| Problem: We use a number of different technologies hosted on a number of different platforms. Some of those technologies/platforms are better than others at PDF generation. The quality/performance/richness of PDF generation features that we deliver to customers can be quite variable. Furthermore, shared document storage solutions need to be duplicated on every individual application that need to retain generated PDFs. These problems act as a barrier to service excellence by giving customers an inconsistent experience with duplication of technical costs and overheads across services. Proposed solution: Build a service to centralise PDF generation and storage, which will act as an enabler for service excellence. The service will provide 1) consistent features and functionality to applications, and 2) secure centralised storage of generated documents for applications. I'd like to start with the basic use case of an application that needs to generate a PDF from HTML. If things go well I can move on to 1) merging/interacting with pre-generated PDFs, and 2) a minimal web UI for service owners to see what applications are using the service, along with stats on PDFs being generated/stored by each application. |
