Retrieve items

OL Connect Professional General
1

I’m exploring this workflow component (Retrieve Items) of OL Connect, but I cant’t figure out what it can do.
Reading the help it says:

The Retrieve Items Action Task locates and extracts items from the OL Connect Database so they can be used with further tasks.

In the component options/configuration I can’t see any value for a Database Connection, such as hostname, port, etc.
How does it work? There is a simple example available?

Thanks in advance, Mauro

2

Hello Mauro,

That’s a bit of a misnomer, I’ll correct it in the documentation because it’s actually pulling directly from the Connect Server, using the authentication provided in the “OL Connect Proxy” tab, like any other Connect task.

Here’s a video we recorded last week and, in a massive feat of awesome coincidence, have finished postprocessing on and are ready to publish. You’ll be the lucky first to watch it!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXH_knJvz2c&feature=youtu.be

If you have any further questions after this, let me know and I’ll be glad to clarify.

3

Hmm, youtube is taking more time than expected to process the video for PlanetPress Connect. In the meantime, check this version out (it’s branded PReS Connect, but it’s the same except for the branding!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hCQCqsTlYA

4

I have just finished watching the video.

This is what I understand (specifically for commingling, in wich I’m interested); correct me if I’m wrong.
I create two or more branch in the process, to generate for example 2 documents with “Create Print Content”.
Next I use “Retrieve Items” to get these documents and “Create Output” to generate a single PDF (for example).

Is this the functionality of “Retrieve Items” component?

Thanks, Mauro

5

Pretty much except that in this case (and in most cases) you need to use Set Properties to actually “tag” your current print job with a unique identifier, so that you only get the current job when you do “Retrieve Items”.

Here are some example files we used in the video. That should help.

6

Hi, I tried to replicate the process in the example, with my templates and my datamappers, of course.

But I have an error in the step “Create Job”, after I retrieve items.
I know from the video you linked yesterday that for the commingling I need a license, but I don’t know if the error is related to this or to something else.
The error is:

W3001 : Error while executing plugin: W4206 - Metadata does not contain valid Content Set Item Collection

Can you give me any clue?

Thanks in advance, Mauro

7

If you get the W4206 error, you have to look earlier in the log, because there is most likely an error occuring in the Retrieve Items task itself and that’s why it’s not producing any metadata.

If you’re trying to do actual commingling (using Retrieve Items on 2 or more different templates) without a license, then that’s probably what the log is going to tell you.

8

Thanks, maybe I just found the reason of the error.

In the “Create Job” task, I used the preset I have made in Designer, instead of the Default (Use IDs in the metadata).

I changed to this one and the error disappeared.

Now in the output I have a PDF with pages from the two different templates.

Just one last question.
In this process I have 2 very basic templates, each one of 1 single page with a table that contain the data from input file (a sample csv with 3 column, id, first name and last name).
Using your process (AX Commingling) as a base, i create 2 print content (one for each teamplate) in 2 different branch and then delete them.
Next I retrieve items (pick by Id and sort by Id), create job, create output and finally send PDF to folder.
In the create output task I insert a blank sheet before each document.
Sorry for this long preamble, my question: is there a way to control the order the templates appear?
In this case I have a blank page (begin of document), then page from the first template (that from first branch), then page from the second template (that from second branch), then the second document and so on.
Can I decide the order?

Thanks, Mauro

EDIT: I think the license is OK. If I check by the “Connect Software Activation”, in the Server Section, I saw “Job Creation ==> Comingling”.
See the screenshot below

485×691 8.31 KB

9

There’s no default UI way to do this, however, if you “number” your templates, that would work. That is to say, add a property called “templateOrder” or something, with value “A” for your first template, and “B” for your second template. Then, in the Retrieve Items, Commingling tab, you can use that templateOrder property in the sort, meaning you do a sort by ID first, then templateOrder in Alphabetical Ascending order. That’s for the order of the template.

If you wanted to put all of the pages of the first template at the top and the second template at the bottom of each document (so, if a client has multiple “letters” and then multiple “invoices”), you’d start with the templateOrder and THEN do the ID sort.

Hope this helps.

10

Yes, you put me in the right direction and give me a start point to begin with.

Thanks,
Mauro

11

Hi,

I am also having the error W4206 but my license should be okay. Please advise.

Thanks and Regards,

Janice