When we upgraded our ADTS 6.7 SP2 into 7.2 we realized how great the new version was!

Intro

The 7.2 version changed its entire structure and cleared many useless dependencies such as Adlib. Now every files and configurations are stored in one only place! Before we had files dispersed in C:Documentum, in Program FileDocumentum, in Program Files(x86)Adlib and so on. How do you want to find yourself with this structure!

Now, everything is located under C:Documentum (by default) but it can be changed during the installation. Regarding the installation, it’s still straight forward, keep the default and you only have to click next.

All CTS configurations and logs are located under C:DocumentumCTS. Even the temporary folder for checkouts is located there: C:DocumentumCTSdocbase<your docbase>.

Too cool to be true, only 3 services remains:

  • The Agent
  • The Process
  • The monitor to keep the process up

Adlib has been removed so you don’t have these 5 outer space services to manage anymore.

The rendering principle is quite the same as before. A request is sent into the content server queue and ADTS will pick up the document requested to render; and select a right profile depending on the format of the document.

But the way it will be rendered changed a bit. Now you can choose to use Office to render the document or the ADTS internal plugin.

Internal plugin??

Yes, now ADTS can use different plugins and the most known are these ones:

  • Doc6
  • Doc10

I didn’t yet study the other ones, but I will probably post another blog on the others, but note that they are 10 by default.

The Doc6 plugin

This plugin is enabled by default and it is the default rendering process. It uses the internal process to render the document. I don’t know this exact process unfortunately but note that it’s super-fast. However it’s not as accurate as an Office PDF generation.

As it is based on an internal process maybe some margin or font or title or whatever will not be rendered exactly as visualized in Word/Excel/Power Point documents. This plugin is a way to get a rendition in a short time and if you don’t have specific fonts or if you don’t need the pdf to be perfectly rendered as the original, you should go with this plugin.

After several tests with Doc6 plugin I managed to get quite a good render, almost the same as the original, so it is not as bad as it looks like. I had headers and footers with pictures as expected!

But be prepared, EMC wrote that it could have some differences. Well, and if we need the perfect pdf?

The Doc10 plugin

You may have guessed, if I’m talking about Doc10 here it’s because it renders the original document as expected; because it uses Office to get the pdf!

This plugin is not enabled by default because you must install Office 2013 before using it. When activated it will automatically make the link to Office and call the ‘save as pdf’ kind of command.

The documentation is well written regarding how to enable Doc10 plugin (Administration Guide) but I will put here the main steps; because it’s always useful!

You first have to enable it on the ADTS server. Go edit the configuration file: C:DocumentumCTSconfigCTSPluginService.xml

It lists all available plugins, add the following line:

<CTSPlugin DELEGATE_CLASS="com.documentum.cts.plugin.doc10.Doc10Plugin" CONFIGFILE="C:DOCUME~1CTSconfigdoc10doc10.xml"/>

Now go to the profiles (accessible from DA) in System/Media Server/System Profiles and edit both profiles:

  • document_to_custom_pdf.xml
  • document_to_pdf.xml

Uncomment the Doc10 plugin. Note that if you put the Doc6 line before the Doc10 one in the files, it will first try to render through the Doc6 plugin. If you let it as default, it will try to render first with Doc10 plugin and if it fails it will try with the Doc6 one. Doc6 usually doesn’t fail. But if you want it to stop if the Doc10 failed just comment the Doc6 plugin line.

The plugin is enabled but you will not see any specific logs for this plugin. If you already noticed in the CTS logs folder, there are a log files for each plugin which have a name like DocX_log.txt with X the number of plugin.

You can enable a Doc10_log.txt log file by editing C:DocumentumCTSconfiglog4j.properties and add the lines:

log4j.category.com.documentum.cts.plugin.doc10=DEBUG,Doc10Appender
log4j.appender.Doc10Appender=org.apache.log4j.DailyRollingFileAppender
log4j.appender.Doc10Appender.File=C:\Documentum\CTS\logs\Doc10_log.txt
log4j.appender.Doc10Appender.Append=true
log4j.appender.Doc10Appender.layout=org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout
log4j.appender.Doc10Appender.layout.ConversionPattern=%d{HH:mm:ss,SSS} %10r %5p[%10t] %-20c{1} - %5x %m%n
log4j.appender.Doc10Appender.DatePattern='.'yyyy-ww-dd

 

Now you can check if your rendition has been done through the Doc10 plugin. You will see entries in the log and normally nothing in the Doc6 log file.

The post installation steps for Doc10 plugin is directly extracted from the documentation:

1. In Microsoft Word, click File > Options > General.
2. Disable Show the start screen.
3. In Microsoft Word, click File > Options > Trust Center > Settings.
a. Click ActiveX Settings.
b. Select Safe mode.
c. Select Disable all controls without notification.
d. Click Macro Settings.
e. Select Disable all macros without notification.
f. Click Protected View and clear all the options.
g. Click Privacy options.
h. Clear all options under Privacy options.
i. Clear the Warn before printing option under Document specific settings.
4. Close Microsoft Office applications.
5. Configure the anti-virus scanning software to disable scanning of <ADTS> subfolders.
6. Disable User Account Control (UAC) by using
Control Panel > Users on your computer.
7. Type services.msc from the Run window, and identify the administrator user name who launches the Documentum Content Transformation Services.
8. Add the administrator user from step 7 to Distributed COM users group:
a. Type lusrmgr.msc from the Run window.
b. Click Groups.
c. Right-click Distributed COM Users group.
d. Select Properties.
e. Click Add and add the administrator user from step 7.
f. Click OK.
9. Add the administrator user for the Microsoft Office applications:
a. Type mmc -32 in the Run window.
b. Click File > Add Remove Snap-in > Component Services.
c. Click Add.
d. Click OK.
e. Navigate to Console Root > Component Services > Computers > My Computer > DCOM Config.
f. Right-click on Microsoft Excel Application and select Properties.
g. Click the Identity tab.
h. Select This user and enter the credentials for the Administrator who launches the Advanced
Document Transformation Services service.
i. Click the Location tab.
j. Select Run application on this computer.
k. Repeat steps f to j for Microsoft Word 97 - 2003 Document and Microsoft PowerPoint Application and Microsoft PowerPoint Slide.
10. Log in as an administrator and create the following folders on the 64-bit ADTS system:
C:WindowsSysWOW64configsystemprofileDesktop
C:WindowsSystem32configsystemprofileDesktop

 

Test the rendering process

You can easily test the rendering process directly from the ADTS server.

Put your document to C:TempMyDocument.docx for example. Then open a cmd window and navigate to: C:DocumentumCTSlib and issue one of the following command:

  • CTSOfficeService.exe exec:winword C:DocumentumTempMyDocument.docx 1200
  • CTSOfficeService.exe exec:excel C:DocumentumTempMyDocument.xlsx 1200
  • CTSOfficeService.exe exec:powerpnt C:DocumentumTempMyDocument.pptx 1200

The 1200 argument is the timeout in second. The resulting pdf file should appears aside your original document.

Setting DEBUG mode

You can set the global debug mode by editing C:DocumentumCTSconfiglog4j.properties and changing INFO into DEBUG in the following line:

log4j.category.com.documentum.cts.impl=INFO, CTSServicesAppender

 

I hope this blog helped you to understand a little bit ADTS 7.2, I still have some study on it to do and hope I will have the time to post more blogs about it!