Spool to PDF conversions helps DiVal Safety Equipment, a large, US-based distributor of safety and industrial products. They own and operate several offices and warehouses throughout the Eastern, Central & Southern United States.

How does DiVal use CoolSpools?

DiVal has hundreds of automated spool to PDF conversions for such things as emailing invoices, statements, purchase orders, acknowledgements, etc. and they are also starting to use CoolSpools to archive day-end reports which have historically been bound and stored.

CoolSpools is used by DiVal to convert (to PDF) and email artwork held on the IFS for their silk screening, needlework and tool repair processes and their team have written a CL with a prompt for a query name/library and email address so that any member of staff who uses Query/400 can send & receive worksheets via email.

To achieve a workflow solution DiVal use RPG XML to create HTML which is put into the SNDCMN or CVT command so their customer gets an email with a “response” link, an attachment of the PDF document to be approved, buttons to Approve, Approve with Change or Decline, and a text box for comments.   They are also able to embed a logo header and footer into the email using HTML pointing to a web server.

Paul McMahon of Dival Safety Equipment says “Having previously used IBM’s SNDDST with stand-alone PDF and Excel converters CoolSpools is day and night as to flexibility and ease of use, plus it’s more reliable. If you ask me to describe the CoolSpools product and support team it’s easy because I’ve said it to lots of people. They are absolutely hands down the best I’ve worked with. From guiding me through maps and template creation to figuring out (and fixing) why certain Query/400 results error out, to help with attaching and embedding files and gifs for enhancing the display of emails. Every time I think I’m pushing the envelope, the CoolSpools folks have a suggestion or solution!”

Download the full DiVal case study

AS400 AS400 to PDF IBM i