Create!Form printing in Europe

I am trying to print Create!Form overseas in Europe. CF server is located in US. CF server has printer setup via TCP/IP port. The printer is located in europe. When I am sending the job to print, it is taking a long time to print. If I am printing a normal page to print, it printed immediately. Why Create!Form server is taking so much time to print? How can I resolve this issue?

Some questions for you;
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[*] What version of Cform software are you running?

[*] If your environment is EnterpriseOne, are jobs run as "Print Immediate" on the EnterpriseServer then printed to the CformServer?

[*] If E1, are you using "View PDF" (Cform plug-in merge) then printing from Acrobat Reader? Is the response time for that also slow?

[*] If E1, where is that EnterpriseServer - also in the US or in Europe? What is your E1 platform (WinNT, AS/400 or UNIX)?

[*] On the CformServer, where are the form projects located that are used to merge with the output from JDE (on that server or somewhere else in your network)?
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Karen.

What version of Cform software are you running?
Create!Form 3.2

*If your environment is EnterpriseOne, are jobs run as "Print Immediate" on the EnterpriseServer then printed to the CformServer?
What do you mean by “Print Immediate”


*If E1, are you using "View PDF" (Cform plug-in merge) then printing from Acrobat Reader? Is the response time for that also slow?
It is not slow because you are printing directly. It is the merging that is taking time.

*If E1, where is that EnterpriseServer - also in the US or in Europe? What is your E1 platform (WinNT, AS/400 or UNIX)
EnterpriseServer is in US. Platform is AS/400.

*On the CformServer, where are the form projects located that are used to merge with the output from JDE (on that server or somewhere else in your network)?
Form Projects are located on Cform Server.

"Print Immediate" is an option in JDE when you submit a job to run. When the job completes the output is immediately sent to the JDE printer selected for the job at the time of submission. That output is then sent to the CfromServer, merged with the form project and sent to the destination physical printer.

Is the problem you are trying to find help for only occurring when users "View PDF"?

I am assuming that the problem you are trying to resolve is that there is a considerable delay waiting for the Cform project to merge and show the results in Acrobat Reader. That once that happens the user selects File>Print and the document immediately prints on the printer.

If my assumptions are valid then the delay that users see waiting for the merged PDF in AcrobatReader can be caused by several things. Some things you should look at are;
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[*] The version of Cform software you have implemented. Very possible that this type of issue has been resolved in a service pack or update to the version you are running.

[*] How the plug-in is configured for form project directory and install directory.

[*] The type of client used in Europe to access and E1 session (Fat, Citrix, Web).

[*] The content/structure of the Cform project used to merge with the JDE PDF. It could be as simple as a graphic logo file that used to import into the Cform project had a large file size that resulted in the Cform project being larger than necessary.
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Hope this helps -

Karen.

The discussion has gone to another tandem.

We are not using CF plug-in to view the pdfs and submit to the windows printer directly.

I am submitting the job to Create!Form printer that reroutes the job to physical printer via Create!Form Director. The physical printer is located in europe and is setup on the CF server via TCP/IP. The physical printers that are located in US are not taking time. The physical printers in europe are taking considerable time to print. I am thinking that merging via WAN is significantly slower than the merging via LAN.



tgatif

I am merging the document before it is going to printer via Create!Form Director. In Create!Form Director, we need to give the special node to merge the forms. The special node is called Form Merge. Printer to which the form is going to is disabled in Create!Form Server 3. The merging job is being done by Create!Form Director and not by the printer.


Taj

Taj -

I don't know enough about LAN vs. WAN printing but like you suggested earlier maybe that's the root cause.

My 2cents on that would be that I don't think it's the Cform merging but instead TCP/IP print spooling via LAN vs. via WAN. Maybe a network techie could offer advice on how to increase NT server print performance when printing via WAN.

When the Cform Server merges and prints to a local US printer (via LAN) what's the size of the print job (in bytes) that gets sent to the printer? Same question for Europe printing via WAN.


Karen.

The size of the print job is 72KB. I also tried to email the particular file and it was 25KB.

tgatif

It makes sense that the Cemail job is smaller since it's just an email template message and merged PDF file attached to it. In contrast the job stream sent to the printer is either PostScript or PCL language that describes to the printer how to "draw" the page to be printed.

I still think the root of your problem may be Windows print server performance LAN vs. WAN. What's the speed/capacity of your WAN link? Again this is not my area of expertise but is there something that defines what jobs get priority/bandwidth on the WAN connection?

Another test to check file sizes; check what the size of the data stream sent via WAN is. What's the size of the print job for something sent to a Europe printer that does not get processed by CformServer? Keep in mind you want to keep with the same type of job (3 page PDF rather than do one test with a 3 page PDF, then the next test with a 723 page PDF.)

One more thing to check... on the Cform server, what are the director settings for Form Project and CommonFormProject? If those directories are physically located on a hard drive in the Cfromserver then the path should be DriveLetter:\directory\directory (for example C:\Program Files\Create!form\ProdDir6 as opposed to \\servername\share name).


Karen .