User Guide Version 1.4.5.
OL Connect Send Connect Send User Guide 2018-12-10 OBJECTIF LUNE Inc. 2030 Pie-IX, Suite 500 Montréal, QC, Canada, H1V 2C8 http://learn.objectiflune.com © 2017 Objectif Lune Incorporated. All rights reserved.
Table of Contents What is Connect Send? 5 Features List Main steps in OL Connect Send Installation 5 6 8 Printer driver Workflow Plugins Connect Send database cleanup service Moving Workflow to another machine Prerequisites System Requirements plugin Printer Driver HTTP Browser Installing OL Connect Send Printer Driver Setup process – new installation Adding, modifying or deleting a printer Shared Printers Managing multiple OLCS printers Mass deployment of the OL Connect Send Printer Driver Silent setup
User mode Click Charge mode Incoming print jobs and the license Scenario 1 Scenario 2 OL Connect Send in Workflow 33 33 34 35 35 36 Configuring the OL Connect Send Workflow processes Job transfer process Interactive process Production report process Plugins Job Processor plugin Get Job Data plugin Get Data plugin Using the Printer Driver 36 37 37 38 39 39 43 48 55 Log files 58 Workflow log files Printer log files History log files Logged events Information per log entry Troubleshooting 58 58 58 59 59
What is Connect Send? Connect Send is an application with two components. The first is a Windows printer driver and the second includes a set of Workflow plugins. These two components work together – they cannot be used on their own. Connect Send allows for PostScript files to be received over the internet from any Windows Desktop application. It can be used in unlicensed mode and licensed mode. The Unlicensed mode (default) allows users to push documents to Connect Send.
l l Unlicensed mode l Non-interactive job submission. l Free to use. l Confirms job transmission with a message in the Notification Area. Licensed mode l l l Interactive job submission possible. Launches the user’s default browser to display web content produced by a Connect server. Database containing domain, workstation ID, document information and page count information. Main steps in OL Connect Send The main steps in the functioning of OL Connect Send are: 1.
Data plugin" on page 43) will be displayed in the browser. If the plugin is not licensed, or the license is exceeded, this HTTP request is suppressed and the Printer Driver will not launch a browser window. 12. The Printer Driver will display status information using the Notification Area (also called "system tray").
Installation Printer driver The OL Connect Send Printer Driver must be installed on a dedicated machine and a Windows printer must be set up using this driver. Additionally several settings regarding the host for sending print jobs have to be set. All this is done with the Printer Driver installer; see "Installing OL Connect Send Printer Driver" on page 11. Any OL Connect Send Printer Driver with a version number less than 1.0.5 should be uninstalled before installing the newest Printer Driver. 1.
Connect Send database cleanup service A cleanup mechanism in the OLCSService service and in the Job Processor plugin prevent excessive growth of the Connect Send database. There are no settings to make for these mechanisms, except that you could change the default number of days to keep history of transactions. This influences the output of the Get Data plugin (see "Get Data plugin" on page 48). By default, the minimal number of days to keep history of transactions is 60. To change this: 1. Create a olcs.
l l OL Connect Send: l OL Connect Send Printer Driver l OL Connect Send plugins. These are built in in Workflow as of version 8.6.1. An OL Connect Send license (required for interaction to take place) System Requirements plugin The Job Processor plugin is designed to work with the Workflow module (Workflow) of PlanetPress Connect and PReS Connect (Connect) which means it will run on any operating system by those products.
l Windows Server 2008 32-bit as well as Windows Server 2008 prior to R2 l Windows Server 2012 32-bit as well as Windows Server 2012 prior to R2 HTTP Communications between the Printer Driver and the plugin is achieved using HTTP. It is therefore necessary to ensure that HTTP interaction between all Printer Driver and server machines is enabled. Browser After print job submission, further interaction between the OLCS Printer Driver and Workflow is achieved using HTML.
malicious applications try to install themselves on a PC, it is under severe surveillance of Windows' protection systems, including SmartScreen, which will prevent the installation to protect the PC. Nevertheless, OL Connect Send is secure and it is Microsoft Certified, so it is guaranteed to be nonintrusive. A message will be shown while the Setup program checks if all prerequisites are met and prepares the machine. When the setup is prepared, this first screen appears, containing basic information.
Communication URL settings The URL for the data transfer is required for the HTTP connection with OL Connect Workflow (e.g. http://localhost:8080/olcs_transfer). This would be the Workflow process which accepts the relevant data. If the Workflow server is active, it is useful to test the connection. For greater security, HTTPS can be selected as the connection; it is possible to set whether valid certificates only are accepted by the Workflow server in this regard.
http://demo.objectiflune.com:8080/olcs_transfer The required pattern is: ://:/[/] l : Sets the communication protocol and has to be either HTTP or HTTPS. Any other setting is invalid. As soon as HTTPS is set as protocol, the communication will automatically run in protected mode (SSL). Tip For additional information about secure file transfer, HTTPS certificates and how to request a countersigned certificate, please see this page: SSL HowTo.
By unchecking Interactive mode you can set this specific printer to only send jobs to the server, without further user interaction. In that case, the printer will not pop up a browser window. Nevertheless, messages will pop up in the tray area, informing about transfer, success or failure. When the Interactive mode is disabled, the HTTP action for interaction field also becomes disabled.
Note If the main URL for print job submission contains any path components, these must be added here as well. Example The URL for job submission is given as http://demo.myhost.com:80/path/to/target/olcs_transfer. The HTTP action for interaction must be entered as: path/to/target/olcs_interaction. When done, click Next to continue. Printer name and logging In the Printer name and logging screen, you can set a name for the printer you wish to create and setup the logging level.
Printer name By default the printer name is OL Connect Send Printer. If a printer with the same name already exists, a number is added and increased until no matching printer name is detected. This then becomes the proposed printer name in this dialog. The printer name must consist of valid characters. Invalid, forbidden characters are: l / = forward slash, 0x2F l " = quote, 0x22 l \ = backslash, 0x5C l * = asterisk, 0x2A l : = colon, 0x3A l ? = question mark, 0x3F l < = less than sign, 0x3C l
l | = pipe symbol, 0x7C l , = comma, 0x2C Note As opposed to the other settings, the printer name can’t be changed after installation. Logging The OL Connect Send Printer Driver creates one log file per printer per day. (For information about all log files, see "Log files" on page 58.) The number of log messages can be set by choosing the log level. Available log levels are: l l l l DEBUG: Logs all messages and is intended to be used only for bug research.
Finishing the installation At this point Setup has collected the required information to install the printer driver and create it. The next screen will ask you to continue by clicking the Install button. A progress bar is shown, while the installation process is running. After a successful installation, the Finish dialog is shown. Click Finish.
Adding, modifying or deleting a printer To install an additional printer, modify a printer or delete a printer, run the installer again. The installer will detect that it’s not being used for the first time and will present a different screen. Clicking the Next button will bring you to the selection page where you can decide to: l Add a printer. l Modify the settings of an existing printer. l Delete one or all existing printers.
Adding a printer The wizard pages that follow when clicking the Add printer button are the same as for a new installation. Each printer can have its own settings. Modifying the printer settings Depending on the number of printers already installed, you will either see the Wizard window or a dialog box from which you must select the printer you wish to modify.
The wizard pages are the same again, so you can modify any of the values (e.g. if the host name has changed), except for the printer name which is grayed out and locked. Removing a printer Depending on the number of OLCS printers installed, you will either get a selection box to identify which printer to remove, or you can just delete the only one.
Shared Printers The OL Connect Send Printer Driver is not a shareable driver. This is because the browser interaction cannot be routed through the print server to the end user's desktop. Also a shared printer would transfer the print server's machine name, user name, domain etc., thus invalidating the intended behavior. So, OL Connect Send Printer Driver must be installed on each dedicated machine.
Mass deployment of the OL Connect Send Printer Driver The OL Connect Send Printer Driver is intended to be installed on computers from which print jobs shall be sent to the respective Workflow server. Often such computers are part of specific domains on which end users are not allowed to install software on their own. Such users may not have the knowledge to install printers, and often dedicated restrictions and policies have to be taken into account.
Configuration file content The silent installation mode will only work with a valid configuration file. The name of the file must be OLCSClient.ini and it must be located in the same folder as the Silent Setup tool. The content of the file must follow the rules for standard Windows .ini files (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INI_file). If the .ini file is malformed, the installation will be terminated with an error.
Section Description Default Interaction Defines if the printer shall communicate with the Workflow server in interactive (setting = 1) or noninteractive (0) mode. Please be aware that interaction also relies on the presence and the possible exceedence of a license. 1 Secure Defines if the communication shall use secure HTTPS (1) or not (0) 0 AcceptAllCertificates Defines if the printer will accept any (1) or only validatable, officially signed certificates (0).
Section Description Default already installed, the OLCS Notifier will not be touched by the setup. Reboot requirement Depending on what applications and Visual C++ runtimes already installed, a reboot may be required after the successful installation of the OL Connect Send Printer Driver. In this case the silent installer will: l Return the exit value 3010 (= "Reboot required". See e.g. Windows installer error codes). l Log a respective message in the log file.
OLCS Notifier Once an OL Connect Send Printer Driver is installed, an application called OLCS Notifier is also installed. It displays information concerning the preparation and transfer of each print job. The OLCS Notifier resides in the Windows taskbar, in the notification area (also called "system tray" or "status area"). It shows up with the OL Connect Send icon. The OLCS Notifier will show each OL Connect Send printer message with a standard Windows balloon speech bubble.
Depending on the log level of the respective printer (see "Logging" on page 18), the messages are more or less verbose and contain information about the Job ID and the printer name. The amount of messages depends on the log level set for the printer in question. Regardless of the log level however, any information about success or failure of a print job transfer will be shown.
l l HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Objectif Lune\ConnectSend\TaskbarNotify on 64bit Windows HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Objectif Lune\ConnectSend\TaskbarNotify on 32bit Windows The key must be named UDPPort and must be of type REG_SZ. The OLCS Notifier will check this entry when it is (re)started and keeps it as long as it is running. The OL Connect Send Printer Driver is checking this entry on each job transfer.
Printing PDF files with Adobe Acrobat Reader It is recommended not to use Adobe Acrobat reader to print PDF files with OL Connect Send. Print the source file (e.g. the Word file) whenever available. If PDF files are to be printed with OL Connect Send, use a different PDF viewer instead. Adobe Acrobat Reader produces its own PostScript file, rather than passing the PDF to the OLCS Printer Driver to generate a PostScript file.
License modes OLCS can operate in three different modes but they cannot be mixed on a single Connect system. The three modes are: Basic, User and Click Charge. The Basic, unlicensed mode: l allows non-interactive job submission. l is free to use. l confirms job transmission with a message in the Notification Area (also called the "system tray"). The User and Click Charge modes are licensed modes in which: l l l interactive job submission is possible.
possible. Workflow will not save any information in the database (see "Job Processor plugin" on page 39). User mode User mode requires a license for each domain or subdomain submitting jobs. A (sub)domain license can be obtained to allow 10, 25, 50, 100, 200 or unlimited (Enterprise) users to print. Each (sub)domain needs its own domain/user license, but multiple domains/users licenses can be added to a single Connect system to allow job submissions from multiple domains.
documents -, the Click Charge license can be used. It allows any number of domains and users to submit jobs into the Connect system, providing credits are available. 1. This mode enables the Printer Driver to request a web page (which could include a preview of the document) from Connect. For each job that is received, the Job Processor plugin records key data in the database. 2. One click equals one page (any size) of the submitted print job.
Scenario 1 OLCS is licensed in Click Charge mode with 10,000 pages. They have already used 9,870 credits, so 130 are left. l l Case 1: A job comes in with 40 pages. This job can be handled in LICENSED mode, so this is a "licensed job". Case 2: A job comes in with 243 pages. This is more than 130. This job is handled in UNLICENSED mode (reduced metadata and no database entries). This is an "unlicensed job". Scenario 2 Perpetual license with domain = "some.phantasy.com" and number of licensed users = 100.
OL Connect Send in Workflow Just as the Printer Driver is an indispensable part of OL Connect Send, OL Connect Send cannot function without its Workflow plugins, embedded in special Workflow processes. These processes take care of the communication with the Connect Send User Guide and they handle the interaction with the user who sends a print job using the Connect Send User Guide. The following topics explain how to configure these processes.
Sample project The Ad Hoc Mail Consolidation sample project may help you understand the Workflow processes for OL Connect Send and configure your own. l l Watch the sample in action on demo.objectiflune.com. Under Ad Hoc Mail Consolidation, click Demo and follow the instructions. (If you have already installed the printer driver, you don't have to do that again.) Add a Connect Send printer with the given settings and print the provided Word file to that printer.
Workflow. This is what the OL Connect Send Get Job Data plugin is made for. For more information, see "Get Job Data plugin" on page 43. l l Each web page served by an interaction process is generated by the Create Web Content plugin. It creates HTML output from a specified web template. That template needs to be created beforehand with Connect Designer and has to be sent to Workflow. (For information about this plugin, see the Workflow Help: Create Web Content.
Plugins Job Processor plugin The Job Processor plugin appears in the plugin Bar area of Workflow under OL Connect Send. The Job Processor plugin is an output plugin that must be added to a Workflow job transfer process that starts with an HTTP Server Input. The Job Processor plugin is the only other task in that process. The action name of the HTTP Input task must match the last part of the URL for print job submission, that has to be set in the printer driver installer (by default: olcs_transfer).
Configuring the plugin To configure the Job Processor plugin, right-click it after adding it to the Workflow process, and click Properties. The color of the property names in the Job Processor Properties dialog indicates that these fields can contain variables. Workflow variables To facilitate using job related information for the creation of the target folder and file name/s, the Job Processor plugin maps job relevant information to the standard Workflow variables (%1 to %8).
Information Workflow Variable When licensed When unlicensed IP Address 1 %4 The IP address The IP address No. of Pages 1 %5 Number of pages of the job Number of pages of the job No. of Copies 1 %6 Number of copies set by the user Number of copies set by the user Domain Name 1 %7 The Domain Name "na" Machine Name 1 %8 The Machine Name "na" 1) These values originate from the Printer Driver machine.
HTTPS Communication The Printer Driver can be set to use HTTPS for any job transfer. To do this Workflow must also be set to use HTTPS. This topic is covered briefly in the “Server URL Setting” section in this document (new Printer Driver installation), but full details can be found in the Workflow documentation. Job Origin Each print job will include unique information about the machine it has been sent from.
Timeout During a job transfer from the Printer Driver to Workflow, a timeout could occur (indicated by a log entry like “ERROR: sendBinaryContents: Could not open request. Reason: 12002”). In this case, the timeout for the HTTP service in Workflow needs to be increased. We recommend using a value of more than 10 minutes (>600 seconds). Additionally, the timeout in the browser on the client side should be enhanced. Please see the help pages for your browser about how to do this.
Typically, it is used in the interaction process just after the initial HTTP Server Input plugin. The Get Job Data plugin gets all relevant information for the dedicated print job using the Unique Job ID. Unique Job ID: Whenever an OLCS Printer Driver is sending a print job to the OLCS plugin, it creates a unique ID string composed from 10 upper- and lowercase letters and digits e.g. “ri0zZdluLp”.
General Tab Three different settings affect the general behavior of the plugin: l Where to get the Print Job ID. l When to continue with the next step. l Where to store the job information details. Select Job ID Source The plugin can be used in a generic way. Whenever information about a specific print job is required, it can be retrieved as long as the related job ID is known. However, the plugin has been implemented so that it can also be used in the “OLCS_Interaction” process.
l Read from Variable. When selecting this option, any existing Workflow variable can be chosen via the drop-down field. In this case the plugin reads the Job ID from that variable. Select Returning Type Depending on this setting the plugin gets status information about the job before it has arrived or it gets information after the job has been completely received. l l Immediately.
Date/Time stamp: This is the time when the matching job was initially created in the database. It is stored in UTC format plus time zone indicator inside the database. It will differ from the time stamp logged by the Printer Driver as well as by the OLCS main plugin. Note The Printer Driver machine time stamp in the Printer Driver log may significantly differ from this value.
Domain / Workgroup Indicator: This domain name is the real domain name or only a workgroup name. For explanations about domains, domain names, users, user names, user domains, logged on users vs. application running users, machine names etc. please refer to the respective Windows help pages or ask your system administrator. Machine name: The name of the machine the OLCS printer driver is running on as retrieved by the respective Windows API.
A cleanup mechanism in the OLCSService service and in the Job Processor plugin prevent excessive growth of the Connect Send database. There are no settings to make for these mechanisms, except that you could change the default number of days to keep history of transactions. This influences the output of the Get Data plugin (see "Get Data plugin" on the previous page). By default, the Connect Send database keeps history of transactions for 60 days.
l Workflow variables l Job variables l Names. Note No spaces are allowed around the listed names resp. before or after a semicolon. Example 1 A valid user name search string would be: %\{global.User};helen;%1;george napier This would look for all entries, where the user name is: l as currently stored in the global Workflow variable User l "helen" l as stored in the job variable number 1 l equals "george napier" (case insensitive). The search criteria in this case is an OR.
Valid date/time entries: 2016-07-12 It is possible to only define a date without a time 2016-%m-%d Standard Workflow variables for year, month and day are allowed 2016-07-12 11:00 From and To dates may also have a time indicator (24 hour notation, separator from the date is a space character, separator between hour and minute is a colon) It is possible to define the same date for From Date/Time as for To Date/Time.
Results File Format The following result file formats are selectable: l XML l JSON l CSV (Separator = semicolon (0x3B), string indicator = quote (0x22)). Note This file is not automatically saved to disk. The retrieved job info is written to a temporary results file that will be passed on as the new Workflow job file. To save the results file, use a Send to Folder plugin and configure that appropriately.
l l l l l l l l l Number of Copies: This is the value set by the Printer Driver for the number of copies (intended number of copies required for the print job). Some applications do not use the general print job information to define the number of copies. In such (rare) cases, the Number of Copies sent in the job can differ from what the user entered in the print dialog.
Comments Tab Please refer to the Comments tab paragraph from the Workflow documentation.
Using the Printer Driver The OL Connect Printer Driver can be used like any physical printer. Just go through the usual steps: 1. Click the Print button (or use the menu from the software used). The Print dialog appears. 2. In the Print dialog, select a printer that works with the OL Connect Send printer driver and click OK.
The OL Connect Send Printer generates a local PostScript file. This data is zipped and sent in one or multiple chunks to the Workflow server. Depending how the environment has been setup, information is sent using the HTTP or HTTPS protocol.
customer’s machine is launched showing the interactive web page defined in the installation process. Warning It is recommended not to use Adobe Acrobat Reader to print PDF files with OL Connect Send. Print the source file (e.g. the Word file) whenever available. If PDF files are to be printed with OL Connect Send, use a different PDF viewer instead. Adobe Acrobat Reader produces its own PostScript file, rather than passing the PDF to the OLCS Printer Driver to generate the PostScript file.
Log files Workflow log files The OL Connect Send Workflow plugins write to the Workflow log file. Its location can be found in the Workflow Help (see help.objectiflune.com). Printer log files Each OL Connect Send printer logs its messages in a daily log file. The log files are located under %ProgramData%\Objectif Lune\CPD\Log\ on the machine/s on which the Printer Driver has been installed.
On the first line of this CSV file are its column headers: {{Date;Time;Printer;Job ID;Document Path;Document Name;Pages;Chunks;Chunk No;Status;Mode;User;Target}} The separator character is the semicolon (0x3B). Each following line is one log entry. The file can be loaded with e.g. Excel and filtered, ordered, sorted and modified as desired.
l Printer name l Job ID l l Document path as can be retrieved from the spooler information. Please be aware that some applications suppress this information. Document name as can be retrieved from the spooler information. Please be aware that some applications modify, mix up, enhance or truncate this information. l Number of pages l Number of chunks l Chunk number = number of the currently transferred chunk l Job transfer status.
Troubleshooting There are some known issues that can be encountered when using Connect Send, depending on the way OL Connect Send is installed, configured or used; see "Known Issues" on page 30. If another issue occurs and you find that you cannot solve the issue, there are a few things to check. 1. Switch the OL Connect Send Printer Driver logging to DEBUG. This can be done by modifying the OL Connect Send Printer Driver; see Installing OL Connect Send Printer Driver.
c. Remove the existing OLConnect1.OLConnectLicense from %ProgramData%\Objectif Lune\OL Connect\licenses. d. Put the new license at that location. e. Restart any Connect services you stopped. You may notice that removing the existing license may be forbidden and you need to allow it explicitly. It may even be that you need to log on as an administrator to delete the file. Note This is not an issue with OLCS, but with the Connect and/or Workflow version and under which user it has been installed.
