OBJECTIF LUNE PlanetPress Connect 1.7 User manual

User Guide

Version:1.7.1

User Guide

Version 1.7.1

Last Revision:2017-11-28

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. 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. reserves

the right to alter the information contained in this documentation without notice.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents 4

Welcome to PlanetPress Connect 1.7.1 13

Icons used in this guide 13

Setup And Configuration 15

System and Hardware Considerations 15

System Requirements 15

Environment considerations 16

Database Considerations 18

Network considerations 23

Language and Encoding considerations 23

Performance Considerations 24

Antivirus Exclusions 26

Installation and Activation 28

Where to Obtain the Installers 28

Installation - important information 28

Installation - "How to" guides 29

Activation 29

Installation Prerequisites 29

User accounts and security 30

The Importance of User Credentials on Installing and Running PlanetPress Connect 31

Installing PlanetPress Connect on Machines without Internet Access 33

Installation Wizard 34

Running connect installer in Silent Mode 41

Activating a License 49

Migrating to a new workstation 52

Information about PlanetPress Workflow 8 59

Upgrading from PlanetPress Suite 7.6 60

What do I gain by upgrading to PlanetPress Connect? 63

Server Configuration Settings 70

Scheduling Preferences 71

Server Security Settings 75

Uninstalling 76

Important Note:Stop any active Anti-Virus software before uninstalling Connect. 76

Page 4

Impacts upon other Applications and Services 76

Uninstallation Wizard 77

The DataMapper Module 78

Basics 78

What's next? 79

Data mapping configurations 79

Creating a new data mapping configuration 80

Opening a data mapping configuration 83

Saving a data mapping configuration 83

Using the wizard for CSV files 84

Using the wizard for databases 85

Using the wizard for PDF/VT and AFP files 88

Using the wizard for XML files 89

Data mapping workflow 90

Creating a data mapping workflow 91

Testing the extraction workflow 92

Data source settings 92

Extracting data 96

Steps 115

The Data Model 125

Creating a Data Model 126

Editing the Data Model 127

Using the Data Model 128

Fields 129

Detail tables 134

Data types 141

Data Model file structure 150

DataMapper User Interface 153

Keyboard shortcuts 155

Menus 160

Panes 163

Example 170

Text File 193

PDF File 194

CSV and Database Files 196

XMLFile 198

Text and PDF Files 202

Page 5

CSV and Database Files 204

XMLFile 205

Text and PDF Files 209

CSV and Database Files 211

XMLFiles 213

Left operand, Right operand 217

Condition 219

Operators 219

Text file 220

PDF File 221

CSV File 223

XML File 223

JavaScript 225

Toolbar 225

Welcome Screen 227

DataMapper Scripts API 228

Using scripts in the DataMapper 230

Setting boundaries using JavaScript 233

Objects 238

Example 242

Example 244

Examples 247

Example 249

Example 250

Example 252

Examples 255

Examples 258

Example 261

Example 262

Example 266

Text 267

XML 268

Functions 268

The Designer 276

Basic Steps 276

Features 277

Templates 278

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Contexts 293

Sections 294

Print 298

Creating a Print template with a Wizard 300

Print context 304

Print sections 307

Pages 314

Master Pages 322

Media 325

Email 330

Designing an Email template 331

Creating an Email template with a Wizard 335

Email context 338

Email templates 340

Email header settings 343

Email attachments 350

Web 351

Creating a Web template with a Wizard 352

Web Context 356

Web pages 357

Forms 362

Using Form Elements 367

Using JavaScript 372

Capture OnTheGo 375

COTG Forms 375

Creating a COTG Form 375

Filling a COTG template 376

Testing the template 379

Sending the template to the Workflow tool 379

Using COTG data in a template 379

Designing a COTG Template 382

Capture OnTheGo template wizards 385

Using Foundation 389

COTG Elements 392

Using COTG Elements 397

Testing a Capture OnTheGo Template 401

Content elements 407

Page 7

Element types 408

Editing HTML 409

Attributes 409

Inserting an element 410

Selecting an element 411

Deleting an element 412

Styling and formatting an element 412

Barcode 413

Boxes 454

Business graphics 457

COTG Elements 460

Date 464

Forms 466

Form Elements 470

Hyperlink and mailto link 474

Images 475

Table 480

Text and special characters 484

Snippets 486

Adding a snippet to the Resources 486

Adding a snippet to a section 487

Creating a snippet 488

JSON Snippets 488

Styling and formatting 488

Local formatting versus style sheets 488

Layout properties 489

Styling templates with CSS files 490

Styling text and paragraphs 498

How to position elements 502

Rotating elements 505

Styling a table 505

Background color and/or image 510

Border 512

Colors 514

Fonts 518

Locale 520

Spacing 521

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Personalizing Content 522

Variable data 523

Conditional content 523

Dynamic images 523

Dynamic tables 523

Snippets 524

Scripts 524

Loading data 524

Variable Data 534

Formatting variable data 540

Showing content conditionally 543

Dynamic Images 545

Dynamic table 547

Personalized URL 551

Writing your own scripts 552

Script types 553

Creating a new script 554

Writing a script 555

Managing scripts 557

Testing scripts 560

Optimizing scripts 564

Loading a snippet via a script 568

Control Scripts 570

The script flow: when scripts run 585

Designer User Interface 585

Dialogs 587

Keyboard shortcuts 659

Menus 665

Panes 676

Toolbars 692

Welcome Screen 697

Print Options 698

Job Creation Presets 756

Output Creation Settings 765

Script API 784

Designer Scripts API 786

Examples 814

Page 9

Examples 815

Examples 816

Examples 818

Examples 821

Examples 822

Examples 824

Examples 826

Examples 827

Examples 828

Example 829

Example 830

Example 831

Examples 832

Creating a table of contents 832

Example 834

Examples 834

Examples 837

Examples 838

Replace elements with a snippet 839

Replace elements with a set of snippets 839

Example 840

Control Script API 841

Generating output 858

Print output 858

Email output 858

Web output 859

Optimizing a template 859

Scripts 859

Images 860

Generating Print output 861

Page 10

Saving Printing options in Printing Presets. 862

Connect Printing options that cannot be changed from within the Printer Wizard. 862

Print Using Standard Print Output Settings 863

Print Using Advanced Printer Wizard 864

Adding print output models to the Print Wizard 865

Splitting printing into more than one file 866

Variables available in the Output 866

Generating Fax output 873

Generating Tags for Image Output 874

Generating Email output 875

Email output settings in the Email context and sections 876

Generating Email output from Connect Designer 877

Generating Email output from Workflow 878

Using an ESP with PlanetPress Connect 879

Generating Web output 884

Attaching Web output to an Email template 885

Generating Web output from Workflow 886

Web output settings in the Web context and sections 886

General Information 888

Connect File Types 888

Additional Information 889

Release Notes 890

Overview 890

Connect 1.7.1 General Enhancements and Fixes 892

Connect 1.7.1 Designer Enhancements and Fixes 897

Connect 1.7.1 DataMapping Enhancements and Fixes 905

Connect 1.7.1 Output Enhancements and Fixes 908

Workflow 8.7 Enhancements and Fixes 916

Known Issues 919

Previous Releases 923

Overview 923

OLConnect Send 926

Connect 1.6.1 General Enhancements and Fixes 928

Connect 1.6.1 Designer Enhancements and Fixes 929

Connect 1.6.1 DataMapping Enhancements and Fixes 930

Connect 1.6.1 Output Enhancements and Fixes 930

Page 11

Connect Workflow 8.6 Enhancements and Fixes 932

Known Issues 934

Overview 939

Connect 1.4.2 Enhancements and Fixes 940

Connect 1.4.1 New Features and Enhancements 941

Connect 1.4.1 Designer Enhancements and Fixes 943

Connect 1.4.1 DataMapping Enhancements and Fixes 944

Connect 1.4.1 Output Enhancements and Fixes 944

Connect 8.4.1 Workflow Enhancements and Fixes 945

Known Issues 945

Legal Notices and Acknowledgments 951

Copyright Information 956

Page 12

Welcome to PlanetPress Connect

1.7.1

Note

Since we are always looking for new ways to make your life easier, we welcome your

questions and comments about our products and documentation. Use the feedback tool

at the bottom of the page or shoot us an email at doc@ca.objectiflune.com.

PlanetPress Connect is a series of four tools designed to optimize and automate customer

communications management. They work together to improve the creation, distribution,

interaction and maintenance of your communications.

The PlanetPress Connect Datamapper and Designer is designed to create output for print,

email and the web within a single template and from any data type, including formatted print

streams. Output presets applied outside the design phase make printing device independent.

The Designer has an easy-to-use interface that makes it possible for almost anyone to create

multi-channel output. More advanced users may use native HTML, CSS and JavaScript.

PlanetPress Connect also includes a process automation server, called Workflow. It is capable

of servicing response form web pages and email to provide interactive business

communications.

PlanetPress Connect can create documents for tablets and mobile devices that run a free

CaptureOnTheGo App. Users with a CaptureOnTheGo subscription can then download

documents to their own devices, interact with them and send the captured data back to

PlanetPress for conversion into additional documents or workflows.

This online documentation covers PlanetPress Connect version 1.7.1.

Icons used in this guide

Icons are used throughout this guide to point your attention to certain information.

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Note

Complementary information that is not critical, but may help you better use PlanetPress Connect.

Tip

Information that is useful or suggests an easier method.

Warning

Information that is potentially critical to using PlanetPress Connect. Pay close attention.

Page 14

Setup And Configuration

This chapter describes the PlanetPress Connect installation and the different considerations

that are important in regards to the installation and use of PlanetPress Connect.

l "System and Hardware Considerations" below

l "Installation and Activation" on page28

l "Server Configuration Settings" on page70

l Uninstalling

System and Hardware Considerations

There are a variety of considerations to be aware of. These are documented in the following

pages:

l "System Requirements" below

l "Environment considerations" on the facing page

l "Database Considerations" on page18

l "Network considerations" on page23

l "Language and Encoding considerations" on page23

l "Performance Considerations" on page24

l "Antivirus Exclusions" on page26

System Requirements

These are the system requirements for PlanetPress Connect 1.7.1

Operating System (64-bit only)

l Microsoft Windows 2008/2008 R2 Server

l Microsoft Windows 2012/2012 R2 Server

l Microsoft Windows Vista

l Microsoft Windows 7

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l Microsoft Windows 8.1

l Microsoft Windows 10 (Pro and Enterprise versions only)

Note

Windows 8.0, Windows XP, Windows 2003 and older versions of Windows are not

supported by PlanetPress Connect.

Minimum Hardware Requirements

l NTFS Filesystem (FAT32 is not supported)

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

l 8GB RAM (16GB Recommended)

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

Note

For tips and tricks on performance, see "Performance Considerations" on page24.

Environment considerations

Virtual Machine Support

PlanetPress Connectsupports VMWare Workstation, VMWare Server, VMWare Player,

VMWare ESX (including VMotion), Microsoft Hyper-V and Microsoft Hyper-V/Azure

infrastructure environments as software installed on the Guest operating system.

Warning

Copying (duplicating) a Virtual Machine with Connect installed and using both images

simultaneously constitutes an infringement of our End-User License Agreement.

Page 16

Note

While some virtual machine environments (from VMWare and Microsoft) are supported,

other virtual environments (such as Parallels, Xen and others) are not supported at this

time.

Terminal Server/Service

PlanetPress Connect does not support Terminal Server (or Terminal Service) environment as

possible under Windows 2000, 2003 and 2008. This is to say, if Terminal Service is installed

on the server where PlanetPress Connect is located, unexpected behaviours may occur and

will not be supported by Objectif Lune Inc.. Furthermore, using PlanetPress Connect in a

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

Remote Desktop

Tests have demonstrated that PlanetPress Connect can be used through Remote Desktop. It is

however possible that certain combination of OS could cause issues. If problems are

encountered, please contact OLSupport and we will investigate.

PlanetPress Connect 1.3 and later have been certified under Remote Desktop.

64-bit Operating Systems

PlanetPress Connect is a 64-bit software and can only be installed on 64-bit operating systems.

Antivirus Considerations

l Antivirus software may slow down processing or cause issues if they are scanning in

temporary folders or those used by PlanetPress Connect. Please see KB-002: Antivirus

Exclusions for more information.

l Antivirus software might interfere with installation scripts, notably a vbs script to install

fonts. McAfee, in particular, should be disabled temporarily during installation in order for

MICR fonts to install and the installation to complete successfully.

Windows Search Indexing Service

Tests have concluded that the Windows Search service, used to provide indexing for Windows

Search, can interfere with Connect when installing on a virtual machine. If the installation

hangs during the last steps, it is necessary to completely disable this service during installation.

Page 17

l Click on Start, Run.

l

Type in services.msc and click OK.

l

Locate the Windows Searchservice and double-click on it.

l

Change the Startup Type to Disable, and click Stop to stop the service.

l

Try the installation again.

l

Once completely, you may re-enable the service and start it.

Commandline switches and .ini entries

PlanetPress Connect is intended to work stably and reliably, based on Java and the Eclipse

framework. To ensure this reliability and robustness, many Java and Eclipse parameters have

been tested and tuned, which is reflected in the respective .ini entries and the used command

line switches. A collection of valuable settings has been elaborated and found its entry in

PlanetPress Connect “good switches list” (called the “whitelist”).

The protection of the end user’s system is one of our main goals and therefore we have

implemented a very strict verification mechanism, which ensures, that only these whitelisted ini

entries and commandline switches are accepted, when one of Connect components is started

and run. Please be therefore advised, that any non-whitelisted ini entry or commandline switch

will be accepted and will - if tried to be used - lead to the respective application’s “sudden

death”. If you should encounter such a behaviour then please double-check your Connect log

file/s for respective entries.

Database Considerations

This page describes the different considerations and pre-requisites for the database back-end

used by PlanetPress Connect, whether using the MySQL instance provided by the installer, or

pre-existing (external) instance.

Using the MySQL Instance from the Installer

The MySQL Instance provided in the Installation Wizard is already pre-configured with options

to provide the most stable back-end setup.

These are the specific options that have been changed in our version of "my.ini":

l

max_connections = 200 : PlanetPress Connect uses a lot of database connections. This

number ensures that even in high volume environments, enough connections will be

Page 18

available.

l

max_allowed_packet = 500M : In some implementations, especially when using Capture

OnTheGo, large packet sizes are required to allow transferring binary files. This

substantial packet size maximum setting ensures that the data received by PlanetPress

Connect will be able to be stored within the database.

l

character-set-server = utf8 , collation-server = utf8_unicode_ci , default-character-

set=utf8 : These indicate database support for UTF-8/Unicode.

Installing / Updating Connect Using an existing local MySQL instance

If MySQL Server is already present and you wish to use it, the following should be taken into

consideration:

l The MySQL account must have access to all permissions using the GRANT Command,

including creating databases.

l The database configuration must include the options detailed in the "Using the MySQL

Instance from the Installer" on the previous page topic above.

l The SQL instance must be open to access from other computers. This means the bind-

address option should not be set to 127.0.0.1 or localhost.

Warning

If you chose not to install the supplied MySQL database, and instead opt for using a pre-

existing (External) database then you yourself must ensure that the External database is

accessible to Connect.

Objectif Lune Inc. will take no responsibility for database connections to any but the

supplied MySQL database.

Options available within the installer:

l The Configuration page for the local MySQL is displayed.

l MySQL settings are pre-filled with default values if no existing MySQL db configuration is

found.

l MySQL settings are pre-filled with existing db configuration settings, if they point to a

MySQL db type.

Page 19

Installing Connect using an existing Microsoft SQL Server instance

If Microsoft SQLServer is already present and you wish to use it, the following should be taken

into consideration:

Warning

If you chose not to install the supplied MySQL database, and instead opt for using a pre-

existing (External) database then you yourself must ensure that the External database is

accessible to Connect.

Objectif Lune Inc. will take no responsibility for database connections to any but the

supplied MySQL database.

Note

Since PlanetPress Connect version 1.6 the minimum required version of the MS SQL

Server is SQLServer 2012.

l

When MS SQL is selected, the default values for root user are sa and 1433 for the port.

l If db settings from a previous installation are found, the pre-exising settings will be

displayed for the matching db type (for MS SQL settings, this will only work if they were

created with Server Config Tool 1.5.0 or later, or the Connect installer 1.6.0 or later). If the

db type is changed in the configuration page, the default values for this db type will be

displayed. If the pre-existing db settings are set to Hsqldb, the default db type selection

will be MySQL.

l Selected db settings are stored in the preferences as usual (C:\ProgramData\Objectif

Lune\Ol

Connect\.settings\ConnectHostScope\com.objectiflune.repository.eclipselink.generic.pref

s)

Updating With No Local MySQL Product

l When updating a Connect installation from 1.5.0 which contains a Server Product but no

local MySQL Product, the DB Configuration Page will detect which db type was set

before (especially if the db configuration was switched from MySQL to MS SQL using the

Server Configuration Tool), and default to those settings.

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OBJECTIF LUNE PlanetPress Connect 1.7 User manual

OBJECTIF LUNE PlanetPress Connect 1.7 User manual

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