Sierra Atlantic A Hitachi Consulting Company

Issues faced when Implementing BI Publisher Reports

Prepared by: Shailesh Madhukar

Introduction
The primary objective of the project was to convert reports designed in Optio Software to BI Publisher. This was driven by multiple reasons from cost and maintenance perspective, but the primary reason was to make use of the extensive capabilities offered by the BI Publisher with ease of use. The client BIGBAND NETWORKS already had the AMS contract with Sierra and this was signed as an enhancement request. The project scope did not include modification to the existing data model of the report or to the existing layout. Therefore the existing RDF reports were used as they were already designed with XML output format.

Brief
The major chunk of the work involved was in actual designing of the layout. The other part was to print the reports to different printers where most of the issues were faced and are be detailed in this document. The issues are broadly categorized as below. - Setups required for printing BI reports. - Printing BI reports on Laser Printers. o Type of Reports : PORTRAIT, LANDSCAPE and LANDWIDE. o Printers : HP, XEROX and RICOH - Printing BI reports as Labels on thermal printer o Printer : ZEBRA

Setups required for printing BI reports.

The BI Publisher report printing requires the below basic setups to enable printing of the PDF reports. # 1 Issue Report not printing on already defined printers in Application. The View Output of the BI publisher report concurrent program shows XML output instead of the PDF format. Resolution The printer type needs to be changed to Pasta Universal to enable to print the BI Publisher reports with PDF output. The default output type needs to be set as PDF when defining the template in the XML Publisher Administrator.

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Printing BI Reports on Laser printers

The client had a mix of different type ( Postscript / PCL ) of printers at multiple locations giving rise to the below issues. # 1 Issue BI publisher reports print fine on postscript printers but not on PCL printers.
Prints fine. Does not print.
Xerox WorkCentre Pro 238 PS HP LaserJet 8100 Series PS RICOH Aficio SP C411DN PS HP LaserJet P2035n HP LaserJet 5Si

Resolution The postscript printers are enabled with processing the pdf files and printing. The PCL printers need to be defined as Pasta type printer at the OS level and the preprocess for converting the pdf file needs to be defined in the pasta.cfg. The details of the same are in the below metalink notes.
Note 365111.1 How to setup PASTA for PCL Based printers? Note 356501.1 How to setup PASTA quickly and effectively?

The printer truncates left or right margin of the report for BI reports with Landwide and Landwide240 style.

By default the Pasta Landwide240 style is not defined for the Pasta type printers and needs to be defined at application and OS level. This will define the page style of the report. The settings for this can be done on individual pasta.cfg files for the individual printers. No issues were noted when printing to Portrait or Landscape styles.
Note 763274.1 How To Setup Custom Pasta A4 Print Styles And Drivers.

BI publisher report with PDF output not printing as part of document set.

BI Publisher report do not print as part of document set, whereas Optio reports as part of document set are printing fine. BI packing slip report does not print serial numbers when printed through Document set as part of the Ship confirm process. This prints fine when printed with the Optio document set.

This is a bug in 11.5.10.2 where the version of WSHDSPRB.pls is earlier than 115.42.11510.7. Patches 5688014 and 9245452 need to be applied to resolve the same. The optio reports have printers defined at the individual report level. For the BI report to print as part of document set the default printer needs to be set at the user level. The order of the shipping reports in the document set plays an important role due to the after report triggers logic. Correcting the order of the BI reports in the newly defined document set resolved this issue.

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Printing BI reports as Labels on Thermal Printer

The labels were used as part of the shipping process and required barcode to be printed on the label. The setup at the client location was as below Printer : Zebra Z4M Driver version : 1.0.0.35 Scanner : WASP WWS 800 C The BI Publisher follows the below process when printing labels on thermal label printers (eg. ZEBRA printer).

Method to Print Labels with Barcode

The labels with barcodes can be printed with below methods. 1 Design the label with the third party tool like Zebra Designer and upload the template. The preprocessing is done by this Zebra enterprise connector and requires compatible drivers at the server and the printer level. 2 Design the label with BI Publisher designer and upload as a regular template. This requires the preprocessor to be correctly defined and configured at the OS level in the pasta.cfg file for that printer. This method was used here as the printer was desupported and compatible drivers with the Zebra enterprise connector were not available. The below issues were faced when configuring to print the label on the zebra printer.

Issue 1 : Label not printing on Zebra printer

The Zebra printer was configured as RAW by default at the OS. This was conflicting and causing the printer to print a blank page. The issue was resolved by changing the printer type PASTA at the OS level.

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Issue 2 : Barcode printed on the label is not read by the scanner

Freely available barcode fonts ( code128 and code39 ) were used to print the barcode on the label. But the scanner was unable to read any of the barcodes printed. Below steps were taken to resolve the issue. # 1 Action Taken Installed Zebra connector on the server and designed template in the zebra designer. Outcome FAIL. The printer stopped printing the label text and barcode and instead printed zpl. This was caused due to mismatch in the printer driver and the zebra enterprise connector drivers. Since the printer was de-supported the upgrade for the printer driver was not available. FAIL. This was done in conjunction with the zebra enterprise connector but did not resolve issue of printing ZPL. This was therefore reverted back along with the zebra connector. FAIL. The scanner did not read the barcode. SUCCESS. The scanner was able to scan the barcode.

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Defined new Zebra printer server with drivers 2.6.42 Build 2382 compatible with the Z4M printer. Standard encoder for the barcode font was added in barcodeutil.java Licensed barcode font code128 was used. This came along with the preprocessing logic which was included in the barcodeutil.java.

Note: The barcodeutil.java was compiled on the server for correct results. Vendor site : http://www.idautomation.com/fonts/code128/

The licensed barcode font code128 came with different sizes and the font was finalized after testing all and comparing with the existing label for layout and readability. IDAutomationC128XXS IDAutomationC128XS IDAutomationC128S

The final successful configuration was as below o Tool used : Standard BI Publisher in word doc. o Printer Type : Zebra printer defined with PASTA type at the OS Level. o Preprocessor : PDFTOPS was used in the pasta.cfg file o Font : IDAutomationC128XS

Issue 3 : The Label retracts back in the printer after printing the label
The zebra printer printed the label from Optio correctly. But when printed from BI Publisher retracted the label.

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Sierra Atlantic A Hitachi Consulting Company This caused issues to tear off the label as seen in the below images. When Printed from BI. When Printed from Optio

Below steps were taken to resolve the issue on the application side. # Action Taken 1 Modified BI Table layout to align to the printer. 2 Modified BI Layout to include additional lines at top / bottom 3 Modified Page size 4 Modified Page break 5 Modified Page Margins 6 Modified page size at OS level 7 Modified rows for printer style of printer at application level. 8 Modified "Printer_Style" to align to printer. 9 Verified for any properties that can be set at PDF level for formfeed. 10 Verified for any properties that can be set at run time level for formfeed. 11 Modified PRINT_MODE on port on print server. 12 Modified RETRACT on printer setup. 13 Printed the output file from Linux server. 14 Printed directly to the IP instead of routing through the print server.

Outcome Fail. Fail. Fail. Fail. Fail. Fail. Fail. Fail. None identified. None identified. Fail. Fail. Fail. Fail.

Below steps were performed on the physical setup of the printer to resolve the issue. # Action Taken Outcome 1 Default PRINTMODE option is Tear Off. This was changed to Rewind. Fail. 2 Default BACKFEED option is After Print. This was changed to Suppress. Fail. 3 Default TEAROFF setting is 100. This was modified to -90. Fail. 4 Set the BACKFEED to Before and the TEAROFF to -80 Success.
Note : In case label was printed from Optio the settings would be reset and therefore required reconfiguring the same to print the label correctly through BI Publisher without the retracting issue.

No formfeed or pagesize setups were done at the layout level. The final successful configuration done at the physical printer was as below o BACKFEED : set to BEFORE at the physical o TEAROFF : set to -80.

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