OL Connect Release Notes 1.6.1

Overview

This document provides an overview of the new features and enhancements in OL Connect 1.6.1 and Workflow 8.6.

The major focus of Connect 1.6 has been to improve performance and increase stability, as well as launching a new option for the PReS Connect and PlanetPress Connect brands called OL Connect Send.
A description of the the new OL Connect Send can be found here: OL Connect Send.

Installing OL Connect 1.6.1 and Workflow 8.6

• 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 and Workflow 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 1.6.1 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 1.6.1 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.

Updating stand-alone Workflow Messenger installations

If Workflow Messenger were installed stand alone, with no other Workflow components installed, the Update Client cannot find the Messenger component and thus it will not automatically update the component to the Workflow 8.6 version of Messenger. To get around this, download and run the Workflow 8.6 installer manually.

Templates Used in Workflow

For improved performance we recommend re-saving Workflow templates set up in the previous versions to run with OL Connect1.6.1\Workflow 8.6.

Updating Connect 1.5 installations using Microsoft SQL Server as back-end

If a Microsoft Server and MySQL were installed with Connect 1.5, and the Server Configuration Tool used to switch the back-end database to Microsoft SQL, then an extra step is required in the Update to Connect 1.6.1. The procedure is documented in the installation guide.

Print Only Version

A Print Only license is available with version 1.6.1 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.

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.

OL Connect Send

OL Connect Send is an application of two components. The first is a Windows printer driver and the second is a set of Workflow plug-ins.

In its most basic form, OL Connect Send allows the transmission of print files over the Internet from any Windows Desktop application.

OL Connect Send flavors

OL Connect Send comes in three flavors. These are:

• Free of charge: No license required; any user; any domain; no usage limits; no web interaction.
• User mode: user-domain license required for each client domain; no usage limits, web interaction. OL Care at POP sold separately. Packages are available for 10, 25, 50, 100, 200 or Enterprise (Unlimited) users.
• Credit mode: credit license required; any user; any client (allows all domains) ; limited by credits only, web interaction. Includes OL Care at POP. Credits packages available for 20,000, 50,000, 100,000, 200,000 credits, 400,000 and 1,000,000 credits.
  
  

With the licensed version, OL Connect Send has the ability to requests a web page, displayed in the user’s browser that allows them to enter job specific information. The information from this web page tells Workflow what to do next. OL Connect Send can be used to create custom interactive workflows from a centralized location, yet has the ability to be deployed and installed very easily.

OL Connect Send Verticals and applications

OL Connect Send has many applications. These include:

• Print-for-Pay market: Enables the consolidation of incoming jobs for further processing, printing and mailing.
• Insurances and Financial market: Desktop capture over the Internet of print jobs, (remote workers and branches), for centralized processing, printing and mail.
• Law firms: Desktop capture over the Internet of print jobs requiring complex mail merge and stationery management.
• Supply Chain: Inbound document processing, such as capturing inbound invoices or POs for publication in an ECM. Print to EDI for outbound documents such as invoices.

For further information on Connect Send, please refer to the OL Connect Send website and standalone User Guide.

Connect 1.6.1 General Enhancements and Fixes

Performance improvements

• Changes to the handling of transparency in PDF backgrounds has not only cured some job failures, but has also led to substantial improvements to both output speeds and filesizes.
• Improved processing speed for multiple large detail table documents.
• Improvements made to the clean-up processes, improving overall production speed.
• Some memory leaks plugged, improving overall production speed.
• Improved reliability when using MS-SQL as back-end database.
  

Further Performance improvements can be found detailed in the Output Enhancements and Fixes section.

Documentation improvements

• Help layout changed to allow easier navigation, and the content improved.
• Broken links within the Welcome Screen have been fixed.

Installer improvements

• Microsoft SQL Server can now be setup as the back-end database during the installation process.

Print Manager improvements

• Support added for IPDS printer status (SNMP ).
• Improvements with handling and deleting of overlays for some IPDS printers.
• Disable printer capabilities check when the printer is busy, to reduce connection problems with older printers.
• Improved support for Xerox IPDS 495 printers.
• Improved error handling when IPDS structural errors are encountered in IPDS resources. The Print Manager now reports the error and ceases sending the job to the printer.
• Print Manager would hang when unexpected errors encountered on IPDS printers. The Print Manager now checks for fatal errors and exits the running job when one is encountered.
• Improved robustness when encountering Communications Errors. For example, the errors previously encountered when removing a job whilst Print Manager was retrying a connection.

Connect 1.6.1 Designer Enhancements and Fixes

General Designer improvements

• Interface improvements such as inclusion of icons for different types of files (js and CSS).
• Provided option to configure the script timeout period.
• Minor issues with non-English language translations fixed.
• Display issues that were sometimes encountered when changing section background images have been fixed.
• Issue with Virtual Stationery not being enabled when adding VS PDF in Formal Letter Template wizard now fixed.
• Fixed an issue in which resizing an abs box in some scenarios would result in an additional box being displayed.
• When typing in a non-English input language (such as Hebrew), the keyboard input would periodically switch to English. This issue has been fixed.
• Saving a template when in Source view would erroneously show snippet content within the Source view thereafter. This has been fixed.
• HEX encoding option added to DataMatrix barcodes.

Capture On The Go (COTG) and Web form improvements

• Dummy data can now be added, to help when designing COTG forms.
• Improvements made to the COTG Kitchen Sink template Wizard. Added Image Annotation and Fields Table controls.
• Visible container added to Geolocation objects.
• Added support for blank forms, for multiple submissions.
• Workflow "Output to COTG" task now returns Document ID.
• Fixed picture issues with iOS sometimes causing image to be displayed as a red "X".
• Fixed Geolocation coordinates on Android devices.

Connect 1.6.1 DataMapping Enhancements and Fixes

• Support for Regular Expressions added to database searches.
• Improved Datamapping process reliability.
• Improved data record reliability when handling large jobs (those in excess of 50,000 records).
• Improved PDF extraction avoids character duplication.
• Improved marking of data fields in extraction steps.
• New option added to support multibyte (variable length) encoded data such as Big5, GBK, UTF-8 and Shift-JIS.
• Fixed issue whereby post-function for extracted fields containing several lines would only replace characters on the first line.
• Fixed issue with Identically named datafields in different detail tables causing issues with data extraction.
• Fixed issues with Right-To-Left text concatenation.
• Fixed issues with PlanetPress Suite PDFs not working consistently within Connect.

Connect 1.6.1 Output Enhancements and Fixes

General

• Merge Engine memory leaks fixed.
• Improved creation of Metadata after content creation.
• Improved conditional content for Email and Web output.
• Fixed issue with PDF Pass-through jobs, whereby hidden features of the PDF input were being included in the output.
• Some templates containing JPG or Bitmap graphics could trigger the flatten.exe program (used for flattening external files) to repeatedly open, causing performance degradation or even failure.

Email Output

• Fixed issue with the email Subject field not being encoded properly when using characters other than Latin characters.
• To improve privacy certain Meta tags that were embedded in the output email HTML have been removed. These include "email-reply-to", "email-from", "sender-name" and "sender-address".
• The Date field was not always included in the email header. This has been fixed and the Date field should now be present in all email headers.

Print Output

• Improved processing speed for jobs involving separation that create multiple output files.
• Improvements made in the conversion of PDFs to other formats have made such conversions significantly faster and the output smaller, in PCL, AFP and IPDS output.
• Improved page range handling on last page.
• Improved N-Up positioning.
• Improved color support on older AFPDS and IPDS printers.
• PDF and TIF objects are now marked for optimization in AFPDS output
• Vector graphic processing improved, resulting in much faster output, and smaller file sizes.
• Issues with AFPDS Highlight colors have been resolved.
• Issues resolved with missing non-Latin characters (such as the dyet "Đ" character) in IPDS PDF Pass-through jobs.
• Errors were encountered in Connect Master/Slave environments, when printing to a directory via a Job Output Mask that contained a directory structure.
• Fixed issue with missing PDF backgrounds in output from Master/Slave (Server Clustered) environments. These errors were due to merge engine concurrency issues.
• If an image file were replaced on disk between runs then a subsequent Proof printing would display the old image, . This has been fixed.
• Merge engine no longer slows down when using external JavaScript files in print sections.
• Fixed "ApplicationException: Null" errors encountered in some PCL outputs.
• Added support for shaded bitmap fonts to allow printing of grey text on supported IPDS and AFPDS printers.
• Fixed issues with output to IPDS Printers that do not support FS45.
• Fixed issues with imported PDF graphics that were inverted in IPDS output.
• Conversion of certain FS10 G4 encoded images in IPDS output was causing Xerox 495 Printers to crash. This printer specific issue has now been fixed.
• In IPDS and AFPDS output lines and boxes would be drawn using "Graphics Object Content Architecture" (GOCA) processing, rather than the more efficient Write Text (WT) processing. This has now been fixed, and the more efficient process is now used.
• New PrinterDef designed for Nipson 7000 IPDS printer, which does not support Extended OVL.
• When converting a PDF in IPDS processing, if the final item could not be converted it was lost. This has now been fixed.

Known Issues

Installing OL Connect Send on a machine with Connect installed.

When OL Connect Send Plug-Ins are installed (either standalone or via a Workflow installation) on the same machine as Connect, an interference between OL Connect Send's internal Database and that of Connect may occur, which will block a browser popup on that same machine.
This issue can be fixed by applying a startup wait to the Connect Server Service.
If the issue occurs during runtime, restarting the Connect Server Service will fix the issue.

OL Connect Send issues under Microsoft Edge browser.

• Issues with using the built-in Windows 10 default "Administrator" account and the OL Connect Send Client. This is due to Windows disallowing the opening an Edge browser whilst running under this account. This blocks interaction with the printer driver.
• The Microsoft Edge browser fails to display web pages when Workflow's CORS option (in the HTTP Server Input 2 section) is set to "*". This issue will be resolved in a future release.
  

Disk Drive 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.

Note that this is not an issue with fresh Connect installations, which have the correct settings by default.

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 | es | de | fr | it | ja | pt | tw | 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 1.6.1 a downgrade to a Connect version earlier 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 later (MySQL 5.6) is different to that used in earlier versions. If you need to switch to an older version of Connect / MySQL, it is first 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 1.6.1: *.all[0].*

Any preset containing this code will need to be recreated in Version 1.6.1.

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 Workflow

In 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.