OL Connect Release Notes 2024.2.3

License Update Required for Upgrade to OL Connect 2024.x

From OL Connect 2019.1 onwards, only customers with a current OL Care subscription will be able to update OL Connect.

Every OL Connect license now contains an end date that represents the last day of OL Care coverage for each customer. Upgrades and updates of OL Connect will be freely available up until that end date, but will not be available thereafter, unless the OL Care period is extended.

This licensing model requires anyone upgrading from OL Connect versions earlier than 2019.1 to first update their OL Connect License. A dialog box appears as part of the OL Connect upgrade process requesting that you do this.

It is recommended that you first update the OL Update Manager, as newer versions of the Update Manager can update your OL License to the required version.

For further details on how to upgrade the OL Update Manager to the latest version and update your OL Connect License see the Update Manager 1.9 - Upgrade Guide.

If issues arise, or if you need to renew your OL Care subscription, please contact your local Customer Care group.

Backup before Upgrading

It is recommended that you always backup your existing OL Connect preferences before upgrading to a new version. This will enable you to revert back to the previous version, in a worst case scenario in which the new version introduces issues with your existing production processes. Whilst the probability of such a worst case scenario is remote, it cannot hurt to take some simple precautions, just in case.

For instructions on how to do so, please see Backup existing OL Connect version.

Overview

This document provides an overview of the new features and enhancements in OL Connect 2024.2, as well as some important installation information.

Installing OL Connect 2024.2

  • OL Connect is released as a 64 bit version only.
  • Full details on installing and licensing OL Connect can be found in the online help, here Installation and activation.
  • Note that OL Connect comes with a 30 day trial license by default.
  • It is recommended that you install and use OL Connect Designer under the same user account.

OL Connect installer requires Administrator rights

Please note that the OL Connect installations can only be run by users who have Administrator rights.

OL Connect 2024.2.3 Improvements

Data handling regression issue

A data handling regression issue was discovered with CSV/Excel data when running existing Templates. This issue was introduced by new auto-detection functionality, added in the 2024.2 release.

A option to "Automatically detect data types" has now been added to the data mapping configuration dialogs, to allow switching between the new behavior (checkbox selected) or the old. (94522)

 

Section background causing blank pages

Fixed an issue with sheet configuration that could produce additional unneeded blank pages in certain cases when a section background was used. (94745)

OL Connect 2024.2.2 Improvements

Some regression issues were discovered specific to 2024.2.1. These issues have been addressed in 2024.2.2. They were:

  • Issues with dynamic email attachments in templates. Both those that were added using custom scripts or via the Dynamic Attachment wizard. This issue did not impact scenarios involving the Print context attached as a PDF or static attachments, and it did not affect earlier versions of the software.

    The issue was that dynamic email attachments would accumulate across multiple messages. Additionally, when testing in the Designer application, this could cause attachments to be unintentionally added to the template. We now ensure dynamic email attachments are handled correctly, with each email containing only the intended attachments and templates being saved properly.

    If you are using dynamic attachments in your templates, we recommend testing them after updating to confirm that everything is functioning as expected. (94522)

    Note: Even though OL Connect Desktop cannot create email output, you could still corrupt email templates by going to the preview tab and saving them.

  • Remote translations files could not be added to templates. In templates that already had remote translation files added, you could no longer update any properties nor view the content of the remote file in read only mode. (94536)

OL Connect 2024.2.1 Improvements

During the OL Connect 2024.2.0 partner preview a regression issue was discovered with the Preferences dialogs not displaying all options. This was fixed for the 2024.2.1 release. (94142)

OL Connect 2024.2 Improvements

Architectural Software Updates

  • Java: Updated the Java platform which OL Connect runs on to Adoptium Temurin version. 21.0.3. (92074)

  • MariaDB: Updated the database that is packaged with OL Connect to 11.3.2.

Security improvements

  • Third party libraries updated to recent versions. (92741)
  • The Quartz Library has been removed and this may affect your Clean-up Schedule due to the change in CRON specification. (92748)
  • JavaScript Libraries used by OL Connect have been updated to current versions. (92983)

OL Connect backend improvements

  • Fixed issue with database preferences prompting a database restart warning when settings reverted back to original settings. (92615)

  • Resources being used in Content, Job and Output creation are now clearly identified in the engine logs. (92702)

OL Connect 2024.2 Designer Improvements

Address Block improvements

  • The Insert Address Block dialog now remembers the last applied address format template, instead of going back to the locale default. (92527)
  • Address Block has now been made read-only in Preview mode. (93172)
  • Added support for the United States Postal Service Ancillary Service Endorsement (ASE) and IMb barcodes. (93362)
    •
  • If the Address Blocks working folder doesn’t exist yet, it gets created. (93513)

Handlebars improvements

  • Improved handling for reserved characters contained within square brackets or quotes. (92803)
  • Fixed an issue where Handlebars expressions in table captions would not be replaced. (92805)
  • Introduced a “counter” helper for Handlebars. (93115)
  • Fixed an issue that could cause Handlebars expressions in elements with data-translate to become hard-coded in Master Page content. (93382)

General Designer improvements

  • The Designer Messages View was not catching log messages prior to it displaying. This has been fixed. (64681)
  • Introduced Remote Control Scripts to access control scripts not found within the Template. (87605)
  • Improved the Auto save feature. It now postpones saving if the Designer is busy. (90672)
  • Added option to quickly Duplicate resources. (90695)
  • We now support inserting barcodes in snippets. Note, though, that barcodes cannot be absolute positioned in snippets. (90772)
  • Added a new menu item for adding sample data. (90868)
  • Introduced a View Menu to the Data Model view. (91073)
  • Improved matching character highlighting (for CSS, HTML and JavaScript). (91177)
  • Preference pages can now be filtered on keywords found in the contents, not just in the titles. (91311)
  • Added an Image section to the Attributes view. (91561)
  • Fixed an issue where a post pagination script would be unable to modify master content after merge.section.paginate() was called. (92075)
  • Improved error handling for loading remote content, and Handlebars partials in particular. (92119)
  • Fixed a problem with the Send COTG Test when used in combination with JSON sample data. (92245)
  • Added "drag and drop" and "double click on Data Model fields" support to the URL field for hyperlinks in the Attributes panel. (92428)
  • Added support for sentence case as an option for the string formatter object and as string formatter in Handlebars expressions. (92530)
  • Added ability to access Section metadata entries in Print Context. These properties can then be accessed in standard User Scripts or through the @meta helper in Handlebars. (92574/93383)
  • Added support for a built-in "lookup" helper for Handlebars. (92576)
  • Fixed an issue whereby on some machines the UI language could not be changed. (92636)
  • The Designer Messages View was not catching log messages prior to becoming visible. This has been fixed. (92687)
  • Prevented an error dialog from popping up after clicking Cancel while opening an editor. (92783)
  • Changed the default scale option for QR and DataMatrix barcodes to Proportional. (92868)
  • Prevented an unnecessary error about core.css being logged when switching to Live mode. (92940)
  • Labels in the Resources panel now include a count that represents the number of child entries (excluding folders). (93020)
  • Disabled Section Background settings are no longer used when a Section Background is enabled in scripting. (93197)
  • Fixed a problem in the Show View menu where it would show less items for certain languages. (93198)
  • Fixed a pagination issue that could cause cosmetic issues in the Designer. (93215)
  • Improved the behavior of forced page breaks in pagination, when job is Previewed. In certain rare cases this may lead to small differences in output, particularly when it comes to the margins of elements at the top and bottom of each page. (93256)

  • Added ability to launch the Section Clone wizard by right-clicking a section in the Resources panel. (93511)

  • Fixed an issue that could cause edit helpers (for dragging and resizing) to be persisted in Templates and in some cases even appear in output. This only occurred for sections that use Handlebars and/or JavaScript resources. (93533)

OL Connect 2024.2 Output Improvements

Print Wizard\Preset enhancements

  • Fixed an issue where attempts to import a printer definition could sometimes display a “Printer not available” error even though it has been successfully imported. (90670)
  • Fixed an issue that would occasionally cause the last used preset file(s) in the Print Dialog to load as “<Last Used Settings>” when no change to the preset file had been made. (92645)

  • Added support for localized font names for Output Preset additional text. (92710)

  • Added support to the PPD import feature in the output and print wizards for WindowsANSI language encoding. (93819)

Known Issues

As of OL Connect 2018.1 the Known Issues have moved from the Release Notes to the OL Connect Online Help.

They can be found here Known Issues.