newsletter PGCG EOM News and Views Adding barcodes to your output Need help? Issue 45, Summer 2017 Pretty Good Consulting Group

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1 newsletter PGCG Pretty Good Consulting Group G o t a p r o b l e m? W e c r e a t e s o l u t i o n s. EOM News and Views Adding barcodes to your output DDA makes printing a variety of barcodes quite simple Identify the barcode data, use the Print Barcode command. It is a little trickier when the data to encode is NOT there. For example, multiple customers require the 3 of 9 barcode to be printed on every page and that barcode must include the page sequence (i.e. 1 of 4, 2 of 4, 3 of 4, 4 of 4). Many current output reports do not include the total number of pages for a particular statement. One solution is to have EOM execute a Custom Job when the file arrives that counts pages, inserts new text that the DDA looks for, and then submits the print data back to EOM to process with the following DDA syntax... <3of9> <3of9> <3of9> <3of9> Need help? Barcodes... 1 Need Help?... 1 UEOMSplit options... 2 Run the Print Spooler... 3 Replacing lpr.exe... 4 Quick Hits... 5 Contact information... 5 In case you are a little fuzzy on where to get information on EOM The EOM Help file is accessible from the release media, Windows Start menu, and EOM Client The EOM client software has a handful of multimedia vignettes Go to Help / Demos to see the various topics Unisys has multiple documents posted ( search on "Enterprise Output Manager") as well as multiple YouTube postings The PGCG website ( has many EOM Newsletters, typically dealing with real customer issues and solutions. Current customers can request archived Newsletters no longer posted Want I.T. Consulting ( has documentation and examples

2 Slicing & Dicing files with UEOMSplit The UEOMSplit program is a Custom Job that has been on the EOM release media since EOM 7.0. The UEOMSplit program, configured as an Output Manager Custom Job, provides an additional solution to break up files and control the routing of the sections or "pieces" of the file to Output Manager EOM destinations. This capability does not require any change to the application producing the file and provides flexible control of the use of the sections of that file. Prior to the recent UEOMSplit 3.5 release the UEOMSplit program required configuration in the UEOMSplit.dat file that defined how the file was to be split based on file CONTENT (data in the file). New options have been added that allow for more general file splitting NOT based on the file content. No adjustments are required in the UEOMSplit.dat file to use these options Splits the file by a fixed record count Splits the file by a fixed number of bytes (nearest record to that size) Splits the file into the specified number of files Splits the file by a fixed number of pages When using any of these options the UEOMSplit program simply splits the file into the output directory, naming each split file with an incrementing file extension. Example The latest release (3.5a) of the UEOMSplit program can be found on the Downloads page of the PGCG website. [ 2 ] Page [ 2 ]

3 How the Windows Print Spooler causes heart failure Nothing impresses customers quite like having an installation failure and EOM service aborts. Recently, while installing the EOM 13.0 release on a new server we ran into a PDF Writer installation failure. The Windows Event Log pointed to a.net errors and really did not have much to go on. So, we tried to start the EOM service - it aborted. The Event Log looked like Followed by The solution? Start the Windows Print Spooler in the Services.msc app. Re-install the PDF Writer and start the EOM service. [ 3 ] Page [ 3 ]

4 Replacing lpr.exe In the Spring 2017 Newsletter we noted how the lpr.exe program used by EAE/AB Suite to send files to EOM had failed and how it took a while to figure out why. Maybe there is a better way to "feed" EOM and resolve other issues at the same time. In cases where you cannot use the EOM COM/.Net interface directly but DO have the ability to execute a process from the application, having a program or script submit files to EOM directly might be the solution. Let s start with the issues when using lpr.exe and then add a few requirements There is no logging from the lpr.exe program so you do not know if the program executed, aborted, or succeeded. There is no recovery or alerting if the lpr.exe execution fails. You have to remember to set a Windows registry value to use more than 10 ports. Very limited set of parameters given to EOM when receiving via the LPR protocol. Logging of all attempts and status of each attempt so we can track down problems. Recovery if there is a transfer failure, automatically retry to send the file to the EOM instance. Allow for more parameters to send to EOM. For example, the LPR protocol gives you the Host System, Host Queue, Host Banner ID, and Host Project (a.k.a. Job Class in this case) to File Mask on when receiving files. It would be very useful to be able to set more properties to make File Masking easier on the EOM side. There at least two cases to consider 1) When the application and EOM are on the same server 2) When the application and EOM are on different servers While it is tempting and would be fun to write our own lpr.exe program replacement, there is already a super-simple way to handle the requirements with an existing program. The UGiveItBack program is a free Custom Job on the EOM release media (see Tools subdirectory). It simply passes a filename and numerous optional keyword values to EOM via the COM interface. It has its own logging to a text file when executed (/L option) or upon failure, but more important than that once the file is given to EOM all of the logging, transport, recovery, and alerting requirements are met. This makes life really easy and much more efficient if EOM and the application are on the same server - no transferring the file via the LPR protocol to the same machine! Suppose your EOM instance and application are NOT on the same server. Well, we suggest that you save your self time, energy, and potential issues by purchasing the Professional Edition of EOM and install it on the same server as the application. The really cool part of this is that the configuration for the new instance of EOM can be very easy - anything received is transferred to your primary EOM instance. The UGiveItBack.exe command line syntax could look something like GiveItBack.exe I1=InFile HS=<HOSTSYS> HQ=<HOSTQUEUE> HR=<RUNID> HQL=<QUALIFIER> HFL=<FILENAME> HA=<ACCOUNT> HB=<BANNER> HP=<PROJECT> HU=<USERID> where you replace the <..> text with actual values you want to use with EOM. If you are limited to executing the lpr.exe program but can set parameters freely then simply copy the UGiveItBack.exe as lpr.exe. The UGiveItBack program and documentation can be found on the PGCG downloads page. [ 4 ] Page [ 4 ]

5 Training is available If your team is looking for a brush up on features or want to know about the entire EOM product we can help. Best of all is that we can use your real-life production requirements during the custom training. The training can be accomplished remotely or on-site. We have to admit that the on-site training usually is more beneficial in the long run because we tend to hear about (& see firsthand) more problems that EOM can solve. Who are we? Highly skilled, creative, solution provider focused on the Unisys Enterprise Output Manager product (formerly known as DEPCON) with a sense of urgency sums up who we are and what we do. We provide general Enterprise Output Manager consulting, migrations, upgrades, configuration, training, and custom programming. On-site services, remote services, and general consulting are available now. Why use PGCG? Deep knowledge of the EOM product integrated into a variety of customer environments set us apart. Our customer s production environment depends on solid, working solutions that we provide. Quick Hits When EOM 13 is installed the service "Unisys Enterprise Output Manager Web Service" is also installed and by default is allowed to start Automatically. You may want to set this service to "Manual" unless you plan on using EOM with InfoImage, other Enterprise Content Management software, or your own programs via the Web Service interface. Reminder - The login used to run the EOM service must have privileges to "see" Windows printers when added. Once again we heard from customers stating that they could not configure new Windows printers in EOM - they added the new printers using one login, the login for the EOM service did not have privileges, so could not "see" those printers. The Write a brief description and send it to SteveD@PrettyGoodConsultingGroup.com for future newsletter discussion. Pretty Good Consulting Group, LLC 4235 Ivy Court Lake Elmo, MN [ 5 ] Page [ 5 ]