McLaren Enterprise Engineer Reprographics Server

McLaren Enterprise Engineer Repographics server polls a job source continually for work items.

It provides following features:

• ·        Watermarking
• ·        Moving files
• ·        Rendering to PDF/HTML/Tiff formats
• ·        Content transfer to the transmittal server
• ·        Properties update
• ·        Title Block Synchronization

Technical details:

• ·         It polls a specific inbox and finds tasks. It processes task based on the configuration information.
• ·         It runs on .Net framework 3.5
• ·         It is used as wither Windows service or a standalone GUI.(Administrator account is needed when installing Reprographics as a Windows service)
• ·         It is built on top of McLaren Work Manager

Hardware/Software detail

• ·         McLaren Work Manager Client (With Office integration and Drawing Manager)
• ·         MS IIS 7.0
• ·         Native apps like CAD, Adobe Acrobat Professional and MS Office (for rendering purpose)
• ·         One repro server needs one reprographics user account.
• ·         Reprographics specific entries are present in the computer registry as following location: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Mclaren\
• ·         Reprographics console is accessed by visiting URL http:///ReproAdmin
• ·         Reprographics server uses log4Net to create and maintain logs and controlled by ReprographicsController.exe.config file available at c:\Program Files\Mclaren\Reprographics\. The log file is located in the user’s profile at c:\Users\\AppData\Roaming\Mclaren\EnterpriseEngineer\logs

Important Configuration Files

JobSources.xml

This configuration file tells the server which inbox to poll for tasks.

TaskPerformers.xml

This configuration file contains settings that guides transformation of native file into various different formats viz. PDF/XML/HTML etc.

Servers.xml

This configuration file tells Repro about the ECM servers [Repository (for Documentum)/ Content Server (for FileNet)] to connect to and provides connection information (configured via Reprographics Connection window).

Preferences

As Webtop in Documentum and Workplace/Workplace XT in FileNet P8 allow users to have set their profile preferences, Reprographics has following types of preferences:

a). General

This type of preferences include polling interval, the default timeout, daily boot time etc.

b). Email Notifications

Sends email notifications to administrator when job fails to complete.

This tab needs SMTP server information to be configured and email account of an administrator who needs to be notified via an email.

How Reprographics Works?

Step1: It finds a Work Task

Step2: Uses configuration information to determine necessary processes (Uses Parameter Gatherers)

Step3: Selects Task Performer* based on Parameter Gatherer information.

* = A component that executes the task usually defined in TaskPerformers.xml

Task Performers render the native files such as CAD into PDF and also performs non-rendering tasks such as change of lifecycle states of documents.

Multiple servers process same queue

Multiple Reprographics servers can poll the same inbox queue. If one server goes down the other will process all tasks. Multiple servers help to handle high volume of tasks. Reprographics server picks the task in FIFO fashion.

Multiple servers process different queues

In multiple Reprographics servers’ scenario (require multiple licenses), each server can poll a different inbox queue as well. JobSources.xml needs to be modified for queue (inbox) information. Specific tasks can be configured for different queues such as change of lifecycle state of documents, PDF publications etc.

There are various benefits of having multiple Reprographics servers:

a). In the event of a server failure, the other available server will continue to process remaining work tasks.

b). Handles high volumes and covers scenarios like large PDF creation

c). Improves processing of package.

Note: Reprographics server can be monitored remotely by visiting a URL such as http:///ReproAdmin/viewQueueContents.aspx

Prioritizing Queues

In case of multiple Reprographics queues, priority can be set on each of them. Repo server process each queue in order of priority. For example, server will finish processing the tasks of highest priority queue first before it starts processing lower priority queue.

By default all queues has priority 1 unless it is set in JobSources.xml.

Following can cause Reprographics server to fail:

a). Corrupt or password protected content

b). Infrastructure and/or configuration issue

e.g: An immutable document cannot be rendered. Network slowness causes timeout for task processing.