OBJECTIF LUNE PlanetPress Workflow 2018.2 User guide

User Guide

Version:2018.2

User Guide

Version 2018.2

Last Revision:2019-01-29

Objectif Lune, Inc.

2030 Pie-IX, Suite 500

Montréal, QC, Canada, H1V 2C8

+1 (514) 875-5863

www.objectiflune.com

All trademarks displayed are the property of their respective owners.

reproduced, transmitted or distributed outside of Objectif Lune Inc. by any means whatsoever

without the express written permission of Objectif Lune Inc. Inc. Objectif Lune Inc. Inc. disclaims

responsibility for any errors and omissions in this documentation and accepts no responsibility

for damages arising from such inconsistencies or their further consequences of any kind.

Objectif Lune Inc. Inc reserves the right to alter the information contained in this documentation

without notice.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents 4

Welcome to PlanetPress Workflow 2018.2 11

Notes in this guide 11

Installation and setup 13

System Requirements 13

Operating System (64-bit only) 13

Minimum Hardware Requirements 13

Environment considerations 14

Terminal Services 14

Virtual environments 14

32-bit or 64-bit? 15

Antivirus considerations 15

Backup considerations 16

Microsoft Office compatibility 17

Setting up the working environment 17

Network considerations 17

Local and network rights 17

Account requirements 18

Mapped drives 18

Network ports used by each service 19

Known Issues 21

Microsoft patch causing handling of XLS to fail 21

Other known issues 22

About PlanetPress Fax 24

About PlanetPress Image 25

Preferences 26

Basics 27

Related tools and resource files 27

Features 29

About Workflow Configurations 29

Creating a new configuration 30

Open a PlanetPress Workflow configuration file 31

Saving and sending a Workflow Configuration 31

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Exit PlanetPress Workflow Configuration program 34

Workflow Configuration resource files 35

Connect resources 35

PlanetPress Design documents 39

PrintShop Mail documents 44

About data 45

About documents and variable data 45

Job file 46

Job file names and output file names 47

Data selections 48

About data emulation 54

Sample Data 64

Metadata 69

Working with JSON 80

Data Repository 84

Structure 84

Accessing the Data Repository 85

Where to find the Data Repository 87

Debugging and error handling 87

About error handling 87

Using the On Error tab 88

Creating and using Error processes 89

Accessing the Logs 90

Resubmit backed up input files to a process 92

Debugging your PlanetPress Workflow process 94

About printing 98

OL Connect print jobs 98

PlanetPress Suite print jobs 99

PlanetPress Workflow printer queues 100

Shared printer queue properties 101

Windows Output printer queue 103

LPR Output Printer Queue 104

FTP Output Printer Queue 105

Send to Folder printer queue 107

Load balancing 108

Associating PlanetPress Design documents and PlanetPress printer queues 108

Triggers 110

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Objectif Lune Printer Driver (PS) 110

About processes and subprocesses 113

Processes 113

Startup processes 114

Subprocesses 115

Creating a process 115

Importing processes 117

Activating or deactivating a process 119

Process properties 119

About branches and conditions 124

Converting a branch to a subprocess 125

Running a process on desktop 126

Saving and sending a Workflow Configuration 126

Using Scripts 131

Run Script task 131

APIs 132

The Script Editor and XSLT Editor 132

SOAP Server API Reference 138

The Watch Object 145

Data Repository API 161

Stopping execution 181

Special workflow types 183

HTTP Server Workflow 184

PDF Workflow 191

PlanetPress Capture Workflow 194

Database considerations (ODBC) 201

Workflow processes in a Connect Send solution 231

About Tasks 232

Adding tasks 233

Editing a task 234

Task properties 235

Input tasks 239

Action Tasks 291

Data Splitters 361

Process Logic tasks 382

Connector Tasks 399

PlanetPress Capture 439

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Metadata Tasks 462

OL Connect Send 480

OL Connect tasks 494

Output Tasks 539

Unknown tasks 556

About variables 556

Job Info variables 557

Standard variables 559

Local variables 564

Global variables 565

Variable task properties 567

Special workflow types 569

PlanetPress Capture 571

About PlanetPress Fax 599

About PlanetPress Image 600

Workflow processes in a Connect Send solution 601

ZUGFeRD 602

About related programs and services 612

Available Input services 612

Available Output services 613

Start and stop PlanetPress Workflow Service 614

Users and configurations 615

Workflow Services 616

The user interface 619

Customizing the Workspace 620

Dock and undock areas of the Program Window 621

Show or hide areas of the program window 622

Combine and attach areas 622

Resize the program window areas 627

Change the Interface language 628

PlanetPress Workflow Button 629

Options 629

Configuration Components pane 630

Components Area Sections 630

Process properties 633

PlanetPress Design document properties 638

Moving and copying configuration components 640

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Renaming objects in the Configuration Components Pane 643

Reordering objects in the Configuration Components pane 644

Grouping Configuration Components 645

Expanding and collapsing categories and groups in the Configuration Components

pane

646

Deleting something from the Configuration Components pane 646

Dialogs 647

Access Manager 647

Activate a printer 653

Advanced SQL Statement Dialog 654

Data Repository Manager 655

The Data Selector 658

The File Viewer 663

Data Selector display preferences 663

PDF Viewer 666

Process properties 668

Update document 673

Virtual Drive Manager 673

Workflow Services 674

The Debug Information pane 676

The Message Area Pane 677

The Object Inspector pane 678

Editing properties 678

The Plug-in Bar 679

Categories 679

Settings & Customization 680

Preferences 681

Other Preferences and Settings 682

General appearance preferences 682

Object Inspector appearance preferences 683

Configuration Components pane appearance preferences 684

Default Configuration behavior preferences 685

Notification Messages behavior preferences 685

Sample Data behavior preferences 688

Network behavior preferences 688

PlanetPress Capture preferences 689

OL Connect preferences 698

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PDF text extraction tolerance factors 699

General and logging preferences 701

Messenger plugin preferences 702

HTTP Server Input plugin preferences 1 703

HTTP Server Input plugin preferences 2 707

LPD Input plugin preferences 708

NodeJS Server Input plugin preferences 1 709

NodeJS Server Input plugin preferences 2 711

NodeJS Server Input plugin preferences 3 712

Serial Input plugin preferences 713

Telnet Input plugin preferences 714

PlanetPress Fax plugin preferences 715

FTP Output Service preferences 718

PlanetPress Image preferences 719

LPR Output preferences 722

PrintShop Web Connect Service preferences 723

Editor Options 724

The Process area 728

Cutting, copying and pasting tasks and branches 729

Highlight a task or branch 731

Disabling tasks and branches 731

Moving a task or branch using drag-and-drop 732

Redo a command 733

Removing tasks or branches 733

Replacing tasks, conditions or branches 734

Resizing the rows and columns of the Process area 735

Undo a command 735

Zoom in or out within Process Area 735

The Quick Access Toolbar 736

Adding buttons 736

Removing buttons 736

Moving the toolbar 736

The PlanetPress Workflow Ribbon 737

The Task Comments Pane 740

Additional Information 741

Copyright Information 742

Page 9

Legal Notices and Acknowledgements 743

Page 10

Welcome to PlanetPress Workflow

2018.2

This PDF documentation covers version 2018.2. To view the documentation of previous

versions please refer to the PDF files available in the Downloads section of our website:

http://www.objectiflune.com/OL/Download/DownloadCenter.

Workflow is the heart of all of our solutions. Working in conjunction with PlanetPress Connect,

PlanetPress Capture, CaptureOnTheGO, PlanetPress Imaging, PlanetPress Fax, and a variety

of plugins, it helps improve your communications processes. Processes such as

communication creation, interaction, distribution and even maintenance.

Workflow is the "super dispatcher". It caters for inputs from a huge variety of sources, such as

email, web pages, databases, individual files (PDF, csv, XML, etc), print streams, FTP, Telnet

and ERP systems. This data can then be analyzed, modified, stored, verified, routed and used

as triggers for other processes from entirely within Workflow. Finally it is passed to one of our

other products (or not) to be outputted in multiple ways (printed, emailed, posted, archived, sent

to third party solutions, etc..).

Consider Workflow as a set of buildings blocks that enable you to build your own customized

automated processes which will fit your environment and not the other way around. Create

processes that will save you time and money!

Notes in this guide

Notes are used throughout this guide to draw your attention to certain information.

Note

Important information that deserves your attention.

Tip

Information that may help you better use PlanetPress Workflow or suggests an easier method.

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Warning

Information that is potentially critical to using PlanetPress Workflow.

Technical

Background information.

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Installation and setup

This chapter describes the different considerations that are important in regards to the

installation and use of PlanetPress Workflow.

l "System Requirements" below

l "Environment considerations" on the facing page

l "Setting up the working environment" on page17

l "Known Issues" on page21

System Requirements

These are the system requirements for PlanetPress Workflow 2018.2.

Operating System (64-bit only)

l Microsoft Windows 2008 R2 Server

l Microsoft Windows 2012/2012 R2 Server

l Microsoft Windows 2016 Server

l Windows 7

l Microsoft Windows 8.1

l Microsoft Windows 10 (Pro and Enterprise versions only)

Note

Windows Vista, Windows 8.0, Windows 2003 Server and earlier versions of Windows are

not supported by PlanetPress Workflow.

Minimum Hardware Requirements

l NTFS Filesystem (FAT32 is not supported)

l CPU Intel Core i7-4770 Haswell (4 Core)

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l 8GB RAM (16GB Recommended)

l Disk Space: At least 10GB (20GB recommended)

Environment considerations

This page is intended to provide technical information about the environment in which

PlanetPress Workflow is intended to run.

Terminal Services

PlanetPress Workflow does not support Terminal Services environment as possible under

Windows 2000, 2003 and 2008. This is to say, if Terminal Services is installed on the server

where PlanetPress Workflow is located, unexpected behaviors may occur and will not be

supported by our company. Furthermore, using PlanetPress Workflow in a Terminal Service

environment is probably an infringement of our End-User License Agreement.

Terminal Services may also be referred to as Terminal Server or Remote Administration Mode

(Windows Server 2003 and 2008).

Single-User Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) (where only one person can use RDP at a time)

is supported for PlanetPress Workflow version 6.2 and higher, however it is only supported in

Windows XP or Windows 2003. While later versions of Windows may not cause issues when

accessing PlanetPress Workflow through RDP, these combinations are no longer tested and

may not be functional.

Virtual environments

PlanetPress Workflow supports the following virtual environments:

l VMWare Environments. This includes VMWare Player, VMWare Workstation as well as

VMWare ESX Server.

l VMWare VMotion. This means the virtual machine hosting PlanetPress Workflow can be

automatically moved from one ESX server to another in a clustered installation.

l Microsoft Hyper-V/Azure infrastructure environments.

PlanetPress Workflow is not officially supported on any other virtual machines such as Virtual

PC, Parallels, Bochs, Xen, etc. While running PlanetPress Workflow on these virtual machines

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may work, and they are properly detected by PlanetPress Suite 7.5.1 and higher, we have not

tested them and cannot offer support for them.

Warning

The PlanetPress Workflow End-User License Agreement (EULA) specifies that a

PlanetPress Workflow software license may only be used on a single virtual or physical

PC at a time. While copying a virtual machine for backup purposes is acceptable, running

two instances of the same machine, using the same serial number, is strictly prohibited.

About PlanetPress Suite

In previous versions of PlanetPress Suite, not all virtual environments were supported:

l PlanetPress Suite 6 and higher support VMWare Environment.

l PlanetPress Suite 7.1 and higher also support VMotion.

l PlanetPress Suite 7.5.1 and higher started supporting Hyper-V virtualization in addition to

the previous environments.

32-bit or 64-bit?

PlanetPress Suite version 7.1.3 and higher, as well as PlanetPress Connect, support a 64-bit

operating system. However, PlanetPress Workflow remains 32-bits in this environment, which

means that for all intents and purposes there is no difference between those two environments

as far as PlanetPress Workflow is concerned.

Antivirus considerations

PlanetPress Workflow generates a very large amount of temporary data on your hard disk,

especially when manipulating or creating PDF files. This can sometimes cause issues when

any other software is trying to access the temporary files at the same time as PlanetPress

Workflow and its components are trying to read, write, create or delete those files.

If you experience these issues you may want to temporarily disable your antivirus "live", "daily"

or "deep" scans for the following folders and processes:

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Warning

Disabling any antivirus scanning permanently on any folder or program is not

recommended, and Objectif Lune cannot be held reliable for any consequence of

disabling your antivirus or whitelisting the folders or executables listed here, or any other

change in your antivirus protection setup!

l On Windows 7/2008:

l C:\ProgramData\Objectif Lune\PlanetPress Workflow 8\

l C:\Users\planetpress\AppData\Local\Temp\ (where planetpress is the user under

which Workflow is configured)

l C:\Users\planetpress\Connect (where planetpress is the user under which Workflow

is configured)

l On all systems:

l C:\Windows\Temp\

l Processes:

l PPAlambic.exe

l ServerService.exe

l PPWatchService.exe

l PPImageService.exe

l MessengerService.exe

Note

C:\Windows\Temp\ is used by multiple software which may cause risks on your computer.

However, PlanetPress Workflow may use this folder as temporary storage, especially in the case of

creating PDF files. We do not recommend disabling scan on this folder, unless you notice

performance issues when generating PDFs, and then only as a test.

Backup considerations

For similar reasons, it is important to know that backup software can also access files while

copying them to a remote backup location, so you should make sure that no PlanetPress

Workflow process is working during your backups.

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Microsoft Office compatibility

The Microsoft Office 2010 line of products, other than Pro and Enterprise, has not been certified

for use with PlanetPress Workflow. Some of its products may not be compatible with the

connectors included in the Suite.

Setting up the working environment

After installation, the working environment needs to be set up before you start using Workflow.

This involves:

l Configuring PlanetPress Workflow Services (see "Workflow Services" on page674).

l Setting up the Workflow Configuration tool. You can configure a variety of options, from

how the application itself looks or behaves, to plugin specific options. These are

accessible through the Preferences button under the PlanetPress Workflow Button (see

"Preferences" on page681).

l Activating the printer, in order to output PlanetPress Design documents (see "Activate a

printer" on page653 and "PlanetPress Design documents" on page39). This applies to

PlanetPress Suite only.

Network considerations

While PlanetPress Workflow is typically installed on a server machine that is only accessed by

one single user such as an IT person, multiple users logging on to that machine is a possibility

(except with terminal servers, see "Environment considerations" on page14). Because each

user may have different local and network rights, it may be important to consider the

implications in regards to PlanetPress Workflow. To change the service log on information, see

"Workflow Services" on page674.

Local and network rights

Programs, such as PlanetPress Workflows and all its services, must identify themselves in

order to be granted permission to perform operations on the computer on which they run as well

as on other computers accessible via a network connection. On a given workstation, you can

configure your PlanetPress Workflow to use either the local system account or any specific user

account. When you do this, you grant PlanetPress Workflow and all its services the same rights

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associated with the selected account (except for PlanetPress Messenger Service which always

runs on the Local System account).

When you are running PlanetPress Workflow Configuration program on a workstation, if it is

associated with an account that is different from your account, the following icon is displayed in

the lower right corner of PlanetPress Workflow Configuration program: . The icon reminds you

that the logon information is different for the PlanetPress Workflow services, and that some

network resources may not be accessibly by PlanetPress Workflow when running a live

configuration.

Account requirements

PlanetPress Workflow and its services require administrator rights to run on any given

computer and must therefore be associated with an account that has such rights.

We recommend creating a network or domain account specifically for the PlanetPress

Workflow services, which has administrator credentials on the machine where it is installed,

and is given proper rights for any network resources your configuration may request.

Mapped drives

Mapped drives (for example, drive X: leading to \\server\public\) are always user-specific and

are created at logon. This means that mapped drives are typically not available by the

PlanetPress Workflow services when running a live configuration. Furthermore, while the

mapped drives are not shared, they are still limited to one map per computer, meaning if one

user maps the X: drive, a different user (or a service) will not be able to map it again.

This creates a limitation in PlanetPress Workflow: if you create a mapped drive as a user, you

will not have access to this mapped drive while running as a service unless you log off, and

then have PlanetPress Workflow Tools map the drive using a Run Script action inside a Startup

Process.

We strongly recommended that instead of using mapped drives, you use full UNC paths for

your network drives. PlanetPress Workflow Tools can automatically convert mapped paths to

UNC paths. For more information, please see "Network behavior preferences" on page688.

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Network ports used by each service

The port configuration for each PlanetPress Workflow component is described in the following

table. The port number assignments comply with Internet standards. If PlanetPress Workflow

component is not active, the port is not used.

Component Protocol Local Port Remote Port

Email Input (POP3

mode)

TCP Default

1

110

Email Input (Outlook

mode)

TCP see Remote Port See Network Ports Used by Key

Microsoft Server Products

Folder Capture TCP/UDP Default

1

Standard Windows file and

printer sharing ports

2

:

l UDP 137, 138; TCP 139

(NetBIOS over TCP/IP

(NetBT))

l UDP 445; TCP 445 (SMB

over TCP/IP)

LPD Input TCP 515 (listening

port)

N/A

FTP Input TCP Default

1

21

Telnet Input TCP Default

1

9100 (configurable)

FTP Output TCP Default

1

21

Email Output (SMTP

mode)

TCP Default

1

25

Email Output (Outlook

mode)

TCP See Email Input

(Outlook mode)

See Email Input (Outlook mode)

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Component Protocol Local Port Remote Port

Send to Folder

Windows Queue

Output

TCP

Default

1

Standard Windows file and

printer sharing ports

2

:

l 137, 138 and/or 139

(NetBIOS over TCP/IP

(NetBT))

l 445 (SMB Over TCP/IP)

LPR Output TCP Default or 721 to

731

3

515

PlanetPress

Database

TCP or

UDP

Unknown

4

Unknown

4

SNMP Condition UDP Default

1

161

1

Value is greater than 1024 and is assigned by Windows XP. This is the default.

2

Windows NT 4.0 uses NetBIOS over TCP/IP for file and printer sharing, while Windows 2000,

Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003 may be configured to use NetBIOS over TCP/IP or

SMB over TCP/IP. The operating system may use additional ports. Refer to the Windows

documentation for further information.

3

If the “No source port range restriction” option is checked (recommended), see footnote a. If

the option is unchecked, the local port will be chosen from a range going from 721 to 731.

4

Contact your DBMS vendor to determine which ports are used by the ODBC driver for

accessing a network database.

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