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Scheduled events, variable paths, and more


farns

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Greetings,

 

This is my first post in this sub-forum, I have been a FP Desktop user for years, and used the OLD server version, when it was called DL-1000. Used that up until about 4 months ago when I switched to a different company.

 

Now, I'm kinda caught up a little bit. I am on Windows 8 running FP Creator 9.1 on Acrobat XI.

 

I apologize in advance, this post will be a little long, but I am hoping to get some answers as we are evaluating the potential purchase of FP Producer (not the API version) and I need to understand if it can do what I need.

 

I am attempting to use FP to fill in a gap not provided by the VDP software my new print shop uses. We need the ability to merge multiple PDF files which each have varying page counts into one file for production. Our in-house VDP solution does not do this, but FusionPro does it beautifully. I found this post: http://forums.printable.com/showthread.php?t=37 and downloaded the file, made a few adjustments and I am getting exactly what I want, as far as the output is concerned. However, here are the challenges I need to overcome:

 

  • Problem #1: I cannot run this job on my desktop. By client requirement, it must happen on a secure server in my in-house data center. A server has been setup for this client specifically, and as I understand it, the only way to run Fusion Pro on this box (Windows Server 2012) is to buy FP Producer. Is this accurate?
    • A subset to this, is we are tinkering with a Windows 7 installation in a virtual environment on that server, and considering moving my desktop license from my machine to that virtual box. However, this does address problem #2:

    [*]Problem #2: My company is seeking a fully automated workflow for this project, which is being handled beautifully in our other software, all but this PDF-consolidation part of that process. My experience tells me that FP Producer API would solve this, but it's too expensive, so we're looking at the FP Producer option, and I have about a week left in my trial evaluation of the software. I have tried and tried, unsuccessfully to get the job to run, and here is the details of that problem:

    • The files come in to me daily in a dated folder, such as "2014Feb20". The resources I need to get at each day, are a couple levels inside that folder. The subsequent folders are standardized in name and can be hard coded in my script & rules, but the top level folder name is different every day, as it is the date. When I run my job that works fine in FP Creator over on FP Producer, it doesn't seem to want to follow the rules to get to the assets, it seems to want to collect all the assets, and send them to the Producer working directory to then compose the file. So if a job has 40 records, I'm getting 40 blank pages, instead of 40 combined PDFs which could be hundreds of pages long. It reports no error and thinks it did the job right.

So rather then diving in to HOW to fix this problem, just yet, I need to know if I am even barking up the right tree at this point. I need to know if:

 

  • It is possible to "schedule" jobs in Producer. I keep seeing the term "scheduler" but I do not seem to see any way to schedule a job for automatic execution. Even if it's not command line driven, can a job be ran without touching it. Even if that means leaving Acrobat open and running on the server at all times. This is the most important part. If there is a way to run jobs hands-off, then let's further the discussion. If not, then I may as well not spend the $8000 and just do this by hand in Creator in the Virtual Machine on the secure server.
  • If we can do that, then is there a way to have the project run as I have engineered it, so that I can access these dynamic paths to get to the assets where the customer has placed them?

What thoughts do any of you have on this? Am I on the right path or barking up the wrong tree?

 

 

 

Thanks in advance,

 

 

Farns

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Full automation and "scheduling" (in the sense that you mean it) of jobs is possibly only with FusionPro VDP Producer API (FP Server). It's not possible with Producer (Direct). Producer still requires a human to push a button to invoke a composition.

 

(It is true that a component of the FP Producer (Direct) system is called the "Scheduler," but that's a historical name, and, while I see how it may be a bit confusing, technically the jobs are still being "scheduled" in Producer, and queued up as necessary, even though it's not possible to "schedule" a job to be run automatically.)

 

That said, the problem of the job finding the resources correctly in Creator bu failing in Producer is almost certainly not a licensing issue. It's probably an issue of the job running on the Producer server not being able to find the path to the PDF resource.

 

If the resources are on a network (UNC) drive, then you might need to grant access to that share to whatever account is set up to run the Producer jobs in the Producer Configuration app. Or, if you have a local path to the resources hard-coded in the job, you will first need to change it to a UNC share so that the remote composition machine can access them.

 

If you want to see an error message when the resources are not found, you will need to modify the JavaScript rule to output one by calling the Print function. Or just remove the third parameter in the CreateResource call. (The parameter 'no' in the example is a mistake, as the non-empty string is treated as a Boolean value of true.)

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hmmm. Ok so it sounds like Producer will not be a viable option, at least in the context of this project. So what other value does producer bring to the table then, just the ability to run FP on a server platform and the ability to serve as a central server to crunch all the jobs that multiple workstations send to it? I'm trying understand it's capabilities enough to be able to intelligently recommend to the boss whether to invest in it or not.
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hmmm. Ok so it sounds like Producer will not be a viable option, at least in the context of this project. So what other value does producer bring to the table then, just the ability to run FP on a server platform and the ability to serve as a central server to crunch all the jobs that multiple workstations send to it? I'm trying understand it's capabilities enough to be able to intelligently recommend to the boss whether to invest in it or not.

The main advantage of Producer is that you can compose a big job on the server without tying up Acrobat on your Creator machine. You can queue up multiple jobs, from multiple clients, and then do other template design work. Then you can access the output from any client machine. It can also provide email notifications when jobs are completed, and put output into a hot folder for a printer or another workflow step. But it's not a fully automatable system like the Producer API.

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