How to use Microsoft Word Mail Merge Templates and Cloud Storage options with Aspose.Words REST API

Hi,

We´re developers for a new startup that wants to use Aspose mainly to generate documents from a couple of different templates. We´re just starting with Aspose and we´ve a couple of questions around Storage and Security.

Storage
As far as we´ve understood, Aspose.Words receives the templates from an “outside” storage, either Aspose.Storage or a third party. Does this mean that we can store the templates on any location and just send the template trough the API ? or does the API need to access physically the storage where the template is saved ?
If our option is to use our own storage to store the template, does it affects significantly performance when merging data with a template to generate a file instance ?

Security
From your File Policy disclaimer, we´ve understood that merged files aren´t saved anywhere in your servers, this question is just to confirm, our final client will be generating files data have some personal data and needs to be 100% sure that those files are only available within the context of the REST API call.

Thank you for your help and support,

Vasco Marques

@VMLean,

Thank you for contacting Aspose Support.

You have to store your mail merge templates in either Aspose Cloud Storage or a Third Party storage solution of your choice. Aspose Storage supports Amazon S3, Dropbox, Google Drive, Google Cloud, Windows Azure, FTP and Box storage as an external storage provider. The data to populate the templates can be sent via a REST call.

If our option is to use our own storage to store the template, does it affects significantly performance when merging data with a template to generate a file instance ?

It does not matter whether you use Aspose Cloud Storage or a Third Party storage, it would not effect the MailMerge API performance.

Regarding your question about security, we at Aspose take our client’s confidentiality very seriously. You are correct in your assumption that we do not store any files on the Server.

The following links would help you to get started:
Aspose.Words for Cloud API References
Aspose.Words for Cloud SDK
Aspose.Words for Cloud Developer Guide
Aspose.Storage Getting Started

Should you need any further information, please do not hesitate to contact us.

@VMLean

In addition to above reply. I would like to share some updates. If you do not want to use any storage Aspose or 3rd Party, then you can use ExecuteMailMergeOnline API method. It requires Template and data file in request body and returns the output document in the response body as stream. So there is no involvement of any storage at all.

Secondly, in latest API Version V4, we have introduced native Storage API methods in Aspose.Words Cloud API. So there is no need to use Aspose.Storage Cloud API anymore.

Working with Files in Aspose.Words Cloud API
Working with Folders in Aspose.Words Cloud API