FDC- Guide for Header Footer Options

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

Word comes with the most features as it natively supports every type of visual marking we are adding to documents:
  • Headers
  • Footers
  • Watermarks
Sample Word Visual Tagging Config:
"visualTagging": {
  "showHeader": true,
  "header": "<span style = \"color:#00FF00;\">Word O H Classification: <strong>{classification}/{distribution}</strong></span>",
  "showFooter": true,
  "footer": "<span style = \"color:DarkTurquoise;\">Word O F Classification: <strong>{classification}/{distribution}</strong></span>",
  "showWatermark": true,
  "watermark": "<span style = \"color:DarkTurquoise;\">Word O W Classification: <strong>{classification}/{distribution}</strong></span>",
  "popupConfiguration": {
    "alwaysShowPopup": false,
    "enforceHeaderFooterType": true,
    "headerType": "floating",
    "footerType": "fixed",
    "enforcePageLayoutOption": true,
    "pageLayoutOptions": "titlePageOnly",
    "triggerPagesNumber": 3,
    "enforceOverwriteOption": true,
    "overwriteOption": "overwrite"
  }
}
Note:
  • If popupConfiguration 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. The enforce options (enforceHeaderFooterType, enforcePageLayoutOption and enforceOverwriteOption) can be used to prevent these from being shown if required. These work as follows:
    • enforceHeaderFooterType: If selected then it hides the header/footer portion of the pop-up (shown below) and automatically uses the values for headerType and footerType instead of user input.
    • enforcePageLayoutOption: If selected then it hides the page layout portion of the pop-up (shown below) and automatically uses the values for pageLayoutOptions and triggerPagesNumber instead of user input.
    • enforceOverwriteOption: If selected then it suppresses the append/overwrite pop-up (shown below) and instead uses the value of overwriteOption instead of user input.
In Word there are 2 pop-ups that can be shown:
  • Visual Label Options:

  • Header/Footer Type:
    • Here, the user can choose the type of header and footer they wish to apply. The options for are:
      • 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, center) is determined by the text-align style attribute from the header/footer config.
  • Page Options - 3 choices: Title Page Only, All Pages, All Pages Except Title Page.
  • Threshold: If the number of pages in the document is greater than or equal to the threshold 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 Floating.

Non-Editable Visual Labels:

There is also a new function to prevent the modification of FDC 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 is 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 pop-ups 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 cannot 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.

Limitations/Known Bugs

  • 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.
  • If a user classifies a document that contains an existing header/footer and applies the “All Pages Except Title Page” option, then they may note that there is no longer any header or footer on the first page of the document, including the original header and footer. This is a known limitation/behavior for Word. The text has not been deleted. The agent is simply applying the Header & Footer option (as seen in the ribbon) called “Different First Page”. This is necessary to allow for the option “All Pages Except Title Page”. What is happening under the hood is that Word is now apply a new “first page header/footer” to the first page of the document and maintaining the standard header/footer on the remaining pages. As it has just been created, it is blank. If the user wishes to apply their own text to the first page, they can do so after classifying. It is not possible to automatically copy over the data with the agent, as we cannot arbitrarily support all possibilities of document formatting. And it goes against the convention set by Microsoft.
Note:
  • Unless alwaysShowPopup is set to true, then pop-ups will only be shown in the cases where user input is required to decide on ambiguity between the config and the current document.
    • For example: By default, the agent will always try to write headers and footers with the type “fixed” (as described above). But if the document already contains a fixed header, the pop up will be shown to ask the user what type of header to apply in this case. And to choose to append or overwrite the existing header.
    • In the case where the classification tag type is set to binary in the config, the default behavior of the agent switches to apply “floating” headers and footers (as described above). So, in the previous example where there is an existing fixed header in the document, there will be no pop-up shown as there is no conflict that user needs to provide input on.

PowerPoint

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 FDC 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.
  • If a PowerPoint file is created directly on the desktop or in windows explorer and then classified immediately via right click classification, then the classification will fail. This is a known limitation as files created this way are empty until they are actually opened in the PowerPoint application and so cannot be modified to add classification or visual labels.
  • In PowerPoint, the possible pop-ups are slightly different to Word. Here, the config is slightly different and there is no section for header/footer type, and the slide layout section is slightly different to the page layout section of Word:

    Sample PowerPoint Visual Tagging Config:

    "visualTagging": {
  "showHeader": true,
  "header": "<span style = \"color:#00FF00;\">PowerPoint O H Classification: <strong>{classification}/{distribution}</strong></span>",
  "showFooter": true,
  "footer": "<span style = \"color:DarkTurquoise;\">PowerPoint O F Classification: <strong>{classification}/{distribution}</strong></span>",
  "titlePageShowTitle": true,
  "titlePageTitle": "<span style = \"color:#00FF00;\">PowerPoint O T Classification: <strong>{classification}/{distribution}</strong></span>",
  "titlePageShowSubtitle": true,
  "titlePageSubtitle": "<span style = \"color:#00FF00;\">PowerPoint O ST Classification: <strong>{classification}/{distribution}</strong></span>",
  "popupConfiguration": {
    "alwaysShowPopup": false,
    "enforceSlideLayoutOption": false,
    "slideLayoutOptions": "allSlides",
    "triggerSlidesNumber": 3,
    "fromSlide": 1,
    "toSlide": 3,
    "enforceOverwriteOption": false,
    "overwriteOption": "append"
  }
}
    Note:
    • If popupConfiguration is not configured by default markings will be applied to all slides.
    • fromSlide and toSlide are only used when slideLayoutOptions is set to slideRange.

    PowerPoint Visual Label Options Pop-up:

Limitations/Known Bugs

  • There is a known bug with the Office API that prevents the agent from being able to detect when a user is about to print a document in PowerPoint. To work around this, the default printer options that a user sees in PowerPoint have been removed and replaced with a single “Print” button that when pressed will allow a user to set their print parameters. This custom print settings pop-up allows the agent to correctly detect when the user is about to print a document and so apply our logic, such as reverting any changes to visual labels before printing.

Excel

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 header/footer type section of the 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.
  • If a user classifies a workbook and then changes the Excel Header & Footer options (in the ribbon) to set different first page, or different odd and even pages, the user may notice that the visual labels are no longer applied on all pages of the sheets. This is a known behavior in excel for how headers and footers operate. This will be resolved on the next classification of the file, or when it is next saved or printed.
  • As Excel has no concept of a title page, in the “Visual Label Options” pop up there are only the options to apply to all sheets, or 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 re-nameable placeholder names. It refers to sheets counting from left to right.
    • To use this, please use the fromSheet and/or toSheet 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 to true.
  • Sample Excel Visual Tagging Config:
    "visualTagging": {
  "showHeader": true,
  "header": "<span style = \"color:#00FF00;\">Excel O H Classification: <strong>{classification}/{distribution}</strong></span>",
  "showFooter": true,
  "footer": "<span style = \"color:DarkTurquoise;\">Excel O F Classification: <strong>{classification}/{distribution}</strong></span>",
  "popupConfiguration": {
    "alwaysShowPopup": false,
    "enforceSheetLayoutOption": false,
    "sheetLayoutOptions": "allSheets",
    "fromSheet": 1,
    "toSheet": 2,
    "enforceOverwriteOption": false,
    "overwriteOption": "append"
  }
}

  • Excel Visual Label Options Pop-up:

Outlook

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 FDC 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 will not 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,x they can be classified regularly but the new changes of non-editable markings do not apply to them.