PlanetPress Connect Release Notes 1.7.1

Overview

This document provides an overview of the new features and enhancements in PlanetPress Connect 1.7.1 and PlanetPress Workflow 8.7.

Installing PlanetPress Connect 1.7.1 and PlanetPress Workflow 8.7

• PlanetPress 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 PlanetPress Connect and PlanetPress Workflow can be found in the online help in the installer.
• Note that both PlanetPress and PlanetPress Connect Workflow come with 30 day trial licenses by default.

Upgrading from PlanetPress Connect 1.1

In order to upgrade from Connect Version 1.1 to Version 1.7.1 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, PlanetPress Connect 1.7.1 will become available for download.

From Connect Version 1.2 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 will be unable to find the Messenger component and thus it will not automatically update to the Workflow 8.7 version. To get around this, download and run the Workflow 8.7 installer manually.

Print Only Version

A Print Only license is available with version 1.7.1 of PlanetPress 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 re-saving Workflow templates set up in the previous versions to run with PlanetPress Connect 1.7.1\Workflow 8.7.

Reduced Memory Version

It is now possible to install PlanetPress Connect on a machine with a minimum of 2 GB of RAM. The PlanetPress 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 1.7.1 General Enhancements and Fixes

Template Reports added to Connect

Generate a report in PDF format containing the most important information about your template. The report lists contexts, sections, master pages, scripts, the data model, graphic files, and any other resources used, along with their properties. This report can be added as part of your project documentation.

The report is created using Connect technology, and it generates an XML file and thumbnails, allowing you to create your own custom report structure and corporate styling. This can be achieved by altering the underlying Connect Template and DataMapper configuration.

See the following link for a sample report that was created for the OL Mobile Letter template: Template Report (SHARED-51378)

Document Properties

Document Properties can now be added to both Templates and DataMapper Configurations. This allows you to specify properties such as the document author, the customer name and other important references. You can also add custom key/value pairs. The respective properties can be retrieved in scripting and are thus available as content in your documents. The information is also included in the Template Report feature. (SHARED-47780)

Stability improvements

• Improvements made to the Clean-up service. In some production environments the database Clean-up could not keep pace with database growth, leading to the database gradually filling up. This has been fixed through an improved internal database structure and more efficient queries and deletions. (SHARED-46465/52345)
• The PlanetPress Connect server was experiencing communication problems with the engines in some circumstances, after data mapping or content creation errors were encountered. These issues have now been resolved. (SHARED-55165)

"Enhance with Connect" option added for PDF files in Windows Explorer

A Windows Explorer context menu entry "Enhance with Connect" has been added for PDF files. When a user selects this context menu entry, PlanetPress Connect Designer opens with a prefabricated template, that uses the selected PDF file as the background. (SHARED-15350/47156)

Support added for Remote HTML and JSON Snippets

In PlanetPress Connect 1.7.1 we introduce the concept of remote snippet resources. These snippet entries have a Name and URL property (e.g., the hyperlink to the endpoint) and reside in the Snippets folder located in the Resources panel.

In scripts these snippet entries are referenced just like regular snippets, e.g., loadhtml('snippets/my_content.rhtml') or loadjson('snippets/posts.rjson'). Note the “r” in the file extension.

Having the snippet entry in the Snippets folder within the Resources folder allows us the simplest overview of the resources used. In previous versions this behaviour would have had to be captured in script and therefore would not have been directly visible as part of the resources. This new approach greatly simplifies maintenance of the URL, as it can now simply be updated in the Resources panel rather than by browsing through all the scripts. (SHARED-42314/52591)

Handling Nested Detail Data

Simplifying the handling nested detail data has been on our agenda for some time. As part of our research into this we have looked at an approach that repeats table rows for nested detail data. This doesn’t create HTML tables in HTML tables but rather clones a base row specified for each level.

At this stage there is no user interface to configure this type of dynamic table but in a separate Technical article. It can be achieved by setting some HTML attributes in the Source view and adding scripting to populate the cells.

A user interface (table wizard) to set things more elegantly will be introduced in a future version, along with additional functionality, such as subtotal calculations.

As we are rather excited about this approach we wanted to share the current state with you in PlanetPress Connect 1.7.1. (SHARED-43047)

Installer improvements

• The PlanetPress Connect 1.7.0 installation did not work on machines running Windows 10 build 1703 (i.e. the "Creators Update", released March 2017). This has been fixed for PlanetPress Connect 1.7.1. (SHARED-56800)
•  The silent installation process has been enhanced, and now supports the following:
  • Setting the repository. This can be configured via the "product.repository" entry in "install.properties". (SHARED-17841)
  • Selecting a dedicated locale (language and country code) for the Connect applications. These can be configured by the "user.language" and "user.country" entries. (SHARED-18381)
  • Improved reporting of Silent Installation success or failure. (SHARED-17723)
• Microsoft SQL server connection settings added to Connect Installer. (SHARED-36866)
• The Update Client will now run the installation in the same language as the original installation. (SHARED-37868)
• Installer has been made more robust, and will now continue (with warning messages, if applicable) when it encounters any of the following scenarios:
  • If Server start-up was unsuccessful during installation. (SHARED-39398/46837)
  • If no Database connection could be established. (SHARED-39400)
  • The Installer now checks if the OL Connect MySQL service is in the proper state and resident in the expected folder. If is not, instructional warning messages are now displayed. (SHARED-40309/45431)
  • If Connect folders that should have been deleted were found upon re-installation. (SHARED-41420)

Connect 1.7.1 Designer Enhancements and Fixes

Edit and Save CSS, HTML, JavaScript and JSON files within the Designer

Ever needed to quickly edit an external CSS, HTML, JavaScript or JSON file? The PlanetPress Connect 1.7.1 Designer now allows you to open and save these file types via the File menu. (SHARED-42094)

Data Model Panel Enhancements

Various enhancements have been made to the Data Model panel. The browse options of the main record are now sticky and do not move out of view when working with a large number of data fields. An eye icon has been added to the toolbar, and is used to toggle the visibility of the ExtraData field. In addition, you can select and group multiple fields in order to collapse them out of view (and expand them back, obviously), which is particularly useful when dealing with large data models that force you to constantly scroll up and down to bring a specific field into view. (SHARED-45370/54106)

The Data Model panel has also been enhanced to allow alphabetical sorting of detail tables. (SHARED-47169)

Simpler Invocation of Email Script Wizards

Invoke email related script wizards simply by clicking the labels in the email information bar. (SHARED-47329)

Simplified Email fields User Interface

Create To, CC, BCC, From and Reply To email scripts by dragging and dropping a data field to the respective input field or type a static address directly in the input fields. (SHARED-9178)

Type the subject in the Subject email field and drag and drop data field(s) to positions in that string to make a personalized email subject without any scripting. (SHARED-51475)

Improved Customization of the Designer interface

Customize your interface by selecting your own colours for object edges, margins, guidelines, etc. (SHARED-49841)

Guideline behaviour improved

Along with visible/invisible settings, Guidelines can now be locked in place or set to snap to objects, using the new Guides option in the View menu. (SHARED-47159).

Warning now displayed when opening templates created in an older version

When PlanetPress Connect opens an older template file it is automatically migrated to the template structure of the current version. Saving the file in the new version would thus update the file format and prevent the document opening in an older version.

A warning is now shown when opening a Template created in an older PlanetPress Connect version, allowing you the chance to save the Template to a new file, leaving the original intact. (SHARED-51912)

Turn Warning dialogs Off/On

A "Do not show this warning again" check-box option has been added to many PlanetPress Connect Warning dialog boxes:

These Warnings can be switched on again at any time thereafter, via the "Reset All Warning Dialogs" button in the General Preferences dialog. (SHARED-16962)

Option to automatically Delete a dynamic table when the table is empty

An option has been added to allow you to automatically delete a dynamic table when the data table is empty. To do so, select the entire table, and then tick the "Hide when empty" checkbox in the Attributes panel. (SHARED-43537)

Replace elements with data-insert-location when inserting HTML elements

When inserting an element from an Insert dialog, Connect now checks the data-insert-placeholder attribute. The value of the attribute is then used to set the default value for the Insert Location option within the Insert dialog. If the attribute is not found, things behave as in previous versions.

This ticket also introduces the Replace option for the Insert Location drop down. When selected the to-be-inserted element(s) will replace the currently selected element(s). (SHARED-52369)

Scripting improvements

• Context menu added to the Edit Script dialog. (SHARED-45381)
  
• Find and Replace functionality has been added to Script editors. (SHARED-48424)
• New menu option to rename Scripts or Folders has been added to the Context Menu within the Script panel. (SHARED-48607)
• Support added for copy and paste of folders and scripts within the Scripts panel. (SHARED-49299)
• The JavaScript parseInt() method now defaults to using base 10 arithmetic rather than base 8, as defined in the ECMASCRIPT specifications. (SHARED-49010)

General Designer improvements

• Duplicate and Delete line(s) using shortcuts in the Stylesheet, JavaScript and HTML editors. Use Ctrl+D to duplicate and Ctrl+Shift+D to delete the currently selected lines. (SHARED-46928)
• Entering geometry values without stating a specific unit type will now automatically assign the default unit type to the entry. (SHARED-50656)
• When deleting an element (such as a Barcode or a Chart) on a page, a check will now be made for associated scripts. If any are found, the deletion step will provide an option to delete those scripts as well. (SHARED-45675)
• An "All Files (*.*)" filter was added to Save/Save-as dialogs. (SHARED-28237)
• Icons have been added for JS and CSS files in the Includes dialog to make it easier to distinguish between local and remote resources. (SHARED-47936)
• Abs box grippers and borders now display at a consistent thickness regardless of zoom level. (SHARED-50175)
• Support added for dynamically setting the media background image and its options via a Control Script. This only works for PDF files residing in the template at the moment. (SHARED-53524)

Web form improvements

• Includes (JavaScript and CSS) can now be set for the entire Web context, rather than just per single web pages. These files are automatically linked to all web page sections and act as global includes. This is ideal when working with framework and library files that are used by all web page sections (for example jQuery or Foundation).
  One can still add additional includes on a per web page basis, if desired. (SHARED-48708)

Capture OnTheGo (COTG) improvements

• Two new form inputs have been introduced to facilitate the retrieval of the document ID and the store ID. (SHARED-53987/54054)
• Improvements made to updating the COTG library within existing templates. The user will now be prompted as to whether they wish to switch to the new version or not. (SHARED-46920)
• Ability added to insert dummy data for the form inputs (including special COTG inputs such as the signature) upon retrieving the Job Data file from within the Designer. (SHARED-48676)
• Workflow "Output to COTG" task can now be run as an action and return Document IDs. (SHARED-48951)
• Deskew (straighten) pictures.
  A new option is added to the Camera Properties allowing the user of the COTG app to deskew or straighten images taken with their mobile device. Deskewing optimizes the image for further processing of the image, such as through an OCR process. (SHARED-53982)
  

Connect 1.7.1 DataMapping Enhancements and Fixes

DataMapper can now fetch or update data from remote sources

New in PlanetPress Connect 1.7.1 is the ability to create an XMLHTTPRequest object (aka XHR) in DataMapper scripts in order to issue REST/AJAX calls to external servers. This feature allows the datamapping process to complement the extraction process with external data, including data that could be provided by a HTTP process in Workflow.

For instance, the DataMapper could issue calls to a Workflow process that retrieves certain values from the Workflow’s Data Repository.

Also, one could imagine a DataMapper postprocessor that writes the results of the extraction process to a file and then uploads that file to a Workflow process. (SHARED-43502)

Skip over Source Data Records

Another very important new feature implemented in the DataMapper is the ability to skip over some of the source data records without writing anything to the database. This allows you to quickly filter out some records from the data source without having to extract them to the database first, while still extracting others. (SHARED-24548)

Let’s say for instance that your data source contains postal addresses from many countries, but you only want to extract the data for Portugal. You can now create a condition that examines the country field to determine if the source record is for a country other than Portugal. If the condition is False (i.e. the country IS indeed Portugal), you can extract the data as per usual. But in the True branch of the condition (i.e. the country is anything but Portugal), you can now add an Action Step and specify the new “Stop processing record” action type. This basically discards this data record and instructs the DataMapper to immediately skip to the next source record.

This yields two immediate and major benefits:

• Data Extraction is much faster since you are only extracting the records you actually want
• The database will not be cluttered with useless records (potentially numbering in the thousands) that you were not going to use anyway. As a consequence, the automated clean-up process will have much less work to perform when the time comes to delete obsolete entries from the database. This should result in a lighter workload and better overall performance.

Improved naming of default fields

The default field naming scheme has been enhanced to allow duplicate field names to be generated automatically as long as they are on different levels (or in different detail tables).
This is especially useful with XML data sources where field names (e.g., ID, NAME) are often re-used through different levels of the structure.
With the new, more flexible naming scheme, the DataMapper checks for duplicates at the same level before deciding whether or not to create or increment a numeric suffix that is appended to the field name. (SHARED-42645)

Improvements made to XML File Processing

Issues were encountered with repeated nodes in XML datasets. In XML when adding an Extraction step, the XPath was not generated with an index, which resulted in only the first node being returned. This has been fixed, and repeated nodes are now catered for. (SHARED-28107/32238)

Improved support for Multi-Byte Encoding

Added support for byte based positioning in addition to the existing character based positioning for MultiByte (Big5, GB18030, UTF-8 and Shift-JIS) text files. (SHARED-53174)

General DataMapper Enhancements and Fixes

• XML Wizard: option added to extract Attributes and to set boundaries on Attribute changes. (SHARED-42251)
• Improved support for UNC paths to image files. (SHARED-44316)
• The Extradata fields are now available in the DataMapper to more easily allow setting of field default values. The display of the Extradata fields can be toggled on or off directly from the Data Model panel. (SHARED-51426)
• New data.findRegExp() function added. This function is similar to the existing data.find() function, but with Regular Expression support added. (SHARED-51694)
• Repeat Step conditions can now be set to evaluate operands as integers or as strings to make it easier to compare numeric values without having to cast them first. (SHARED-49786)

Connect 1.7.1 Output Enhancements and Fixes

Grouping With and Without Sorting

Sometimes the data used for generating documents is already pre-sorted, but you may still need to group documents into sets or segments. In those cases, the grouping process should not reorder the documents. This has now been implemented in PlanetPress Connect 1.7.1.

Consider the following example: data has been pre-sorted for postal sorting, which means that documents for the same customer will also be in consecutive order in the job (assuming a customer has a single postal address). If we want documents for the same customer to go into the same job, we can use grouping to create document sets and we might use the customer number for this grouping. When the customer number changes, we want a new document set to begin. If grouping by customer number also sorts by customer number, our pre-sorted order will get messed up.

The Job Creation settings have been improved to allow this kind of grouping. Sorting ascending, descending or not sorting at all can be set per field used for grouping. (SHARED-45125)

This means that, apart from straightforward cases where we are grouping with or without sorting, it is also possible to create combinations where some fields do alter the sort order and others have no effect.

Please note that grouping without sorting also means that any documents that have the same value for the same grouping field (i.e., customer number in the example above), but which are not consecutive in the input data, will not end up in the same group.

The settings for Grouping are available both in the Job Creation Settings dialog and the Advanced mode of the Print Wizard.

Progress of External Sort now displayed

When using an external sort, there was no feedback about how the external sort program was progressing. A new dialog control has now been added to Connect which displays the progress of the external sort in real time. (SHARED-53601)

Improvements made to Imposition Options dialog

The settings page for Cut and Stack Impositioning has been improved to show a sample of the chosen imposition settings.

Additionally, some settings on the Imposition Options page affect the way that booklets are created. These settings are now editable, so settings such as the gap between pages can now also be set for booklets. (SHARED-31097)

Additional Postal Services Barcodes added to Output Creation

Barcodes for postal services are excellent candidates for adding during the Output Creation steps, rather than during Content Creation.

Reasons for this include:

• They often cannot be added during Content Creation because they depend on document size (or weight) and on a sort order that is determined during Job Creation.
• They need to go in a fixed position, dependent upon the envelope window, rather than document design.
• It can be desirable to have templates independent from the postal service doing the delivery, in cases where there is a choice between postal services. This makes it relatively easy to switch to whichever service is offering the better rates.

To support these scenarios better, a number of postal service specific barcodes have been added to Output Creation, in addition to Content Creation. (SHARED-54755/54962/55046)

The new barcodes include:

• Australia Post 4 State
  
• KIX Code (Dutch postal service - Post.NL)
  
• Royal Mail (UK)
  
• Royal Mail 2D (UK)
  
• USPS IMB (US)
  
• USPS IMPB (US)
  

Some of these barcodes have specific requirements in order for them to be usable. The respective postal services provide specifications and sometimes also the tools for generating the content of these barcodes.

The checksums needed for Australia Post 4 State and IMPB are calculated automatically.

Fixed issue with Merge Engine memory usage

The Merge Engine would slow down when running some jobs that used external JavaScript files. These memory issues have now been resolved. (SHARED-47242)

Job Output Mask improvements, to simplify working with output file names

We have improved the way that output file names can be specified. A new dialog box has been added to the Print Wizard, to simplify the creation of Job Output Masks. While it is still possible to directly type a file name with placeholders in the Output File Mask box, it is now also possible to use the dialog to pick the metadata fields and other variables that can be used to create dynamic file names. (SHARED-12173)

A typical use case for using place holders in an Output File Mask is while generating PDF’s for archiving purposes. This can require generating one PDF per document and often the files have to be named in a meaningful manner, by using an invoice number in the file name for instance. This requires one to define the invoice number as metadata in a Job Preset and then this metadata field can be used in the Output File Mask of the output preset. In addition, the Separation setting of the Output Preset has to be set to separate at the document level.

So the next time you need a dynamically generated output file name like inv-${document.metadata.InvNumber}.pdf or ${document.metadata.ID}-${system.time,'yyyy-MMM-dd'}.${template.ext}, you can use this dialog to help you get what you need.

For the Output Preset to know what metadata is available, you can select a Job Preset when creating or modifying an Output Preset:

In the Advanced mode of the Print Wizard this new dialog works a bit different, because the metadata can be directly edited in the same wizard instead of having to refer to a Job Preset.

Tray Mapping for Multiple Templates

For printing to a cutsheet printer, the Output Preset allows mapping of media defined in a template to trays and media known by the printer. To make it easier to use an Output Preset for multiple templates, the list of media shown on the Tray Mapping page is no longer fixed. So now it is possible to easily define a tray mapping for all media used on a certain printer. (SHARED-49357)

This doesn’t mean that all these media have to be used in every job, so one might even map multiple media types to the same tray. In such cases, a Job Preset could be used to filter jobs in such a way that no conflicting tray mappings can occur within a job, as Job Presets allow filtering by media type.

Print Output

• Improvements made to the Print Wizard
  These include:
  • Improved usability in Inserter dialog. (SHARED-38279)
  • Data Filtering dialog usability improved. (SHARED-38281/38283)
  • Support added for manually setting both the horizontal and vertical gutter settings in Booklets (SHARED-53769)
  • The Additional Text and Barcode dialogs did not allow many of the available system fonts to be used. This issue has been fixed. (SHARED-46825)
• Improved PDF comparison implementation has improved output creation times. (SHARED-44097)
• PostScript Tray mapping configurations can now be made independent of the loaded template. (SHARED-49357)
• Improve output creation speed when outputting with separation. (SHARED-52088)

• Soft masked images were not handled correctly when writing to PDF/VT, causing errors. This issue has now been fixed. (SHARED-32335)

Known Issues

Issues with Microsoft Edge browser

The Microsoft Edge browser fails to display web pages when the Workflow's CORS option (in the HTTP Server Input 2 section) is set to "*". This issue will be resolved in a future release.

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 1.7.1 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 1.7.1: *.all[0].*

Any preset containing this code will need to be recreated in Version 1.7.1.

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 PlanetPress 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 PlanetPress Connect Workflow 8 thereafter.

Capturing Spool Files After Installing Workflow 8

If PlanetPress 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 PlanetPress 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 shown 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 PlanetPress Workflow

In PlanetPress 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.

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.

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.