OBJECTIF LUNE PlanetPress Connect 1.5 Operating instructions

User Guide

Version:1.5

User Guide

Version 1.5

Last Revision:2017-04-12

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. 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.

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Table of Contents

Table of Contents 5

Welcome to PlanetPress Connect 1.5 12

Icons used in this guide 12

Setup And Configuration 14

System and Hardware Considerations 14

System Requirements 14

Environment considerations 15

Database Considerations 17

Network considerations 20

Language and Encoding considerations 20

Performance Considerations 21

Installation and Activation 23

Installation Pre-Requisites 24

User accounts and security 25

The Importance of User Credentials on Installing and Running PlanetPress Connect 26

Installing PlanetPress Connect on Machines without Internet Access 28

Installation Wizard 29

How to Run Connect Installer in Silent Mode 35

Activating a License 38

Migrating to a new computer 41

Information about PlanetPress Workflow 8 41

Upgrading from PlanetPress Suite 7.6 42

What do I gain by upgrading to PlanetPress Connect? 45

Server Settings 48

Server Security Settings 48

Server Extension Settings 49

Uninstalling 52

Important Note:Stop any Anti-Virus Software before uninstalling Connect. 53

Impacts upon other Applications and Services 53

Uninstallation Wizard 53

The DataMapper Module 55

Basics 55

What's Next? 56

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Data Mapping Configuration 56

Creating A New Data Mapping Configuration 56

Opening a Data Mapping Configuration 66

Saving a Data Mapping Configuration 66

Data Mapping Workflow 67

Selecting Data 67

Extracting Data 76

About Promotional and Transactional Data 89

Steps 89

The Data Model 103

How to Use a Data Model? 104

About Records and Fields 105

Data Model File Structure 106

Data Source (Settings) 108

Input Data (Delimiters) 108

Boundaries 108

Data Samples 109

External JS Libraries 109

DataMapper User Interface 110

Menus 111

Panes 115

Example 122

Example 127

Left Operand 184

Condition 185

Operators 186

JavaScript 193

Defining Boolean Values 196

Boolean Expressions 196

Defining String Values 197

Building String Values 197

Defining Integer Values 198

Building Integer Values 198

Defining Float Values 199

Building Float Values 199

Defining Currency Values 200

Building Currency Values 200

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Extracting dates 201

Defining a date/time format 201

Examples of masks 202

Entering a date using JavaScript 202

Example 203

Defining Object Values 203

Toolbar 203

Shortcut Keys 205

Welcome Screen 205

DataMapper Scripts API 207

Objects 207

Functions 208

Methods 209

Write Your Own Scripts 214

Boundaries Using JavaScript 216

Objects 222

Functions 229

Methods 236

The Designer 255

Basic Steps 255

Templates 256

Contexts 269

Sections 271

Features 274

Print 275

Pages 276

Headers, footers, tear-offs and repeated elements (Master page) 276

Stationery (Media) 276

Creating a Print template with a Wizard 277

Print context 281

Print sections 284

Pages 291

Master Pages 299

Media 302

Email 307

Designing an Email template 308

Creating an Email template with a Wizard 311

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Email context 315

Email templates 317

Email header settings 320

Email attachments 324

Web 326

Creating a Web template with a Wizard 327

Web Context 331

Web pages 332

Forms 337

Using Form Elements 342

Using JavaScript 346

Capture OnTheGo 348

COTG Forms 349

Creating a COTG Form 349

Filling a COTG template 350

Testing the template 352

Sending the template to the Workflow tool 352

Using COTG data in a template 353

Designing a COTG Template 355

Capture OnTheGo template wizards 358

Using Foundation 362

Using COTG Elements 365

Testing a Capture OnTheGo Template 369

Content elements 373

Element types 374

Editing HTML 375

Attributes 375

Inserting an element 376

Selecting an element 377

Styling and formatting an element 378

Barcode 379

Boxes 419

Business graphics 422

COTG Elements 424

Date 429

Forms 430

Form Elements 435

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Hyperlink and mailto link 438

Images 440

Table 445

Text and special characters 449

Snippets 451

Adding a snippet 451

Creating a snippet 452

JSON Snippets 452

Styling and formatting 453

Local formatting versus style sheets 453

Layout properties 453

Styling templates with CSS files 454

How to position elements 462

Styling text and paragraphs 464

Background color and/or image 468

Border 469

Colors 472

Fonts 476

Spacing 478

Styling a table 479

Rotating elements 483

Locale 484

Personalizing content 485

Variable data 486

Conditional content 486

Dynamic images 486

Dynamic tables 487

Snippets 487

Scripts 487

Loading data 488

Variable Data 497

Formatting variable data 503

Showing content conditionally 506

Dynamic Images 508

Dynamic table 510

Personalized URL 514

Writing your own scripts 515

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How scripts work 515

Creating a new script 516

Writing a script 517

Managing scripts 519

Testing scripts 523

Optimizing scripts 526

Loading a snippet via a script 530

Control Scripts 532

Designer User Interface 546

Dialogs 547

Menus 617

Panes 628

Toolbars 643

Welcome Screen 648

Print Options 649

Job Creation Presets 701

Output Creation Settings 710

Designer JavaScript API 728

Designer API 728

Control Script API 728

Designer Scripts API 729

Control Script API 782

Generating output 798

Print output 798

Email output 798

Web output 799

Optimizing a template 799

Scripts 799

Images 800

Generating Print output 801

Saving Printing options in Printing Presets. 802

Connect Printing options that cannot be changed from within the Printer Wizard. 802

Print Using Standard Print Output Settings 803

Print Using Advanced Printer Wizard 804

Adding print output models to the Print Wizard 805

Splitting printing into more than one file 806

Variables available in the Output 806

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Generating Fax output 813

Generating Tags for Image Output 814

Generating Email output 815

Email output settings in the Email context and sections 816

Generating Email output from Connect Designer 817

Generating Email output from Workflow 818

Email attachments 819

Using an ESP with PlanetPress Connect 820

Generating Web output 825

Attaching Web output to an Email template 826

Generating Web output from Workflow 827

Web output settings in the Web context and sections 828

Release Notes 829

Overview 829

Connect 1.5 Designer Enhancements and Fixes 830

Connect 1.5 DataMapping Enhancements and Fixes 834

Connect 1.5 Output Enhancements and Fixes 834

Connect 1.5 General Enhancements and Fixes 836

Connect 8.5 Workflow Enhancements and Fixes 837

Known Issues 838

Copyright Information 843

Legal Notices and Acknowledgments 844

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Welcome to PlanetPress Connect 1.5

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. Shoot us an email at

doc@ca.objectiflune.com, or visit the online help: help.objectiflune.com and use the

feedback tool at the bottom of the page.

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 1.5.

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.

Technical

Information that may require specific knowledge to understand.

Warning

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

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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23

l "Server Settings" on page48

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 next page

l "Database Considerations" on page17

l "Network considerations" on page20

l "Language and Encoding considerations" on page20

l "Performance Considerations" on page21

System Requirements

These are the system requirements for PlanetPress Connect 1.5

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

l Microsoft Windows 8.1

l Microsoft Windows 10

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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21.

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.

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

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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.

l Click on Start, Run.

l

Type in services.msc and click OK.

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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 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

available.

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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.

Using a pre-existing MySQL Instance

If MySQL server is already installed 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.

Using MS SQL Server from the Installer

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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l On Update from 1.4.2 or earlier, the DB Configuration Page will always default to MySQL

connection settings, and if the installation was manually tweaked to connect to MS SQL

Server, the user has to switch to "Microsoft SQL Server" type and enter connection details

again.

Installing / Updating Connect Using a Local MySQL

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.

When modifying Connect

l If local MySQL is removed from an installation, the DB Configuration page will offer

additionally the Microsoft SQL Server db type with respective default values.

l If local MySQL is added to an installation, the usual MySQL Configuration page with

default values will be displayed.

Important

If a Server Product and a MySQL Product were selected to be installed on Connect 1.5.0, and

then the Server Configuration Tool is used to switch the database used by the Server to an

external Microsoft SQL, then the Update to 1.6 requires an extra step. The procedure is as

follows:

1.

Run the Update to Connect 1.6. This will assume the local MySQL database needs to

be updated and configured, so the user has to enter a root password on the MySQL

Configuration Page (can be any password matching Connect security rules).

2.

After the update, the Connect 1.6 Setup needs to be run once more to modify Connect.

3.

On the Product Selection page, now the MySQL product can be unselected.

4. When stepping forward in the Wizard, the DB Configuration page will be displayed which

allows to configure the Microsoft SQL Server with appropriate settings.

After this modification, the local MySQL is removed, and also the service dependency from

Server to MySQL is removed.

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Note

If Connect was initially installed not containing the local MySQL product (i.e. on 1.5 installation an

external MySQL was configured as database), then the Update to 1.6 will allow to select either

external MySQL or external Microsoft SQL on the DB Configuration Page.

Network considerations

The following should be taken into consideration in regards to network settings and

communications

l

If a local proxy is configured (in the Internet Explorer Optionsdialog, the option Bypass

proxy server for local addresses must be checked, or some features depending on

local communication will not work.

Language and Encoding considerations

Please note the following considerations:

l

Language:

l PlanetPress Connect is currently offered in several languages. These languages

can be switch between via the Preferences dialog. The current languages include:

l English

l French

l German

l Spanish

l Italian

l Portuguese

l Chinese (Simplified)

l Chinese (Traditional)

l Japanese.

The default language is English.

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OBJECTIF LUNE PlanetPress Connect 1.5 Operating instructions

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