OL Connect Release Notes 2024.1

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 1.8 - 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 2024.1 and Workflow 2024.1, as well as some important installation information.

Installing OL Connect 2024.1 and Workflow 2024.1

• 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 helps.
  OL Connect: Installation and activation.
  OL Connect Workflow: Workflow Installation.
• Note that both OL Connect and Workflow come with a 30 day trial license by default.
• It is recommended that you install and use OL Connect Designer and Server under the same user account.

OL Connect and Workflow installers require Administrator rights

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

OL Connect templates used in Workflow

For improved performance we recommend re-saving any OL Connect templates used in Workflow to the current version of OL Connect templates.

Reduced Memory Version (not recommended for production)

It is 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 2024.1 Improvements

OL Connect 2024.1.1

During the OL Connect 2024.1.0 partner preview a regression issue was discovered with PDF text extraction using the DataMapper. This was fixed in the 2024.1.1 release. (92889)

Architectural Software Updates

• Java: Updated the Java platform which OL Connect runs on to Adoptium Temurin version 17.0.10. (92408)

• MariaDB: Updated the database that is packaged with OL Connect to 10.11.5. (89879)

Google Cloud Platform

Google Cloud Platform is now officially supported as a cloud environment to deploy OL Connect, with AWS and Azure. (92104)

Security improvements and library updates

• The setup no longer installs Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime 10.0 (x64) as part of the prerequisites. (90229)

• Added Server configuration option to disable cross-origin resource sharing. (92861)
  
  

Installer Improvements

• A Use Windows Authentication option was added to the installer when configuring a custom Microsoft SQL Server database. (81421)

• If an error occurs when installing the backend MariaDB database and the database service is found not to be running, improved error details are now recorded in the installation log. (90627)

OL Connect backend improvements

• Added Merge Engine Template reuse limit to the Preferences. (87403)
  
  
• Fixed handling of dates under selected Microsoft SQL Server login languages, when using partitioning for the clean up service. (90679)
• Updated validation of Microsoft SQL Server instance names in the database preference pages to match Microsoft requirements. (90683)
• Fixed issue whereby the magic number was not displayed in the Activation dialog due to a computer firmware issue. (90914)

REST API improvements

• Job Creation without Job Preset
  Added support for running default job creation processes on Content Sets via new REST API endpoint /rest/serverengine/workflow/jobcreation/default/{contentSetId}, without requiring a Job Creation Preset. (89926)
• Print Job Statistics
  A new REST API endpoint has been added to OL Connect Server to retrieve statistics of print jobs:
  /rest/serverengine/statistics/jobset/{jobSetId (91372)
  
  The information contains the number of documents, sheets and pages used, along with the applied media types. This is useful for accounting purposes and helps with calculating costs to manage budgets in a printing environment.
  
  The same endpoint also returns document tags for each document (such as dataRecordId and contentItemId), which can be used to populate metadata for document management and archiving solutions. These tags are set in the Job Preset configuration.

OL Connect 2024.1 Designer Improvements

Address Block

A new address block feature has been added to OL Connect Designer to effortlessly insert addresses formatted to the specific guidelines of the selected country. (8795)

You can link data to the elements that compose the address details via the Address Block dialog. The feature automatically collapses empty lines, and provides an option to align the address to the bottom of the address block object.

It automatically sorts the address lines as per the specified country's address specification, and will even add extra spaces between address elements, if required.

At the moment address block templates are provided for the following countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Netherlands, Belgium, Australia, and Malaysia. Other regions and postal service specific formats will be added in future versions.

For specific countries the feature provides options to render postal barcodes, for example the Dutch KIX barcode.

The feature also allows for custom address block templates. This allows you to create your own custom address block templates, for accommodating missing regions or meeting specific postal service criteria.

Major Handlebar Improvements

• "Else if" construct

  The Handlebars implementation in OL Connect supports the fundamental "if else" statement, allowing you to conditionally display content within Handlebars snippets.
  This construct is now expanded with the "else if" statement, enabling even more sophisticated comparisons. (91943)
  For example: 
  {{#if eq policy "HI"}}
    Health Insurance
{{else if eq policy "CI"}}
    Car Insurance
{{else}}
    General Insurance
{{/if}}

• Concat() helper

  Added a ‘concat' helper for Handlebars, which concatenates two or more arguments. (91843)
  It is useful when you want to combine multiple strings for example to dynamically load the contents of a snippet using the partial notation:

  {{+ (concat 'product_' productName)}}
{{+ (concat productName '_' lang)}}
  

  This loads the contents of the “product_toothbrush” or “toothbrush_EN” Handlebars snippet respectively.

• New data variables

  New data variables (prefixed with “@”-sign) are introduced to access runtime parameters and template properties. (91997/92039)
  
  {{@parameters.workspaceFolder}}
{{@properties.application}}
{{@properties.custom.MyProp1}

• Added support for hash arguments and Partial Contexts. (91956)
• Improved behavior for whitespace control. (92173)
  See Expressions | Whitespace control for more info.
• Raw blocks (those that start with four curly braces) are now ignored. (92343)

Translation improvements

When po files are missing the Plural-Forms header, OL Connect now use a default Plural-Forms definition for the language, based on Plural Forms - Localization Guide. (90209)

 

Dynamic Table improvements

Added support for barcodes in dynamic tables, enabling the creation of documents such as warehouse pick lists with scannable barcodes for each line item. (91196)

General Designer improvements

• Fixed a bug where resources added to the template (for example images) were not visible in the resources panel. (89309)
• Fixed an issue with fr-CA locale accounting currency formatting incorrectly. (90227)
• Fixed an issue with switching from Preview mode to Design mode, if Translations are used in combination with ‘Evaluate Handlebars expressions’.
  In order to fix this Preview mode is now read-only if ‘Evaluate Handlebars expressions’ is turned on. (90420)
• Designer now makes sure to select an entire Handlebars expression, even it’s only partially selected, when applying a style. For example setting a text selection to bold. (90597)

• Fixed an issue that could result in inappropriate margins after calling merge.section.paginate from a post pagination script. (90932)

• When inserting an image with a name that already exists in the template, you can now overwrite the existing image with the new one. (90976)

• Updated the default styling for <hr> elements to avoid rasterization in AFP output. (91004)

• Added date formatting options for strings in the Text Scripts and Text Helper wizards. These can be used to present the string as a date, but the date must be in ISO or UTC format for this to work. (91061)

• The proper value for record.index is now shown in Preview mode when using JSON sample data. (91108)
• Fixed display of icons in the Package File dialog when the windows display scaling is not set to 100%. (91226)
• In the Word based print template wizard the margin values are always in print units (the preferred unit) and now all the values are converted to 2 decimals. (91309)
• Fixed errors when renaming files and folders in the Resources panel. (91318)
• Fixed several issues related to forced breaks done through page-break-after and page-break-before. (91365)
• Downgrading OL Connect templates to 2022.2 (or earlier) now migrates dynamic tables correctly. (91476)
• A “selector produced no results” tooltip is no longer shown for a script if its selector matches one on one of the applied master pages. (91478)
• The Set Type menu item in the context menu for the Data Model view is now enabled as long as no data mapping configuration editor is open. (91513)
• Welcome screen improvement. The Designer is no longer unresponsive for 20 seconds on startup when working offline. (91517)
• Pressing an arrow key in an HTML source editor no longer triggers code completion. (91591)
• Improved start up time of OL Connect Designer when setting up database connection. (91857)

• The Resources panel now highlights the active resource. (92007)
  The text bubbles at the top of each page in the main editor now have a distinct look for sections and master pages.

• The default scale setting for new inserted QR Code and Datamatrix barcodes has been changed to Proportional. (92037)
• Fixed an issue that prevented moving existing absolute positioned boxes on a master page of templates created in version 2023.1 or older. (92044)
• Improved version labels in File > Save a Copy... dialog. (92183)
• Fixed issue with renaming open snippets when Designer is first started. (92404)
• An error is now raised if an invalid date is passed to one of the date format functions. Previously this would fall back to January 1, 1970. (92607)
• Fixed an issue that could cause a dynamic table to be pushed to the next page unnecessarily in Preview mode. (92671)
• Improved the output of the Preview HTML, particularly for print sections. (92714)

General Scripting/Handlebar Improvements

• Handlebars expressions used in hyperlinks now work correctly in output. (90757)
• Added a visual indication as to whether the script folder contents are all disabled or not. (90759)
  

Some Enabled	All Disabled

• Dynamic media settings can be modified through one or more Control Scripts.
  For example: var section = merge.template.contexts.PRINT.sections["Section 1"] section.sheetConfig.positions.all.media = "Media 1" (90854)

• Moved the import and export scripts options to the ellipsis menu of the Scripts View. (91071)
  
  
• Fixed the annotation overview tooltip in the top-right corner of script editors. (91174)
• Fixed an issue where error suggestions for scripts that run on master pages would not always appear. (91483)
• Fixed a Handlebars issue where certain characters in strings (surrounded by quotes) or escaped content (surrounded by square brackets) would cause an error. (91567)
• Rule trees now initialize faster than before, particularly if there are many rules.
  Examples of rule trees can be found in the Conditional Content script wizard and in the Dynamic Table wizard. (92181)

OL Connect 2024.1 DataMapper Improvements

General DataMapper Improvements

• Microsoft Excel based DataMapper configurations can now select the sheet name dynamically, based upon runtime/automation properties. (80908)
  You can therefore re-use the same data mapping configuration even when the name of the target Excel sheet changes over time. For instance, your sheet name might change each month because it includes a date, or the workbook might contain two identical sheets, except the first one is in English while the second one is in French (e.g. Customers-EN, Customers-FR).
  In addition, you can refer to a sheet by its index instead of its name. You can therefore refer to the 1st, 7th or 42nd sheet in the workbook, based on a runtime parameter or some other property
• DataMapper now retains the last selected state for the “First row contains field names” property for new CSV and Excel data files. (89126)
• Improved version labels in File > Save a Copy... dialog. (90117)
• Fixed issue with missing last row in some Microsoft Excel data files. (90330)
• Fixed error in step property of JSON emulation after a "Validate" action. (90369)
• The JavaScript Expressions editor is now resizable. (90475)
• Fixed a regression issue that impacted the value of the final statement in a script, in the script engine. (90715)
• Improved usability of the CSV importation dialog. (90884)
• Fixed a problem with incorrect interpretation of multibyte characters in UTF-8 JSON data files. (91077)
• Data Model expanded state behavior has been improved and is now retained in the configuration file. (91101)
• Improved functionality in Order and rename fields dialog in DataMapper perspective. (91370)
• Fixed an issue that occurred when downgrading a template to OL Connect version 1.7. (92213)
• Logging statements were added to log which resources were used when a data mapping operation is performed. (92445)
• Fixed a problem with data mapping text from scaled PDF forms. (92600)

OL Connect 2024.1 Output Improvements

Print Wizard\Preset enhancements

• Fixed issues with loading an existing output preset into the Advanced Print and Output Preset wizards when the imposition sheet size is custom. (82807)
• Fixed issues when creating output presets with a printer model created from a PPD.
  If the PPD does not contain maximum page size dimensions and/or PageSize properties on PageSize elements it was possible for the internal media settings in the created preset to be corrupted, resulting in an unusable preset. (90690)
• Fixed color display in the Proof Preview dialog when previewing output via the preview option in the Output Preset wizard and Advanced Print wizard. (91238)
• Changed the default Position Method setting for Impositioning. (91999)

  • The initial ‘positioning method’ setting for impositioning is now “Center” instead of “Scale to fit”.

  • The initial target sheet size for impositioning is changed to SRA3 (otherwise it would be invalid with Letter format in combination with the new default positioning method “Center”).

General Output Improvements

• Fixed issue with images not being updated correctly when using a shared folder or local folder for Dynamic Images. (83415)
• Fixed an internal computation for cases where a negative font scale was used. (88553)
• Fix an output creation error for certain input files (for example, those with 0-scaled content) in combination with a license that produces a watermark (proof print). (90222)
• Added support for vertical writing content in passthrough PDF files. (90799)
• Use system encoding as fallback when decoding font names that are not UTF-8 or CIDSystemInfo-based. (90935)
• PDF passthrough now retains greater accuracy for matrices, which may be important for character positioning. (90974)
• Fixed a problem with PDF word spacing (Tw) handling when used with CID fonts. (90979)
• Fixed issues with erroneous Type 3 fonts being output, in some circumstances. (91058)
• The output engine now filters out (invisible) images that are drawn with a scale of zero. (91859)
• Fixed a problem with hyperlink being inserted at an incorrect position. (92128)
• Certain fonts may use multiple character codes for a single glyph. This was not supported correctly in the OL Connect output engine but has now been fixed. (92612)

Print Output Improvements

• Fixed an issue with content drift in certain cases where a single record would produce more than 30 pages of content. (89354)
• Fixed an error that would occur during proof printing, if a sub-directory was selected in the Job Output Mask and that sub-directory already exists. Such as when proof printing a second time. (90617)
• Improved font handling in AFP for large jobs. (90981)
• Fix “Invalid coordinates” exception that could occur when dithering very small images, in some AFP/IPDS/PCL output. (91093)
• Fixed an issue with images being written in incorrect order into the PCL output. (91782)
• Fixed an issue where under certain time sensitive circumstances a data record would be skipped and be missed in content creation. This would lead to missing pages. (92721)

Email Output Improvements

• Barcodes no longer produce unnecessary attachments that use the .bin extension. (90946)
• Hidden rasterized barcode elements are no longer added as attachments. (90947)
• Prevent "TypeError: layoutData is null" errors if a rasterized element is hidden for email output. (90953)

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.