header-footer are:
None - Do not apply the header/footer
Fixed - Adds the header/footer text to the standard text area
Floating - Creates a text box within the header/footer area. This avoids any conflicts with existing headers/footers and allows for more flexible placement (i.e. typically to place the marking at the very top/bottom of the page).
NOTE: The actual alignment (left corner, right corner, centre) is determined by the text-align style attribute from the header/footer config.
Apply Visual Label: Here the user can override the options from the "pageLayoutConfiguration" field in the config. Contains the following options:
Page Options - drop-down with choices: Title Page Only, All Pages, All Pages Except Title Page
Trigger Pages Number: If the trigger page number is more than the set value only then visual labels will be applied to the Title Page Only or All Pages Except Title Page.
Append/Overwrite choice: In the case where the document already has a “fixed” header/footer and the user chooses this option in the Visual Label Options pop up, we must ask the user if they wish to append our marking to the existing text or overwrite it. This isn’t shown if they selected “None” or “Floating”.
Non-Editable Visual Labels: There is also a new function to prevent the modification of GV visual markings in this new updater. Users can delete a word or append the header footer but when the document is saved it will be reverted to the original text. It’s not possible to outright lock the text and prevent it from being edited in the first place, so the updater will attempt to revert any changes on new classifications and when saving.
Note: In cases where the document is saved and the document update is run again (to revert any changes to markings) and the user is required to give any input via the pop-ups, then the cancel button will no longer be shown. This is to prevent the user from avoiding the document update to fix modified markings.
Suppress cancellation of default/auto classification: In cases where classification is to be automatically applied, we now suppress the ability for the user to cancel this operation to prevent them from being able to circumnavigate the classification. This means that if a classification event occurs automatically (and when pressing “Set” in the suggestion pop ups), the new popups shown above will not be shown (even if alwaysShowPopup is set to true). The only case when they will be shown is if there is some user input required (such as to choose between append/overwrite), but in these cases, the cancel button is removed from the pop ups so the user can’t prevent the update. Note: automatic classification events include default classification, auto ML classification and the classification event that is triggered on saving the document to prevent editing of visual markings. This applies to PowerPoint and Excel too.
There is a known bug when using the right-click classification of a document (applies to Excel and PowerPoint as well) where any pop-ups will be using the dark mode theme instead of obeying the current agent theme.
The features for PowerPoint are largely the same as in Word, but with some key differences:
PowerPoint does not support watermarks.
PowerPoint does not have native header support, so instead, only “Floating” text box headers are used.
While PowerPoint does have support for footers, they take the form of special text boxes that can be moved, resized, etc. Therefore, there is no need to ask the user for input on the type of footer to apply, so there is no “Visual Label Options” pop up as in Word.
In PowerPoint, we support an additional feature to add a GV title slide with a separately configured title and subtitle. To use this, please use the "powerpointTitle" and/or "powerpointSubtitle" fields in configuration. If used, the “Apply Visual Label” pop up as seen in Word will be used.
The user will be asked to append or overwrite only if there is existing text in the native PowerPoint footer, or in supported 3rd party headers/footers. As PowerPoint does not contain a dedicated header/footer section as with Word, detection of existing headers/footers needs to be explicitly developed for.
The features for Excel are largely the same as in Word, but with some key differences:
Excel does not support watermarks.
Excel splits its headers and footers into 3 sections: left, right, and center. Which section is used is determined by the text-align style attribute from the header/footer config.
As there is only the option to add headers and footers to these specific text boxes, there is no need to ask the user for input on the type of footer to apply, so there is no “Visual Label Options” pop up as in Word.
Additionally, as these are the only text boxes where headers and footers can be added, we support asking the user if they would like to append or overwrite in all cases without needing to explicitly support specific 3rd party headers/footers.
Excel has a limitation on the length of text that can be used in headers/footers of 240 characters. In cases where the text length exceeds this (including existing text being appended to, if chosen), the text will instead be rendered as an image which will be inserted instead. Please note this then prevents the text from being modified later as it is rendered as an image.
As Excel has no concept of a title page, in the “Apply Visual Label” pop up there is no drop down of page options or a trigger pages number field. Instead, there is just an option to choose which sheet numbers to apply From - To. These are inclusive.
Note: The chosen numbers do not refer to the names of the sheets in Excel (“Sheet1”, “Sheet3”, etc) as these are renameable placeholder names. It refers to sheets counting from left to right.
To use this, please use the "applyContentFromSheetNo" and/or "applyContentToSheetNo" fields in Excel configuration. If excluded from config or both set to 0, markings will be applied to all sheets. By default, these values will be automatically applied. For users to be allowed to choose when classifying, please set "alwaysShowPopup" in "pageLayoutConfiguration" to true.
The features available in Outlook are the most different from the other Office applications as there is no native support for headers, footers, or watermarks. Below is an outline of the currently supported features and their limitations.
As there are no native headers and footers in Outlook, we instead are adding the GV markings to the email body itself, at the top and bottom. In order to do this, we are employing hidden tags in the body to mark the correct location for the header and footer. These can be seen by enabling the show hidden formatting in the Format Text tab, Paragraph section. Note that by its very nature, it does mean that it would be possible for the user to enable this hidden view and so be able to edit these hidden tags that the agent relies on to update the markings. However, this is just the limitation we have when the headers/footers have to added directly to the email body. It should be sufficient enough for most common scenarios.
No pop-ups in Outlook as there is no concept of title pages, different header/footer types in Outlook
We support emails, appointments, and meetings in formats like HTML, Rich Text, and Plain Text.
Prevention of markings being modified is done by sending an email. This step will also remove the previously mentioned hidden tags so they won’t be visible to email recipients.
Note:
Modification of the markings is prevented only in the current email body and not in the email chain in case of replies and forwarded emails.
Since appointments can only be saved they can be classified regularly but the new changes of non-editable markings do not apply to them,
Below is a recording of a brief demonstration of the features discussed above.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lt0UCRifdKdoB0mqgeHs9P5wFiTCD2tn/view?usp=sharing