Posts in Category "Correspondence Management"

Quick and Easy steps to run Author & Publish Systems of Correspondence Management ES4

Posted on March 27, 2013 by sankumar | Comments (0)

Steps to setup Correspondence Management system with author and publish instances configured

It’s recommended to perform these steps on your development system where you would like to  have a setup in less amount of time to get started with the application

For stage, UA or prod systems please follow the detailed install & config guides

 

  1. Run LiveCycle installer and complete installation , before running LCM follow as mentioned in next step
  2. Go to <LC_Root_Directory>/jboss/server , create a copy of lc_turnkey under the same folder but with different name .. say lc_publish_turnkey (Publish instance needs a separate JBoss profile so this new profile can be used for publish instance)
  3. Now run LCM and complete the configuration manager – After completing LCM run You will have Author instance of CM up and running , now you need to perform few more steps to have author and publish running on same machine and configured to talk to each other
  4. LCM creates a folder with name crx-repository under <LC_Home_Directory> which is used as a repository for author instance
  5. Create a new folder under <LC_Home_Directory> with name “crx-publish-repository” (without quotes) , Go to <LC_Home_Directory>\configurationManager\export\crx-quickstart and copy install folder along with it’s contents and paste it under <LC_Home_Directory>\crx-publish-repository such that the contents under publish repository would appear like this after pasting the contents <LC_Home_Directory>\crx-publish-repository\install\
  6. Go to <LC_Home_Directory>\configurationManager\export Copy adobe-livecycle-cq-publish.ear file and paste it in <LC_Home_Directory>\jboss\server\lc_publish_turnkey\deploy folder
  7. Start lc_publish_turnkey profile from command prompt using command as “run -c lc_publish_turnkey -Dcom.adobe.livecycle.crx.home=”C:/pathToLCHomeDirectory/crx-publish-repository” -Djboss.service.binding.set=ports-01 -b 0.0.0.0” [o is zero in case you try to copy paste this content]
  8. For the first time start up of publish instance , It takes around ten minutes to completely start as it unpacks packages and creates repository , When the server is up and running You can use following URLs to log on to author and publish systems
  9. Author Manage Assets UI – http://hostname:8080/lc/cm , Publish Manage Assets UI – http://hostname:8180/lc/cm (You can login as default super admin i.e administrator/password – Change the password if needed)
  10. One last setting before you are done – Go to http://authorinstancehostname:8080/lc/etc/replication/agents.author/publish.html  , Login as admin\admin , Click Edit , Go to Transport tab and modify URL to http://localhost:8180/lc/bin/receive?sling:authRequestLogin=1 , Click OK , Click Test Connection and ensure that you see success message

Now you have running Correspondence Management system with author instance running on port 8080 and publish instance running on port 8180

 

Santosh

Correspondence Management Letter Preview Issues in Chrome and Firefox

Posted on March 21, 2013 by sankumar | Comments (0)

 

If you are unable to preview the letter in Correspondence Management Create Correspondence UI and wondering what might have happened – this blog tries to explain the reason behind it

If you are using Chrome , you may be seeing the issue as shown in the below screen shot

Letter preview in Chrome

Chrome Preview

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you are using Firefox , you may be seeing the issue as shown in the below screen shot

 

Letter preview in Firefox

Letter preview in Firefox

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When a letter is opened for preview the Create Correspondence UI opens and this UI is split in to two halves

On the left hand side the contents that are used in the letter are shown in the Flex UI and on the right hand side the preview of final correspondence is shown as PDF

In order to display the PDF on RHS one would need PDF plug-in in the browser that is being used.

The latest versions of modern browsers like Chrome and Firefox have their own in-built PDF Viewers

Chrome’s inbuilt PDF viewer is Chrome PDF Viewer , Latest versions of Firefox has a PDF.js plug-in which shows the PDF in html form

 

The PDF that is shown on the right hand side of create correspondence UI is an XFA form based PDF and the built-in PDF viewers of Chrome and Firefox do not support the preview of these PDFs

The solution to resolve this issue is to set Adobe’s Acrobat/Reader plug-in as the default plug-in to open PDF files inside the browser

 

Follow the below steps to set Acrobat/Reader plug-in as default plug-in to open PDFs in Chrome

1. Open Chrome browser

2. type chrome://plugins in omnibar and press Enter

3. If Chrome PDF Viewer is enabled , you should see something as below in your browser (Notice the Disable on Chrome PDF Viewer – which means it is currently enabled , user can click the link to disable it)

Chrome Plugins

Chrome Plugins

 

 

 

 

 

 

3. Disable Chrome PDF Viewer and Enable Adobe Reader PDF plug-in , after Reader plug-in is enabled you should see something as below in your browser (In this example Adobe Reader is shown but if you have Acrobat installed on your system , the Acrobat plug-in should be enabled)

Chrome Plugins

Chrome Plugins

 

 

 

 

 

 

4. Try to preview the letter again after Reader plug-in is enabled , The letter should render fine now

 

Letter preview

Letter preview

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Follow the below steps to set Acrobat/Reader plug-in as default plug-in to open PDFs in Firefox

 

1. Open Firefox browser

2. type about:config  in address bar

3. type pdfjs in the browser search box

4. In the preferences, select pdfjs.disabled – the option would be enabled by default , set it to false

aboutconfig

aboutconfig

 

 

 

 

 

5. Also in the preferences , ensure that the Acrobat/Reader is selected as the application to open PDF files

6. Restart the browser

 

If the above steps are followed to set Acrobat or Reader PDF plug-in as the default of Chrome or Firefox then the XFA form based PDF would appear properly on the RHS of the Correspondence Management Create Correspondence UI

Letter preview

Letter preview

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Note : In case if the PDF viewer is properly configured to Acrobat or Reader plug-in but if you still see issues in viewing letters there could be some other issue.

 

I will post a seperate blog to investigate how the letter preview issues can be debugged … stay tuned….

 

 

 

 

 

 

Create Correspondence UI view preferences

Posted on March 14, 2013 by sankumar | Comments (0)

 

Correspondence Management create correspondence UI is split in to two columns.

LHS shows the contents that are used in the letter and RHS shows the PDF preview.

CCR view has a drop down that changes the view on left hand side to data entry view or content view based on value selected in the drop down

Create Correspondence UI

Create Correspondence UI

 

 

 

 

 

There is some logic that determines the default view on left hand side (Flex UI) and shows content view or data view depending specific to letter

If a letter contains only layout fields that are user fillable – default view is data entry view

If a letter contains any content (like text , condition , image and/or list ) – default view is content view

There are some customer use cases where they always want the default view to be data even if the letter has content data modules.

To enforce Create Correspondence UI to always show data entry view (by default) follow the steps mentioned below :

 

  • Log on to CRX DE Lite http://hostname:port/lc/crx/de/index.jsp as admin
  • Navigate to /content/cm/tbxeditor-config.xml
  • set ccr default view as DATA (default would be AUTO , change it to DATA)

<!– In Create Coorspondence UI, LHS should default to what view: DATA|CONTENT|AUTO–>

<CCRDefaultView>DATA</CCRDefaultView>

  • Click Save All
  • Repeat the above steps on all instances (author & publish)
tbxeditor-config

tbxeditor-config

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now for any letter preview the default view would be data entry view (data is selected in the drop down by default) but users can switch to content view by changing the value of drop down to content

some customers had a requirement to completely hide the content tab , I will blog a separate post to select the default view to data and completely hide the data/content drop down

stay tuned…

Copy paste of text content from MS-Office applications

Posted on December 10, 2012 by sankumar | Comments (0)

LiveCycle Correspondence Management solution users often use text content from MS-Office applications like Word and Excel.

The text content can be copied from MS-Office applications and pasted to Rich Text Editor of Correspondence Management.

Currently the content copying is supported but any rich text formatting applied to the text in external applications like MS-Office applciations will not be retained.

 

If the user copies (to clipboard) below content from MS-Word

 

 

 

 

 

 

and pastes it in CM text content area of Rich Text editor , the text would appear like

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lot of customers are asking us to provide a functionality to copy paste content from MS-Office applications that supports copying of text content along with the formatting. This is currently on the roadmap but there are no fixed timelines when this feature would be available in the product.

stay tuned …….

 

Special characters for Asset Names

Posted on December 8, 2012 by sankumar | Comments (0)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

LiveCycle Correspondence Management is certified on four different languages (English, French , German & Japanese)

Out-of-the-box deployment of Correspondence Management permits usage of characters of asset names to 0-9 A-Z & a-z via keyboard typing but any language characters can be used in description and comment properties and as part of actual text content as well.

Example :

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A user can type the characters in description and comment but no in the Name field. An easy way to use such characters for asset names is to type it in description field , copy the word and paste it in Name field but in any customer environment if the organization wants the asset authors to allow usage of such characters for asset names the below steps can be followed to allow users type such characters for asset names.

  1. Log on to CRXDE Lite http://<hostnameOrIPAddress>:<port>/crx/de/index.jsp as administrator
  2. Navigate to content/cm/ and double-click tbxeditor-config.xml on left hand side panel
  3. tbxeditor-config.xml file opens in edit mode on right hand side panel
  4. search for customAssetNameCharset tag
  5. Include the special characters that you would like the users to use for asset names, Eg. If you would like to allow users to use Ф in asset name , then include this character in tbxeditor-config.xml file and save it
  6. In case there is a range of characters that you would like to allow, then specify starting charset and ending charset separated by a hyphen, similar to 0-9

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now the users are allowed to type new characters that are specified in tbxeditor-config.xml

This blog is just an extension to our online docs about this topic which is 
available at click here

 

In case of any confusion or more questions feel free to post your query on LiveCycle community forums

20 reasons to upgrade to ES3 Correspondence Management solution

Posted on August 4, 2012 by sankumar | Comments (0)

 

First version of LiveCycle Correspondence Management solution was delivered along with LiveCycle ES2 service pack 2.

Based on the customer feedback and requirements from various existing and prospective customers lot of new features have been added and existing features have been improved in Correspondence Management solution.

If you are an existing customer of Correspondence Management but are on LiveCycle version earlier to ES3 , Here are the 20 reasons why you should consider upgrading to LiveCycle ES3 Correspondence Management.

If you are a LiveCycle ES or LiveCycle ES2 customer and considering to buy and implement Correspondence Management as well , Here are the same 20 reasons why you should consider upgrading LiveCycle as well in order to make use of latest Correspondence Management solution.

 

(Please click the image to enlarge it and clearly view the content)

 

 

 

 

 

http://about.me/nskumar

How to create post-process for Correspondence Management

Posted on March 25, 2012 by sankumar | Comments (0)

Each letter in Correspondence Management can be associated with a post-process. A post-process is nothing but a LiveCycle orchestration with a specific requirement on the input/output parameters.

Sometimes one may wonder that the orchestration that one has created on LiveCycle does not appear in the drop-down of Letter Editor

If the orchestration has two input parameters i.e inPDFDoc , inXMLDoc & one output parameter i.e redirectURL then it will appear in the Letter Editor drop-down.

LiveCycle Correspondence Management Post-Process

LiveCycle Correspondence Management Post-Process

 

The above picture shows a sample post-process , The variables highlighted in a red rectangle are mandatory and are minimum requirements for Correspondence Management to recognise the orchestration as the one which is intended to be used with Correspondence Management Solution

One can add additional variables depending up on the logic and operations the orchestration does.

Fore more details on creating post-process visit our online help docs

Data Dictionary Best Practices

Posted on March 25, 2012 by sankumar | Comments (0)

Correspondence Management DataDitionary provides a representation of the underlying data structure of a complex backend enterprise system in a simple and user-friendly manner which business users can easily understand.

In any enterprise implementation of Correspondence Management usually middle ware developers work on creation of data dictionary.

We get requests from our customers to understand the best practices for creation of DataDictionary.

The answer is try to Keep It Simple.

  1. Do not try to create a single Data Dictionary with tens of thousands of elements to cater to the needs of all the correspondences
  2. If there is a possibility to create multiple data dictionaries by logically separating the correspondences based on business units / business needs , prefer to create multiple data dictionaries.
  3. If a single complex data dictionary is created (even if there isn’t a real need) , there would be some trade-off in the form of performance for some operations like Publishing the datadictionary and preview of letters that use this data dictionary.
  4. Do not try to over complicate the data dictionary by creating too many levels down the hierachy and do not even use a DD which is completely flat.
In case of any confusion or more queries , feel free to post your queries on Adobe LiveCycle forums.

 

Flash player release or debug ?

Posted on February 19, 2012 by sankumar | Comments (0)

 

LiveCycle Correspondence Management Solution has a Flex based user interface which works with Flash Player version of 10.2 or above.

 

Though Flash Player is installed almost on every internet connected PC , often some Correspondence Management solution users have following questions in their minds

1) What is the version of Flash Player plug-in installed in my browserr?

2) Is the Flash Player plug-in that is installed in my browser a release version or a debug version?

When users log on to Correspondence Management Solution http://hostname:port/cm/manageassets.html , Correspondence Management Asset Manager UI is loaded only if FlashPlayer 10.2 or higher is installed if not users are prompted with a URL in their browser to get a latest version of Flash from Adobe’s website.

 

latest version of Flash Player can be downloaded from http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/

If FlashPlayer is already installed it’s easy to check which version of it is installed

1) If you are connected to internet just click here to check what version of Flash Player you currently have and what is the latest version available

2) If you are not connected to internet , Once you log on to CM solution , Right Click anywhere on Manage Assets UI , If the FlashPlayer is of debug version you would see a menu item ‘Debugger’ in context sensitive menu , If not it means the Flash Player that is installed is a release version. Version number of Flash Player is also displayed on the context sensitive menu (see the below image)

 

Connection Error

Posted on February 19, 2012 by sankumar | Comments (0)

 

Developers who are working with Correspondence Management solution would have encountered these errors when working with author and publish instances (see the screen grab of error below).

 

 

These errors will be seen when Author and Publish instances of Correspondence Management solution are run on same machine and if one tries to work with both author and publish instances in two different tabs of same browser. This is quite common on a development system but not on production systems.

These errors can be avoided in different ways

1) Instead of accessing author and publish with same name or IP in browser’s address bar , One can use an IP address for one instance and FQDN for another instance i.e

http://fqdn:author-port/cm/manageassets.html (for author)

http://ipaddress:publish-port/cm/manageassets.html (for publish)

2) One can use two different browsers , one for accessing author instance and another for publish instance

3) Make two entries in hosts file with same IP address but different names , i.e if one’s client machine’s IP address is xx.xx.xxx.xxx one can add following entries in the hosts file of client machine from where the author and publish CM instances are accessed via browser and access the author and publish instances with their names provided in hosts file

e.g entries in hosts file (If the system is Win XP the hosts file will be under %SystemRoot%\system32\drivers\etc\ folder )

xx.xx.xxx.xxx    author

xx.xx.xxx.xxx    publish

Once the above entries are made in hosts file one can access the author and publish instances as below

http://author:author-port/cm/manageassets.html

http://publish:publish-port/cm/manageassets.html