OL Connect Release Notes 1.4.2

Overview

This document provides an overview of the new features and enhancements in OL Connect 1.4.n and OL Connect Workflow 8.4.

Installing OL Connect 1.4.n and Workflow 8.4

• OL Connect is released as a 64 Bit version only (with the exception of the Workflow, Fax, Search and Imaging modules).
• Full details on installing and licensing OL Connect can be found in the online help in the installer.
• Note that the software comes with a 30 day trial license by default.

Updating from OL Connect 1.1

In order to upgrade from Connect Version 1.1 to Version 1.4.n via the Update Manager it is necessary to install a new version of the Objectif Lune Update Client. The next time you run your current Update Client it will show that there is an update available for itself. Simply click on the download button in the dialog to install the new version of the Update Client. Note that it is no problem to run the update while the Client is open. It will automatically update itself.

Once you have done this, OL Connect 1.4.n will become available for download.

From Connect Version 1.2.0 onwards, the newer version of the Update Client was included with the Connect installation.

Print Only Version

A Print Only license is available with version 1.4.n of OL Connect which allows legacy PlanetPress Suite 7 customers on OL Care to upgrade to Connect for a minimal fee. The license allows regular printing via the Print Wizard but runs Email and Web output in demo mode. For more information, please contact your local OL Customer Care or Sales team.

Templates Used in Workflow

For improved performance we recommend resaving Workflow templates set up in the previous versions to run with OL Connect 1.4.n\Workflow 8.4.

Reduced Memory Version

It is now possible to install OL Connect on a machine with a minimum of 2 GB of RAM. The OL Connect Designer will automatically detect whether it has been installed on a machine with less than 4 GB of RAM and default to only using one internal Weaver and one internal merge engine on that system. The Server will also run using internal engines.

Connect 1.4.2 Enhancements and Fixes

Designer

• A blank page is no longer added to beginning of templates that use scripting to add pages from PDF files. This problem only appeared when saving to a new file from within Preview mode, or when generating output from Preview mode. (SHARED-44564)
• Image elements referencing a PDF image would multiply when switching back and forth between Live and Preview modes, in both email and web contexts. This has now been fixed. (SHARED-44066)

Email and Web Output

• Elements whose style was set to display: none would be removed from HTML output, rather than just not being displayed. This error has been fixed. (SHARED-44151)

  Elements hidden via the Conditional Script wizard are removed from the output.

Print Manager

• IPDS - Printing a range of pages with Trace On would lead to errors. This has now been fixed. (SHARED-44291)

Connect 1.4.1 New Features and Enhancements

New Languages Added

The Connect user interface is now supported in Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and Chinese (Simplified) as well as English, French, German, Japanese and Chinese (Traditional). The default language remains English. Further languages will be introduced in later releases.

The language can be selected during the installation of Connect or via the Language Setting options in the Preferences dialog (note that Connect needs to be restarted in order to apply the selected language).

At present only the Connect user interface has been translated. Error messages and warnings will be translated for a later release.

Welcome Screen Extended

• The Printer Definition Configs and HCF files available on the OL Connect website are now grouped by manufacturer, to simplify selection.
• Connect 1.4.1 also introduces Responsive Email Templates.

Virtualisation

• Connect is now supported on the Microsoft Hyper-V and Hyper-V/Azure environments as well as the VMWare Workstation, Server, Player and ESX infrastructure environments.

Modifying Connect Installations

• Connect 1.4.1 introduces the ability to Modify Connect installations, once Connect 1.4.1 has been installed.

Connect 1.4.1 Designer Enhancements and Fixes

Capture OnTheGo

• Remote CSS and Javascript resources can now be pre-fetched and shared between documents to avoid having to embed them in every template. (SHARED-39095)
• Signature widgets can now be marked as required. (SHARED-39833)
• Annotations can now be added to static images (not the picture widget). (SHARED-40369)

Email Context

• Email context sections can be enabled or disabled based upon data value. (SHARED-33656)
• Email port number can now be specified as part of the host name. (SHARED-38008)
• New template wizard for Slate templates by Litmus. (SHARED-36843)

Print Context

• Ability added to mirror margins on back pages of Duplex jobs, via Facing Pages selection added in Sheet Configuration dialog. (SHARED-40505)
• Can now suppress Master Page on duplex back pages, if there are no contents.

Scripting

• Result can now be written as a JSON string into an attribute or text (instead of the field value). Useful for web contexts where a front-end script can easily read the value.
• User-defined formatting masks can now be used when outputting dates and numerical values.
• Conditional script set to "Show if Condition is true" will hide the object by default.
• Page range can be specified via scripting when setting PDF as background. (SHARED-36998)
• Matched elements are highlighted when hovering over scripts. (SHARED-38293)

General

• Numerous improvements to Designer GUI and user-experience. These include:
  • A new "Styles" pane that displays the styles applied to the selected object.
  • Image Selection Dialog now inserts from resources, files or URL.
  • Line number option now available from any source view.
  • View menu now has entries to switch between views within the Workspace.
• Set any PDF as background for a Section. (SHARED-39880)
• Specify a background image and control its size, position and repeat mode. (SHARED-14522)
• Option to generate JSON string from data model fields to pass data record information to client side script. (SHARED-39337)
• CSS Class name completion suggests CSS classes based upon the current section. (SHARED-36870)
• CSS Style inspector allows full control over styles. (SHARED-22929)

Connect 1.4.1 Output Enhancements and Fixes

Print Output

• Images, barcodes, OMRs and text can now all be added to the page at time of output generation.
• Ability to add Metadata to any output type (previously only PDF and AFP), for use within output Presets.
• Static strings can now be added to Metadata in job Presets.
• The Output Path in the Output Preset can now be set dynamically.
• New Color setting for the Add Text option. (SHARED-40830)
• Monochrome and Dithering support added to PCL output. (SHARED-39937)
• Dithering and B&W threshold values now supported in the Print Wizard. (SHARED-39520)
• New option to control Compact Font Format settings within PostScript. (SHARED-39902)
• Support for Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) queries added to Print Manager. (SHARED-39213)

Email Output

• SMTP port can now be customized when sending email.

Known Issues

Memory Usage in Clustered Environments

In high speed clustered environments, OL Connect will fill the database faster than the clean-up service can clear it (the ratio is approximately 3:1). Therefore if the system needs to run for some time under a considerable load, a larger database should be used to prevent production from being interrupted.

We also recommend only the Master Server performing the database clean-up or the local Server Extension if the database is not installed with the Master to improve performance. For ALL Designers, Server and Server Extensions except one, set the clean-up of the database entities to run every 100 months and disable the clean-up for any Designer which also has a Server or Server Extension on that machine. Note that if the Designer is a stand-alone then it is not connected to the central DB for clean-up purposes.

Installation Paths with Multi-Byte Characters

When installing the Chinese (Traditional or Simplified) or Japanese versions of Connect, if the user specifies an alternative installation path containing multi-byte/wide-char characters it can break some of the links to the Connect-related shortcuts in the Start Menu and cause an error to appear at the end of the installer. The workaround for the moment is to use the default installation path. The problem will be addressed in a later release.

Switching Languages

Changing the language using the Window>Preferences>Language Setting menu option does not currently change all of the strings in the application to the selected language. This is a known issue and will be fixed in a later release.

In the meantime we offer the following workaround for anyone who needs to change the language:

1. Go to the .ini files for the Designer and Server Config:
   • C:\Program Files\Objectif Lune\OL Connect\Connect Designer\Designer.ini
   • C:\Program Files\Objectif Lune\OL Connect\Connect Server Configuration\ServerConfig.ini
2. Change the language parameter to the required one under Duser.language=en | fr | de | ja | zh

Only one of the above language tags should be selected. Once saved, Connect will appear in the selected language at next start-up.

GoDaddy Certificates

When installing Connect offline, dialogs allow installing the GoDaddy certificates. Most users should use the default settings and click Next. In some cases, however, this may not work correctly. For this reason those users should activate Place all certificates in the following store and then select the Trusted Root Certification Authorities as the target certificate store.

MySQL Compatibility

After installing Connect 1.4.n a downgrade to a Connect version older than Connect 1.3 or to a MySQL version earlier than 5.6.25 is not seamlessly possible. This is because the database model used in Connect 1.3 and 1.4.n (MySQL 5.6) is different to earlier versions. If you need to switch to an older version of Connect / MySQL, it is necessary to remove the Connect MySQL Database folder from "%ProgramData%\Connect\MySQL\data" before installing the older version.

PostScript Print Presets

The print presets for PostScript were changed from Version 1.1 onwards meaning that some presets created in Version 1.0 or 1.0.1 may no longer work.

Any PostScript print preset from Version 1.0 that contains the following will not work in Version 1.4: *.all[0].*

Any preset containing this code will need to be recreated in Version 1.4.

Available Printer Models

Note that only the single Printer Model (Generic PDF) will appear on the Advanced page of the Print Wizard by default.

To add additional printer models click on the settings button next to the Model selection entry box.

Note that the descriptions of some of the printers were updated in version 1.2 meaning that if you had version 1.n installed, you may find that the same printer style appears twice in the list, but with slightly different descriptions.

For example the following printer types are actually identical:

• Generic PS LEVEL2 (DSC compliant)
• Generic PS LEVEL2 (DSC)

External Resources in Connect

There are certain limitations on how external resources can be used in Connect. For example if you want to link a file (e.g., CSS, image, JavaScript etc.) from a location on the network but you do not want to have a copy of the file saved with the template you need to do the following:

1. The resource must be located where it can be accessed by all Servers/Slaves run as users. Failure to do this will cause the image to appear as a Red X in the output for all documents which were merged by engines which could not access the file. The job will terminate normally and the error will be logged.
2. The file must be referenced via a UNC path e.g.,

   file:////w2k8r2envan/z%20images/Picture/Supported/JPG/AB004763.jpg

   • UNC paths are required because the services will be unable to access mapped network drives (Windows security feature).
   • The engine processing the job will look on the local file system for the direct file path leading to the “resource not found” issue mentioned above.

Using Capture After Installing Workflow 8

If OL Connect Workflow 8 is installed alongside PlanetPress Suite Workflow 7, Capture can no longer be used within Workflow 7. The plugins are now registered uniquely to Workflow 8 and the messenger for Workflow 7 is taken offline. It is only possible to use Capture from OL Connect Workflow 8 thereafter.

Capturing Spool Files After Installing Workflow 8

If OL Connect Workflow 8 is installed alongside PlanetPress Suite Workflow 7, the PlanetPress Suite 7 option to capture spool files from printer queues will no longer function. The solution is to use OL Connect Workflow 8 to capture spool files from printer queues.

Colour Model in Stylesheets

The colour model of colours defined in a stylesheet can sometimes change after editing the stylesheet. This is a known issue and will be addressed in a subsequent release.

Online Help Links Point to Introductory Page

Context sensitivity for the online help is not yet enabled in Connect. All links and F1 calls point to the introductory page, where you can Search on keywords to bring up Help pages relating to the topic.

Context sensitivity will be introduced in a subsequent release of Connect.

Image Preview in Designer

If in the Windows Internet settings (Connection Settings > LAN configuration) a proxy is enabled, but "Bypass proxy settings for local addresses" is not checked, the image preview service, conversion service and live preview tab in the Designer will not work and exhibit the following issues:

• Images will be shows as 0 size boxes (no red 'X' is displayed)
• Live preview does not progress, and when re-activated reports "browsers is busy"

To fix the issue you must check the "Bypass proxy settings for local addresses" option.

Merge\Weaver Engines when Printing

The print operation in the Designer will automatically detect whether the Merge\Weaver engines are available and display a message for the user to retry or cancel if not. Once the Merge\Weaver engine becomes available and the user presses retry the print operation will proceed as normal. This message can also occur in the following circumstances:

• If the server is offline and you are not using Proof Print
• On some occasions before the Print Wizard opens

REST Calls for Remote Services

The Server will now accept REST calls for all remote services and will make commands wait indefinitely until the required engines become available. The Server will log when it is waiting for an engine and when it becomes available. Note that there is no way to cancel any commands other than stopping the Server.

Print Content and Email Content in OL Connect Workflow

In OL Connect Workflow’s Print Content and Email Content tasks, the option to Update Records from Metadata will only work for fields whose data type is set to String in the data model. Fields of other types will not be updated in the database and no error will be raised. This will be fixed in a later release.

VIPP Output

Some templates set up with landscape orientation are being produced as portrait in VIPP. It can also sometimes be the case that text and images can be slightly displaced. These are known issues and will be addressed in a later release of Connect.

Print Limitations when the Output Server is located on a different machine

The following limitation may occur when using the Print options from a Designer located on a different machine to the Output Server:

• The file path for the prompt and directory output modes is evaluated on both the client AND server side. When printing to a network share it must be available to BOTH the Designer and Server for the job to terminate successfully.
• The Windows printer must be installed on both the Server and Designer machines.
• When printing via the Server from a remote Designer, the output file remains on the Server machine. This is remedied by selecting “Output Local” in the Output Creation configuration.