Pharos Blueprint Enterprise 3.5 Service Pack 1 Hot Fix 1

Pre-install

This Hot Fix is compatible with Pharos Blueprint Enterprise 3.5 Service Pack 1.

Installation

This Hot Fix applies to all Blueprint components. It should be run on all Blueprint servers (Collector and Analyst) and any PCs running a standalone Blueprint Administrator, and also distributed to all Tracker workstation and print servers.

To apply and distribute this Hot Fix:

1. Run the supplied Blueprint3.5SP1ServerPatch4686.exe executable on all Blueprint server(s) and Administrator PCs.
2. Use Blueprint Administrator to create an install or upgrade package containing the new Print Tracker components.
3. Distribute the package as you normally would.

Important - remote databases: If the database is hosted on a separate machine from the other Blueprint server components, you will need to manually patch the database before running the patch executable on the Blueprint server. Please follow the instructions in the ManualDatabasePatch.zip file packaged with this hotfix. Note that, while not ideal, it is safe to patch the database afterward if this step is neglected initially.

Note: When installing Tracker packages in certain conditions, you may see the error message: "The application or DLL C:\WINNT\system32\OLE32.DLL is not a valid Windows image." If this error occurs, cancel the install, then find and delete the file wodFtpDLX.dll (located in WINNT\System32 or Windows\System32). You should then be able to re-run the installation. See Pharos Knowledge Base article #1274 for more details.

After applying this Hot Fix, the version number of affected components will be 3.6.4686.

Details

This Hot Fix addresses the following Server issues:

• Secure print jobs with a blank name could not be released. Certain applications print jobs with no job name. The application of this Hot Fix ensures that such jobs can be released, as such jobs are assigned '(blank)' for their job name.

• Large Secure Release Here print jobs could fail to print if they took longer than 30 seconds to send to the printer. The application of this Hot Fix changes the configuration so that secure release jobs no longer time out.

• Secure Release Here print jobs being processed slowly, taking multiple minutes to be page counted, and appear for users to release. Multiple issues caused secure jobs to be processed slowly, including the page counting of large jobs, and also not coping well with the Windows Spooler being restarted. The application of this Hot Fix ensures that secure jobs are processed in a more timely manner. Improvements include more rapid detection of secure jobs, recovering quickly from a spooler restart, and a shorter page counting timeout to not allow large jobs to hold up other user's jobs.

• Secure Release Here print jobs could fail to be released and printed when the printer being released to had its IP address change. This would occur when there was a Blueprint Collector between the device and the Blueprint Analyst. The application of this Hot Fix ensures that the change of device IP address is recorded correctly and made available to the Blueprint Collector when a user chooses to release their print job.

• The Period End close process which prepares data for reporting could fail due to taking too long and timing out. This typically occurred for customers with large volumes of data in the Blueprint database. The application of this Hot Fix ensures that the Period End close process completes quicker and does not cause a timeout failure.

• The Budget Center, Building and Floor Employee Volume reports would not show copy volume assigned to the Unknown Employee when this volume is apportioned during the Period End close process. The application of this Hot Fix ensures that the volume for the Unknown Employee is included in these reports.

This Hot Fix addresses the following Tracker issues:

• Printer queues on a machine with the Print Server Tracker installed could lose their shares and other properties. If a printer was shared, or a new printer created and then shared, after the 'Pharos Systems ComTaskMaster' service was started, then these shares would be lost whenever the service was stopped or restarted (including the machine rebooting). The application of this Hot Fix ensures that printer shares and other properties are not reset when the 'Pharos Systems ComTaskMaster' service is stopped or restarted.

• Print jobs remain in the 'Printed' state for a long time with the Print Server Tracker installed. Secure jobs also take a long time to appear for release. The Print Server Tracker could lose notifications from the Windows Spooler when the Spooler was restarted. When this happened the Print Server Tracker would fall back on a 2 minute poll for checking for new print jobs to process. The application of this Hot Fix ensures that the Print Server Tracker responds as quickly as possible to new print jobs, regardless of whether the Windows Spooler is restarted.

• The Print Server Tracker could cause corrupt job information to be logged to Blueprint under certain failure conditions, such as reading driver information. This could also result in spool files being left behind, consuming disk space. The application of this Hot Fix ensures that the Print Server Tracker copes better under failure conditions, and cleans up spool files whenever it cannot process a print job.

• Stopping the 'Pharos Systems ComTaskMaster' service on a cluster Print Server Tracker install does not reset the 'Keep Printed Jobs' printer flag. This results is print jobs remaining in the 'Printed' state and consuming disk space. The application of this Hot Fix ensures that 'Keep Printed Jobs' is correctly disabled when the 'Pharos Systems ComTaskMaster' service is stopped on a clustered print server.

• The workstation Tracker could cause the Windows Spooler service to crash when under high load. This is most likely to happen when the workstation Tracker is being incorrectly used instead of the Print Server Tracker on a print server. The cause of the crash was logging code not being safe under heavy load. The application of this Hot Fix ensures that logging works properly under high load printing.