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Some report data will be submitted via email attachments. Our users rely on a mix of Excel 2007 through 2017 on Windows machines. As such, it's viable to provide them with .xlsx templates which they fill out, edit, save, and finally submit via an email attachments.
Because Excel 2007 doesn't
Although performing thorough data validation at the system level within NiFi would be ideal, time constraints preclude this approach at the moment. Instead, we're relying on the provided Excel templates to steer users toward proper data entry to the extent possible. Users with modern versions of Excel will benefit from the validations we've entered into the Excel templates. Users relying on Excel 2007, however, will not. Such users can enter arbitrary and incorrect values into text fields which later versions of Excel protect. For instance, Excel 2017 users are only allowed to enter facility names into certain fields. Excel 2007 users can enter anything into such cells.
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