HP Smartstream Designer VDP Workflow

tz8 · Post by **tz8** » Tue Aug 14, 2012 6:59 pm

about the Configurator for the HP Smartstream Designer... can anyone give me a serious slap on the back of my head? I can't figure out which template file he's trying to find...

Cause regardless which files (.indd, .jlyt) are available in the template folder Switch always gives me

No Matching template found for foo in C:/SWITCHFILES/templates/

The databasefile being foo.txt and the indesign version being foo.indd

What am i missing? And where's the damn documentation?

Cheers,

Thorsten

tz8 · Post by **tz8** » Tue Aug 14, 2012 7:37 pm

for the record: .hpd files don't work either

tz8 · Post by **tz8** » Tue Aug 14, 2012 8:36 pm

thanks to my fellow HP Indigo tech guy i've advanced a few steps - but only to fall over the edge:

Trick is that you need to create subfolders in the template directory and put the template files there. So for the template directory being c:bar and the database being foo.txt you need the directory c:barfoo...

BUT regardless what is in there (InDesign Files, .hpd, a random .jpg i found or even an empty directory) once Switch finds the database and tries to execute the HP VDP Scripts the Adobe Javascript Debugger fires (see the screenshot) and the flow lands in a limbo.

the (german) error messages given in Switch are:

Erstellen von Verzeichnis '%1' fehlgeschlagen

Datei 'ECHO ist eingeschaltet (ON/Adobe Scripts/vdp.jsx' konnte nicht geöffnet werden

roughly translated to:

Creation of Directory '%1' failed

File 'ECHO is on (ON/Adobe Scripts/vdp.jsx' could not be opened

This looks to me like a very flawed Javascript... no wonder that it can't work when it tries to open a file called 'ECHO is on (ON/Adobe Scripts/vdp.jsx' after trying to create a folder named '%1'...

After that Switch doesn't show any open jobs, but you can't stop the flow because it's waiting for a job to finish. After the timeout the database lands in the problem job folder.

I will keep you updated once i find out more about how to get this flow operational... and i am still curious about your experiences if you happen to read this

Cheers,

Thorsten

tz8 · Post by **tz8** » Sun Aug 19, 2012 9:53 am

ok, long story short because i already wrote that once but this &%$%*+ forum keeps logging you out while writing longer posts (somebody should fix that session cookie timer!):

Server 2003 (which is the OS of my test machine) is not supported. Although InDesign and SmartStream Designer are working totally fine on it and everything works nice and smooth when invoked manually there are multiple problems when trying to invoke the workflow through Switch:

- Switch 11 somehow can't find the current user's 'own documents' path and therefore the CDP configurator can't store the script file

- even when the path is hardcoded in the configurator (thanks to the HP dev i talked to for like 1 1/2 hours) InDesign is properly called but then throws Visual Basic Debugger Messages and fails

Transferred the test license to my Windows 7 machine - everything works fine

The fun part: HP SmartStream Designer is only certified on Windows 7, Vista and XP. Not on any Windows Server OS AT ALL. And i always thought that if you want to have a nice working Enfocus Switch in a proper virtualised datacenter with failover and all that nice stuff you want in a productive environment you are more or less forced to use it on windows. Because there are no 19" rack optimised Apple computers with failover capabilities.

So jiminy jillikers logic (sorry for being so blatant), i'm going to take away all these nice security features just to have a stable VDP process.

Does anyone happen to know if Switch on OS X is actually a 64 bit application? Because that's what making it easy for me to transfer to another host: even Switch 11 is still only running in 32 bit mode and my 8 core 32 GB RAM machine is being bored to death by not being used at all. What a pity.

And another thing: i asked HP if they will bundle the SmartStream Designer with an InDesign Server license. Would make sense.

tl;dr: Windows Server bad. Is Switch on OS X 64 bit? Question to HP: is InDesign Server supported and will it come bundled?

Cheers,

Thorsten

PS: good thing i copied this text to the clipboard, when i was finished typing it the session cookie was expired again.

dkelly · Post by **dkelly** » Mon Aug 20, 2012 5:32 pm

Does anyone happen to know if Switch on OS X is actually a 64 bit application? Because that's what making it easy for me to transfer to another host: even Switch 11 is still only running in 32 bit mode and my 8 core 32 GB RAM machine is being bored to death by not being used at all.

Switch is 32-bit application; however, it supports threads and hence should be able to use all of the cores of your server. There are some flow elements that can only perform 1 task at a time; such as Indesign or Acrobat. Mostly GUI applications that were not designed for automated workflows.

Check your preferences and make sure that "Concurrent processing tasks" is set correctly. The maximum number of concurrent tasks is controlled by your license which is displayed in the Manage Licenses window.

Dwight Kelly

Apago, Inc.

dkelly@apago.com

tz8 · Post by **tz8** » Wed Aug 22, 2012 6:12 pm

for the record:

HP seems to be working on a SmartStream Designer Server (currently in beta) version which depends on Adobe InDesign Server CS6 and which comes bundled with a piece of server hardware to run on (i heard 30k Euro as a price for the bundle). If a switch configurator will be available for it (i highly doubt it) is not known.

SRSLY, a dedicated machine (Mac Mini for 2k Euro) running a Switch license (core & configurator for 2.5k Euros) plus InDesign (1k Euro) + SmartStream Designer (1.5k Euro) totals to 7k Euros with the disadvantage that InDesign could probably fail starting because it moans for updates. Still you'd be able to create loads of jobs per day. I seriously can't see the point in HPs product strategy...

Cheers,

Thorsten