This is the list of the InterFormNG2 releases and the major new features in each release:
Version 3.4.0 Important: The embedded database has been updated to a newer version. Once this is taken into use, the database files will no longer be compatible with older versions of InterFormNG2. Before upgrading, we recommend making a backup of the INTERFORMNG2_HOME folder, so the old database files can be restored in case a rollback is needed. Also please notice: Exports from this version cannot be imported in older versions if new functionality is used.
Version 3.2.0 Note: Dynamically positioned texts with a max. width and center or right adjustment are now positioned in a better way. You may need to change your templates after an upgrade.
Version 3.1.3 Please notice the changed behaviour of fixed positioned texts, that has a max. width, that are centered or right aligned. You may need to change your templates after an upgrade.
Version 3.4.0
•IMPORTANT: The embedded database has been updated to a newer version. Once this is taken into use, the database files will no longer be compatible with older versions of InterFormNG2. Before upgrading, we recommend making a backup of the INTERFORMNG2_HOME folder, so the old database files can be restored in case a rollback is needed.
•Exports generated in version 3.4.0 cannot be imported in older versions of InterFormNG2 if new functionality is used. This includes e.g. the new column setting, flexible for tables.
The new functionalities in version 3.4.0 are grouped below:
Versioning
•A new optional versioning feature, allowing all resources to be under version control.
•Support for workflow-driven approval process for versioned resources has been added. This includes the new workflow input type, Start approval process as well as the workflow components, Await approval and Complete approval process.
•New option to add users to user groups for more detailed authorization control (currently only relevant for versioning and approval).
ZPL printing
•A new ZPL engine/renderer has been added. It is possible to switch back to the old renderer by setting the predefined variable, interform.destination.printer.zebra.oldEngine to true.
•Additional advanced settings for ZPL printer settings has been added in order to support a wider range of ZPL-compatible printers. These options are both added on the Advanced ZPL settings on the printers and can also be set via predefined variables.
•Added support for ZPL color images (experimental only) to support color images on some ZPL compatible Epson printers. This can be enabled via the option, Allow color images on the printer settings or the predefined variable, zplAllowColorImages.
•Added support for printing text as images for “ZPL compatible” printers unable to handle the DY command for fonts. This can be enabled via the advanced ZPL option, Render text as image or via the predefined variable, zplRenderTextAsImage.
•Label width can now be added in ZPL print with the predefined variable, interformng.zpl.includeLabelWidth. It can be necessary to use this on some mobile printers. This is NOT recommended, but has been introduced to help customers with Zebra Link OS Mobile printers including the iMZ Series, ZQ500 Series and QLn Series to cover the requirement as stated here.
•Support for using installed fonts in ZPL has been added. This support includes the workflow component, Create an upload font ZPL, the option to not upload fonts (found on the printer settings and as the predefined variable, zplNoFontUpload) and the font mapping option on the printer settings.
•Support for incrementing counter in ZPL (^SN command). This is implemented as a new built-in function, ng:serializationData. You can use this to reduce the size of the print data stream and increase print performance.
IBM i related
•A new workflow component Split spool (complex key) has been added for splitting spooled files. This can handle spooled files where the split value(s) are not found in a fixed line/position.
•A new workflow component, From IBM i output queues (multiple) has been added. This is able to read from multiple IBM i output queues in parallel.
•The spool attribute, user defined data is now also copied from input spoooled files. The list of supported spooled file attributes can be found in the section, Input spooled file attributes. The user defined field can be found via the predefined workflow variable, interform.input.spooled.usrDefData or in the attribute tab as: usrDefData.
•Correction for uploading sample spooled files with certain special characters (e.g. #) in the file name.
The designer
•In the template designer, a new dimension option has been added on the container element: "Dynamic width, fixed height”.
•In the designer: The handling of column widths of a table element has been improved. This includes a new value for the column width named: Flexible.
•In the template designer, it is now possible to copy the selected element’s value from the sample XML/SPLF using shortcut key CTRL+C and paste with CTRL+V. This function is described here with other design tips.
•In the template designer, it is now possible to change color/thickness of multiple line elements at the same time (as well as move and resize), if you first multi-select all the elements.
•In the template printer settings element, it is now also possible to select the drawer via the PCL printer drawer number.
•The designer: Reduced the time it takes to save a template, by running the thumbnail generation asynchronously.
•The designer: References to undefined variables are now marked with a warning in the document template tree.
•The default DPI for new email templates is now 72 DPI. The default value can be changed in the template default settings.
•A correction had been added regarding template elements inserted before the page element.
•Correction to prevent merged table cells from still having an effect on the output.
•The template barcode element no longer displays error messages in the designer when a variable is part of the value expression, as these error messages were often inaccurate.
•A correction to support repeating a specific number of times in transformations has been added.
IPP printing
•A new IPP print engine, which can report back print status from the printer has been added. The old engine can be re-activated by using the setting: ippUseClassic=true in the configuration file: application-default.properties
•Support for setting user name for IPP print using the metadata interform.ippJobUsername.
•Support for setting job name for IPP print using the metadata interform.ippJobName.
•Support for password/pincode protecting IPP print using the metadata interform.ippPasswordProtect.
Workflow
•Passwords and similar data can now be encrypted with both the new workflow component, Set secure workflow variables for encrypting variables (that can be decrypted when used in some workflow components like HTTP request) and the built-in function, ng:encrypt(). The password can be decrypted with the built-in function, ng:decrypt(), which is only allowed in these workflow components: Set secure workflow variables, Digital Sign, Samba read/write, PDF Restrict, Rest API calls.
•The Retry-Repeat component can now be used multiple times within a single workflow.
•Extra error handling, Treat error as warning has been added for executing native OS commands in the workflow.
•Fix for named property to payload did not update the XML used for XPath expressions in payload.
•Log flush command now correctly forces log to be written (used for webservice report output and Log to XML workflow component).
•Combined connection pools has been added for external database connections to reduce the maximum needed connections.
•When opening the file browser from a workflow component, only valid resource types will now be displayed (for instance .xsd are not shown in the XSL transformation component).
•Correction to Next connector, to retry in case of expired access token.
Other
•New export and import functionality has been added. With these you can export/import selected settings and resources.
•A new XPath custom function ng:uuid() has been added for generating a version 4 UUID. This generates a 128-bit universally unique identifier that complies with the Internet Engineering Task Force RFC 4122 standard.
•The settings list has been compacted. Multi-instance settings with no instances defined, no longer show all the empty input fields. It is now also possible to delete all instances.
•Printer queue can now cancel some running jobs when printing from a single-server InterFormNG2 to socket, System printer or IPP (and without using Remote Client). Cancelled jobs gets the status: Error.
•Added Swagger documentation for external API, authorization and webservice input. This is available on: https://localhost:8086/swagger-ui.html
•Improved support for including files with ../ relative paths in XSD and Schematron files.
•The old PDF renderer has been removed. The application property pdfRenderUseOld=true no longer has any effect. The job logs will no longer show PDF-Classic as module.
•Changed job log icons for some combined components, to fit the final output from the component.
•Errors that occur while saving a resource will now always be displayed by the front-end (previously a false success message was displayed in some cases).
•Correction to create all missing sub-folders when importing resources/templates in external database.
•Clicking on an .itpl file (InterFormNG template) in the resource library, now displays an informational message.
•Corrected the error that the “import archive” button the the library stopped working after the “upload” button had been used.
•Correction for rare error that caused a crash on the settings screen due to unexpected OAuth2 email authentication settings.
•License files can now be uploaded without errors when running with settings in database, license file.
•Improved error message when the MaxiCode data string is too short.
•Unauthorized 401 error message no longer displayed on the login screen after a logout.
•Correction to ZPL preview in the designer failing if the Helvetica font is not installed on the operating system (Helvetica is not standard on Linux).
Changes to the manual
•A few hints has been added for the error handler. They can help you to make full use of error workflows.
•More examples has been added for user defined PJL sequences in the description of the workflow component, Extra PJL commands to ensure, that the syntax is completely clear. Also multiple examples of the needed PJL commands for stapling has been added.
•It is possible to execute a dynamic XPath expression which is found in a node or a variable. That is possible via the workflow component, Run a script and is documented in Example3: Evaluate an Xpath expression stored in a variable or node.
•A suggestion for a High Availability setup has been added in the manual.
•Additional help for how to setup stapling has been added.
•An example of how to use tokenize is now added the the manual. You can use this to convert a string into a list based on a delimiter of your choice.
•An important notice regarding table elements has been added: Tables inside a component must have a fixed width unless it is inserted inside a container with a fixed width.
•The exceptions for the JSON to XML conversion for both fields and values are now described in the manual.
•Additional examples for mapping spooled files in the designer has been added in the manual. This includes: Switch between different page layouts within a spooled file, Spooled file multi-up, spooled files and duplex, where all types of duplex are covered for spooled file input and an example of how to insert dynamic images found in the input spooled file. A new section, Suggestions for fixed fonts, which are often used for spooled file mapping is also included in the manual now.
Version 3.3.2
Workflows
•Fix for meta data not being written correctly when resources are stored in a database
•Setting the mail server with XPath expression in e.g. Create PDF email and Send an HTML email now works
•Fix so PDF render now also handles metadata references (e.g. total number of pages) from InterFormNG1 templates
•CSV delimiter character is now validated to one character in length in the CSV to XML workflow component.
•In the "To IDM" workflow component, attributes where the name is blank/whitespace are now ignored.
•The recently added XPath extensions ng:payloadToString and ng:varToString are now shown in the “built-in functions” list in the designer and workflow.
•The workflow editor now always shows the output type at the end (right) of the workflow.
•Performance improvement for the startup procedure. It now takes less time to start all the workflows, especially when inheriting workflows from another tenant.
Designer
•Fix for wrong rotation in PDF custom page size landscape mode.
•When using different colors for the border-sides of a container, the result view now shows it correctly.
•Correction to the text style template element. Changing the wrap setting now affects texts that use the style.
•The designer will now show an error in the variable dialog box if the variable name does not start with either a letter or an underscore.
•The rulers in the designer result view are now correct for both inches and centimeters, in all zoom levels.
•All standard page sizes are now correctly displayed in the designer result view.
•In the designer element tree, the context menu delete option now always deletes the highlighted element.
•The designer no longer displays the error message “key is missing in translation file” when an XPath expression is used for the key in a translation.
•In the designer, the paste option now pastes the elements in the same sequence as they were selected.
•In the Excel designer, the “paste cell” option is no longer displayed on the cell element context menu as it is not possible to insert a cell into a cell.
Other
•Correction to synchronization of resource changes in multi-server installations.
•Correction to resource update for resources in a database. Concurrent updates to a resource could cause row duplication.
•Correction to update of user roles for users in a database. Concurrent updates to a user could cause row duplication.
Changes to the manual
•A new section, GS1 and EAN barcodes in general has been added as an aid for users, that want to create GS1 barcodes. A troubleshoot section has also been added.
•The list of used ports has been updated in the prerequisites section.
•The description of the remote client has been improved and it is now also listed on the list of modules.
•The manual now highlights the option to add a URL link for a text and image - also in the email contents. It also explains how to track outgoing emails and test if the email has been opened by linking to a dynamic image. This section now also refers to the option to include a velocity file.
•It is possible to do an SQL lookup in files on the IBM i platform via a library list and in this way to e.g. select between different ERP environments. The setup of the library list is covered in the section, How to select files in SQL via a library list on IBM i on the database connection.
•The built in functions: ng:varToString() and ng:payloadToString() was previously added as an aid to convert variable or payload to a string, when calling external HTTP(s) rest apis. This is now made clear both in the description of the functions and in this example.
•A new troubleshooting section has been added for the module, Spool2XML.
•The description of the built-in function ng:databaseLookup has been improved, when it relates to spooled files.
•The description of the transformation templates has been improved and now also explains how to transform a spooled file into another spooled file.
•The description of the workflow component, Create PDF document has been improved. The manual now explains more clearly how to get the original payload.
•The Infor System-Link configuration is now also described in the manual.
•The description of the workflow component, Create attachment with Infor System-Link has been improved.
•The troubleshooting section has been improved with links for all the sub-sections and a new section regarding the warning, PCL Text X position below zero has been added.
•For the workflow component, Create Excel document it is now made fully clear, that the sheet names need to match if an existing Excel file is used, and you want to insert variable data into an existing sheet.
•The error message "Required cardinality of first argument of <function()> is zero or one; supplied value contains <x> items" is now covered for the functions: ng:trim(), ng:trimLeft() and ng:trimRight(). Links are also added in the sections, Design tips and Troubleshooting.
•The result of the component, Debug headers is normally only found via the system log, but now an example has been added in the manual to illustrate how the result can be seen directly on the tenant via this example, which use the Log to XML component.
•It is now made clear in the manual, that the preview client is no longer needed as the result view in the designer has been improved a lot.
Version 3.3.1
Designer
•In the Excel designer, when selecting XPath from an element under a repeat, the XPath is now correctly shortened (to the relative path) to not include the repeated part.
•In the template designer, suspended sub-trees will no longer show validation errors.
•Corrected a special scenario in which the template designer result view was blank.
•In template designer, selecting multiple page elements and deleting them in one action, now works as expected.
•The template designer page selection will now automatically count down to a valid page, when a change is made that causes the currently selected page to no longer exist.
•SVG images are now also being displayed in the template designer result view.
Workflow
•The cleanup function enabled by “keep processed files” on the “read from file” workflow component, will now only run the cleanup job once when multiple workflows use the same inbox folder. Also reduced average memory usage and log output from the cleanup job.
•Extract of PDF meta data with the component, PDF Metadata to XML no longer fails, if there is an unsigned signature field.
•Correction to rare scenario where an image would be in the wrong position on the page when generating PCL output in duplex.
•When key-value attributes are used in a workflow component(e.g. set multiple workflow variables), the component dialog is now wider than before.
Other
•License check no longer fails if the printer limit in the license is stated as a decimal number.
•Improved error handling and validation of Office365 OAuth2 email settings.
•The rightmost email log columns are no longer pushed outside the right boundary of the window when the subject or email address column is very wide.
•Removed unnecessary job log warning that was sometimes displayed when generating a document from a template that uses table elements.
Changes to the manual
•A new section, Installing InterFormNG2 in an iASP has been added to help customers, that want to move InterFormNG2 to an iASP instead of using the system ASP.
•Regarding executing the NG2CMD command on another platform: The section, Setup InterFormNG2 AS400 command API has been improved with more details and suggestions for troubleshooting.
•A note about the best practice use of template components combined with page elements has now been added in the manual.
Version 3.3.0
Designer
•In the Excel designer, it is now possible to set a column width as part of an Excel style. This also the option to autofit the column width (to adapt the column width to the width of the contents).
•The transformation designer now supports declaration and use of namespaces.
•In the transformation designer, it is now possible to generate and save the XSL to the transform library.
•In regular document templates, many additional fields can now be set with XPath expressions.
•HTML emails created in the designer will now use CID embed as default instead of Base64. This should increase compatibility with Gmail.
•Designer: Correction to changing font settings on multiple selected text elements at a time.
•Designer: Correction to an error that could cause the application to hang when opening a template.
•Designer: Correction to an error that could cause the template designer result view to be blank.
•Designer: Correction to row/column repeat element of a table element sometimes having no text in the designer template tree.
•Links (Hyperlink) in text elements as XPath expressions now also works in HTML Email designer.
Workflow
•The Scheduled start workflow component now has more advanced scheduling options.
•Added support for string encoding payload and variables in workflow using two magic functions ng:varToString('varName','encoding') and ng:payloadToString('encoding')
•Support for rendering PDF pages into images has been added with the workflow components: PDF page to image and PDF to images XML.
•Deleting "when" conditions in a workflow choice component now actually deletes the branches.
•Correction to workflow designer overview not showing the first entry in the set multiple workflow variables component.
•Remote print/email followed by local output in the same workflow branch now works as expected.
IBM i
•The workflow components, Post-process spooled file and Change attributes on spooled file can now also be used in a workflow started by IBM i command input and not only From IBM i output queue.
•The components Post-process spooled file and Change attributes on spooled file no longer displays an incorrect error message when they are used after a multicast or split component.
•Spooled file support: Correction for handling special characters for spooled file attributes in data queue records. Now reading characters with the system code page.
•The cleanup of old work files are now done while InterFormNG2 is running via the new job, NG2CLEAN as described in the section, Purge of old work files on IBM i. This prevents a delayed start of the subsystem, IFORMNG2 if many old workfiles are found.
Job log and system log
•Visual improvements for the job log screen.
•From the job log, it is now possible to jump to the relevant workflow.
•Correction for job log displaying no results when free-text search is used.
•Job log architecture changed to a more direct approach to prevent log messages overtaking.
•Job log: Log info key is now always updated with latest value when being set.
•System log: Added extra log to automatic file deleting of old processed files (setup as 'Keep processed files' on the workflow input, Read from file), which displays the files age and older than in the interformng2.log.
•The job log now also includes data generated by the workflow component, Debug headers. Previously that information was only found in the system log.
License code
•The license screen is no longer available when logged in as a tenant. A license can only be applied on system admin level.
•Correction to license reload and delete buttons being disabled when a license is selected.
User interface
•Export with dependencies of a template (From Library or the template) now include translation files used via the ng:translation XPath function.
•The last used date is now also tracked for printers, that are using driver print.
•In the settings, whitespace is now trimmed from most entry fields, to prevent confusing errors when whitespace was accidentally entered by the user.
•Whitespace is now trimmed from user name and password on the login and user creation screens.
•When trying to view a zip file in the Library, an error is now displayed, as this file type cannot be viewed.
•Library: In cases where a resource has never been used, the value displayed for last used is now "no data" instead of 01-jan-1970.
•When creating a new tenant, a waiting animation is now displayed while the process is ongoing.
•Validation errors are no longer displayed when accessing the system admin settings on a new installation.
Repository
•Correction for database resource provider (repository) duplicating fileItem rows when updating an existing file.
•Correction for database provider (repository) not creating the sub-folders for the standard resources installed for new tenants.
•Correction to an error that caused two test license requests to be sent to the license server when requesting a test license.
Web forms
•Webforms form fields are now displayed in the same order (on the edit form) as the related template (text) fields in the template tree.
•Regarding webforms: Correction for exception that occurred when the prefix was left blank for editable template fields with standard text.
Rendering output
•Fix for barcodes getting checksum calculated twice if ADD is used for checksum (especially Interleaved 2 of 5).
•Email server: A better job log error message added for BadPaddingException. Decryption of password is now disabled for email servers without authentication enabled.
•Print queue: The error: FATAL_ERROR has been added to printer queue items, for when items failed while writing it to the database queue (E.g. in case of OS errors like running out of disk space)
•Fix for wrong PCL command “Enter HP/GL2”, which caused some Brother printers (and possible other brands) to generate incorrect print output when using lines and boxes.
Other
•Correction for multi-server change event handler throwing exceptions.
•Improved error handling and reporting in the Nextway Next integration module.
Changes to the manual
•A better example of how to send emails with a generated Excel file as attachment has been added in the description of the workflow component, Create Excel document.
•An example of how to call a CL program on the IBM i via the workflow component, Execute Native O/S command has now been added to the manual and the description of this component has been improved.
•Examples of how to add preceding or trailing blanks/zeroes to a string has now been added.
•A new section, Why detail lines are not overflowing to a new page has been added. This can help you to solve the challenge, if an automatic page overflow is not happening.
•On the Split XML workflow component the paramter, Collect attachments is now also documented in the manual.
•More details and examples has been added for the ng:databaseLookup built-in function.
•InterFormNG2 does not do a vertical reposition of blank texts (including texts with just blanks) in a dynamic flow, but you can make InterFormNG2 do that. This is covered in the section, Vertical flow for a blank text of the text element.
•The copy management section has been added in the main section, Map spooled files in the designer to show how you can output multiple copies of each input page for spooled file templates.
•A new section, Handling blocks in spooled files has been added in the main section, Map spooled files in the designer.
•The documentation of the ng:spoolMapCond has been improved. This only supports spooled files in Version 1, which is not recommended. Instead the ng:spoolMapRel function should be used within a repeat loop and conditions as shown in the section, that describes the ng:spoolMapRel function. In the documentation of the ng:SpoolMapCond built-in function an extra example has been added to make it more clear that for a spooled file you can either refer to a specific page number (e.g. //page[1]) or the current page number (./text()) - the latter can only be used within a page repeat loop.
Version 3.2.0
•Please note: The position for centered/right-aligned, dynamic positioned max. width text elements has changed compared to earlier versions. Now these texts are positioned like normal dynamically positioned text. After an upgrade to InterFormNG2 to version 3.2.0 you will need to correct the position of the texts, that this concerns.
•A new workflow input, From database with custom SQL has been added. This can help you to extract records from a database table (via an SQL expression) and process the records in a workflow as data in an XML file.
•A new workflow component, Database SQL Select has been added. You can select the contents of a table with this component
•A new workflow component, Database SQL Update has been added. You can change the contents of a table with this component.
•New options has been added in the transformation designer for automatic generation of output structure and partial auto-mapping between input and output.
•A new payable module, Webforms has been added. This includes a new workflow component “Edit document text” for editing the text of a created document with Webforms.
•Added support for email receipt variable, interformng.emailReturnReceiptTo.
•Support for content scaling, moving and rotating for an existing PDF has been added via the new component, PDF scale and rotate.
•An icon to testing the connection to a GitHub server has now been added.
•For ZPL and DP output types, it is now possible to select between the defined preview printers, when previewing in the template designer.
•ING2-1460: Extra searchable logging fields/variables: interform.log.info2 and interform.log.info3 have been added to the job log. The values are not shown in the search.
•New workflow component has been added: From Windows Share to attachment.
•The default spool file format for AS400 and IBM i command line input is now version2, which is recommended.
•Improved validation and documentation of XPath extensions: ng:databaseLookup and ng:measureFont in the template designer.
•Correction for the job log sometimes displaying duplicates of the same log entry.
•If a True Type Font (TTF) cannot be used for embedding in PDFs, then this is now displayed in the font list in the resource library.
•When uploading files to the templates resource folder, the file browser now also shows files with .ixt extension.
•The printer queue list is now sorted with the newest items on top.
•Vertical alignment is now displayed correctly in the Excel result view.
•The error message “No consumers available” misleading error is now changed to more meaningful “Target workflow #Name# does not exist”.
•Xent now shows number of rows returned in the job log.
•Correction for excessive number of error messages being displayed in the resource library in certain cases with invalid resource files.
•Xent SQL enrich, several job log error messages and info messages have updated texts.
•Files can no longer be deleted from file system mapping which is marked as read only in the repository setup.
•General capture added for resource not found exception, in order to give a better error message in the job log.
•Improved error message when trying to request a test license after the maximum number of test licenses have already been requested.
•In the “Resource to attachment” workflow component, the resource type part of the resource path is once again case insensitive (was inadvertently made case sensitive in v3.1.0)
•Test license request now allows (non-ASCII) letters in company name and other fields
•FileSystem resource provider now returns an error message to the front end, if a file cannot be deleted.
•CSVToXML added to TxtToXML classic license conversion.
•Tenant import no longer crashes when imported archives where files have been manually deleted.
Changes to the manual
•An example been included, that shows how to reformat spooled files i.e. change the page breaks to include a different number of detail lines per page compared to the original spooled file.
•An example has been included, that shows how to output a spooled file in reverse order.
•The manual now describes how you change an existing spooled file mapping with the mouse - even if the mapping is combined with other XPath functions - you just need to set the cursor in the substring function to do that.
•A short description of use of the index in Xpath is now included.
•An example of how to limit the range of nodes in a repeat with the position() function is now also included. This can e.g. be used temporarily in the designer to only include a subset of the detail lines.
Version 3.1.3
•Important!: The center and right alignment of texts with a maximum Width and with fixed position now works as dynamic width texts with fixed position i.e. they are centered/right aligned around the reference point. This behaviour is different than in earlier versions, so such texts need to be realigned after an upgrade to version 3.1.3 or higher.
•The library can now display the time stamp for when a resource was last used.
•When searching in the template designer tree, it is now possible to select and change all the matching elements with one click.
•In the library, the file types xent and splf now have a value in the "type" column.
• It is now again possible to upload held-state spooled files as samples into the documents library.
•Corrected position of "system admin" button on tenant selection screen.
•When creating a new workflow, the create button has been re-labeled to "next" as the workflow is not created until it is saved.
•Fix for email log not being available for “classic” licenses.
•The workflow component print on direct socket printer now works as expected.
•Old JDBC 3.0 driver (IBM i DB2) no longer causes render exceptions.
•Print Queue now resets “Printing” jobs to "error" when restarting server. This may cause temporary false “Error” prints for prints currently printing on NG2 installations in multi-server setup.
The false error prints will return to “Printed” state when printing is complete.
•When modifying an XML payload during script execution in a workflow, the resulting XML will now also be used in following XPath expressions.
•The print queue manager is now not activated as default i.e. you specifically need to enable it, if you want to use it.
•Huge print jobs in print queue now also works, limit for print job size has been increased to 2GB
•InterFormNG1 templates now returns better error descriptions.
Changes to the manual
•A new section now describes how you map spooled file data and change the page breaks compared to the input spooled file.
•If a text element width is setup as a max. width, then the width of the text is also limited by the parent container (provided that the text has a dynamic position). This now described in the manual.
Version 3.1.2
•XPath extension ng:base64ToUTF8 now returns empty string when input is empty or null.
•The designer no longer shows an incorrect error message when using ng:base64ToUTF8.
•The Excel result view now correctly shows the font size of the used style.
•Correction for moving lines within rotated containers in designer result view.
•Correction for error in handling of fixed height containers with multiple columns.
•Correction to local printers list not being shown in printer settings when connected to a remote IBM i and having remote output disabled.
•Workflows with "From IBM i output queue" now creates the data queue on the workflow startup instead of during validation.
•Correction to emergency license key not working if the key contains a + character.
•Correction to workflow variable replacement in Xent parameters and field expressions.
•The user interface is no longer translatable with Google translate, as this can cause errors.
•IBM i: New source members in IFORMNG2/APISRC named "FROMNG2*" has been created to shown how to use the NG2 WorkFlow Component Execute Native OS command.
( Old Example APISRC "CPYXML" is no longer supported(or working) but kept for one more year and then removed. )
•Fix for Excel License check using classic license system.
•A “Dummy” tenant license" is now shown (which refers to the system license), in case no tenant license is found.
•M3 input socket no longer causes workflow crashes, if network port is already in use.
Version 3.1.1
•PCL comment (in output PCL files) now correctly shows Produced by InterFormNG2 %VERSION% instead of Produced by InterFormNG version null.
•Fix for formatting numbers with Swedish and Finnish locale in PDF output (non-breakable space is now replaced with normal space).
•Classic InterFormNG template engine in NG2 is now also namespace aware.
•The JSON to XML workflow component now removes illegal XML letters (e.g. character values below 32, except newline and carriage return).
•The From file to Payload component now also logs error with the file name if the file is not found.
•Added workflow component “Force Content Type” which changes the content type in the workflow.
•Fix for license server URL pointing incorrectly.
•Added support for old core license also activates workflow license.
IBM i related
•Wait condition during SPLF conversion has been removed. (Solves issue: Call to AFPDSCVTWTR is Slow.).
•SPOOL2XML copy XML definition improved. (Create fragments and Optimize xml-output is now included.).
•Source and Object Consolidation. NG2/400 ( IBM i Objects ). Review of source code and release process. - approx 50 redundant objects removed from release bundle.
•Spool2XML Field/Concept Template removed from user interface.
Version 3.1.0
•Important: The Read from Windows share workflow input component has been corrected to treat the polling frequency as seconds, not milliseconds. The text always said “seconds” but the value was previously used as milliseconds.
•A new workflow component "Run a script" has been added. This new component can execute a Javascript code.
•A new “choice and join” workflow component has been added. This is very similar to the choice component except that choice and join has an extra join branch, that is always executed after a conditional branch might have been executed.
•The new workflow component has been added: "Forward webservice", which forwards the input webservice request for the REST webservice basic input type.
•Support for a dynamic number of fields of the same type has been added in some workflow components. This means, that a list of flexible list is now displayed instead of a fixed number of key/value pairs. One example of how a flexible number of detail lines has been implemented is the component, set multiple workflow variables.
•The To Windows share workflow component now creates all missing referenced folders and not just one.
•Spelling error fixed for “Execute native OS command”.
•The classic InterFormNG1 template engine (merge of InterFormNG1 templates) in InterFormNG2 is now also namespace aware.
•Improved error message from PDF render, if a font is missing.
•Support for variables (both normal variables and workflow variables) has been added in the transformation designer.
•Option on a table row to disable block protection (a part of the row can then overflow to next page).
•The designer now also supports the WebP image format.
•Errors displayed on the template preview error log now links to the element in error.
•Smaller changes to the font size are now reflected on the designer result view as well as in the final merged result. With this change the designer result view is closer to the final, merged result.
•Workflow variables are now allowed to have a blank placeholder value in the designer.
•Now displaying the total number of pages on the designer page selection.
•The designer is now showing the full sample XML resource name in the designer sidebar.
•Changes to the insert component dialog to ensure visibility of the list.
•Correction has been added for base64 encoded image URLs not working in templates, if direct file access is disabled in system settings.
•Fix for formatting numbers with Swedish and Finnish locale in PDF (non-breakable space is now replaced with normal space). This is relevant for the ng:numberFormat function.
•Corrections to the display of the ruler in the designer (above and to the left of the result view), so that it is now unaffected by browser zoom level.
•The Excel designer result view now refreshes automatically.
•Improved look for the Excel result view in the Excel designer. Sheets are now e.g. displayed as tabs.
•Excel designer: Vertical alignment option added in Excel style.
•Excel designer now use styles from existing column, if no new style has been defined.
XPath extensions/built-in functions
•A new XPath extension, ng:databaseLookup has been added, for executing SQL select on a database directly e.g in both the workflow abd the designer.
•The XPath extension, ng:compare has been added. This can be used for comparing values.
•With the new XPath extension ng:measureFont, you can now measure the width of text width with a specific font. You can e.g. use that to This can be used to adapt the font size to the dynamic width of a text.
•The ng:numberFormat function now handles numbers with more than 16 digits (Numbers, that potentially can be over 16 digits must be written as a string, as W3C xpath number only supports 16 digits).
•ng:base64ToUTF8 now also accepts nodes with multiple elements (only first node is used in those cases)
•XPath extensions ng:dateTimeFormat, ng:dateFormat and ng:numberFormat now uses the templates locale/language as default instead of en-GB. (en-GB is still the fallback).
•Links to the manual has been added for some the built-in XPath-functions added in some designer dialogs.
•A connection test has now been added for IBM i system settings.
•An option to define both IBM i and Windows OS printers has been added, when running with remote IBM i connection. This means e.g. that customers, that process IBM i files (and spooled files) can use the local Windows printer and even use the local Windows driver.
•NG2/400 “NG2SERVER” AutoStart job (Java) improved error handling. (Job no longer dies “almost silent”, but ends in MSGW.)
•NG2/400 Commands for start and stop of the InterFormNG2 application has been added.
•NG2/400 New spooled file processing validation. (Spooled files in status *OPEN will no longer be processed.)
•NG2/400 Removed redundant menu option "5. Work with IFORMNG2 output queue".
•NG2/400 Various improvements of the AFPDS spooled file adjustments CPI/LPI dialog.
•A search field has been added to the printer list in the settings screen.
•Improvements to the user interface for adding a printer in order to avoid confusion.
•Default behavior for selecting printer now changed, so it no longer takes first printer with that MIME type, if no printer with specified printer name can be found and no metadata printer is defined.
•A fix for ZPL output to improve the output on Printronix printers has been implemented (New line added after ID command).
•A PCL comment in the output PCL print data stream now correctly shows Produced by InterFormNG2 %VERSION% instead of Produced by InterFormNG version null.
Library and resource handling
•New resource handling which improves stability
•A new warning is displayed when uploading files to the library with unsupported extensions.
•A refresh button has been added in the library, in order to refresh the resource listing.
Other
•Support for user id's that are not e-mail addresses. The users of InterFormNG2 does no longer need to be an email address, but an optional email address (for password reset) can be registered for the user.
•Changes to the license screen to support new license types.
•On the tenant settings screen, it is now possible to remove the default style selection.
•User interface improvement when cancelling delayed e-mails from the e-mail log.
•Name change of Azure AD to Microsoft Entra ID.
•Correction to authentication settings for email servers (System mail server and Tenant mail server). User name and password are now only used when authentication is enabled in the email server settings.
Changes to the manual:
•A new section concerning support of page range of input spooled files has been added: Use the page range of an input spooled file.
Version 3.0.4
•Various user experience improvements has been added to the printer queue manager.
•New settings for printer queue retention periods.
•The placeholder image set on the template image elements can now be removed.
•Sample files (e.g. .xml and .splf) can now be uploaded directly within the template designer sample file selection dialog.
•The template designer result view now shows an outline of elements that are placed outside the page area.
•The XML search in the template designer will now only highlight the exact nodes that match.
•Template designer now enables 'use baseline' when a text element is moved from a dynamic to a fixed position.
•Support for a new barcode: MicroPDF417 has been added in template designs.
•Support for the GS1 QR barcode has been added in template designs.
•Correction for the template designer result view sometimes showing some of the pages as being blank.
•Correction for the visual display of resizing a container in the template designer result view.
•Correction to the template designer result view for displaying rotated boxes with rounded corners.
•Correction for dynamic text style handling in combination with grid layout on the page element.
•An extra optional 'custom error message' parameter has been added to the date/number format XPath extensions: ng:dateFormat, ng:dateTimeFormat and ng:numberFormat. With this new parameter you can decide which value to return, if the date or number cannot be formatted e.g. because of and input date or number, that is not valid. Previously an invalid date or number would cause these functions to return the Xpath expression.
•The XPath extension, ng:numberFormat now gives a meaning full error, if the input is not a number (NaN - Not a Number).
•Performance improvements for the new template designer result view has been added.
•Visual improvement to the descriptions of built-in functions (XPath extensions) in the template designer XML dialog.
•The Excel designer XML selection dialog can now show a list of all defined variables.
•Correction to the behavior of the "unsaved changes" pop-up in the Excel designer.
•The REST API multipart post component now also sends headers.
•REST API components, check has been added: Test if parameter names and header names are empty (but exists).
Other
•Correction for deleting tenant with an & in the name.
•Correction for renaming a workflow multiple times in the workflow designer.
•Correction to handling of optional workflow component attributes when the same component is used multiple times in a workflow.
•Bugfix for reading from Windows share using the samba component. It now also works for subfolders inside the share.
Version 3.0.3
IBM i platform related
•IMPORTANT: The minimum OS/400 version supported for the next version will be V7R2 (This version still installs on V6R1). This is listed under prerequisites.
•NG2/400 Allow for "Longer custom classpath" definition on menu option 92. Change NG2 installation on the IFORMNG2/IFORMNG2 menu.
•Improved error handling when uploading a spooled file to InterFormNG2.
•JVM custom options can now be used to set e.g. ( java -Dfile.encoding=ISO8859_1) on menu option 92. Change NG2 installation on the IFORMNG2/IFORMNG2 menu. This is related to changed JVM defaults introduced in OS400 V7R4, but you do not need to change any settings in InterFormNG2 if you upgrade to or beyond V7R4 as InterFormNG2 as default use UTF-8 encoding.
•References to IFORMNG(old stuff.) and other internal house keeping. The size of the IFORMNG2 library has been reduced considerable.
Designer
•The designer now only shows 3 decimals when resizing images with locked aspect ratio.
•Negative position coordinates for fixed positioned elements is now possible again.
•When using mm units in the template designer, the arrow keys now move elements in the same increments as when using cm units.
•The comment properties dialog in the template designer will now show more of the comment (for very long comments).
•In the "insert component" dialog in the template designer it is now possible to change the column sorting.
•Correction to error in the template designer in certain cases where table row expressions were used.
•Correction to positioning of barcodes in the result view with certain barcode anchor settings.
•Correction for handling of base64 encoded image URLs in templates.
•The option to transform a spooled file into XML via a transformation template is now also covered in the manual. The full setup is covered in the section, Transform a spooled file into XML.
Workflow
•The workflow designer now shows the correct component list when inserting a component immediately after a multicast.
Output renderer
•Correction for one table row sometimes being lost on page overflow.
•Correction to Code39 / Interleaved2of5 barcode generation with non-integer module ratio. The behavior of InterFormNG2 when it comes to handling non-integer module ratios and how module widths are rounded up is now also documented in the manual.
User interface and management
•Correction to the user management screen so that the action buttons stay on screen even when the list of tenants is very long.
•Application toolbar icons are no longer shown when logged in with a user that only has the web-service role.
•Specific error message in remote output client log when the license module is missing.
•Authorization error messages are no longer shown on the printer queue screen when logged in as regular user or read-only user.
Version 3.0.2
•Important: The template designer no longer supports editing / creation of spooled file extractor transform rules (.sfe resources), which was/is an option for the legacy SPLFv1 format. Existing extraction rules can still be used in the workflow, but editing is no longer possible. It is recommended to instead use the new SPLFv2 format together with the new general transformation template designer.
•Audit logging of resource library and user management actions.
•Advanced job log search with AND / OR. Improved layout of job log icons. If the search takes long a waiting animation is now shown.
•Tenant deletion is now an option for system admins.
•Read only database resource mapping has been added (Use databaseR as mapping type) on the repository setup for a tenant.
•Email - Fix for broken attachment file names when too long and the characters - + _ are now allowed for attachment names.
•Handling of raster style changes (InterFormNG1 template feature) in new PDF renderer.
•The file browser dialog now always shows all columns, even if file names are very long.
•An issue with the preview client has been solved.
IBM i platform
•NG2/CMD Minor issue running NG2CMD and using a remote NG2-Server installation.
•The NG2CMD command now creates a default LogInfo key if none is given. Default Key structure: (UsedWorkflow - JobName/JobUser/JobNumber - SplfName/SplfNumber )
•A longer class path can now be setup in the Java configuration for the IBM i platform.
•A JAVA Runtime verifier for the IBM i platform has been added both for performance test and for validation of the installed Java version.
•The InterFormNG2 installer for the IBM i platform has been improved. It now allocates a few central objects before running installation - to ensure a smooth and controlled installation/upgrade process.
Spooled file handling
•Load SPLF into Document archive - better error messages for several known error conditions.
•Improved XPath generation when selecting SPLFv2 content in a workflow component.
•Correction to enrich spooled file from database component.
•Spooled files wider than 375 characters are now processed correctly.
Transformation
•A new option to create simple transformation templates in the template designer (for XSL transforms). These transformation templates can be used directly in transformations in the workflow.
•A new workflow component, Transform design to XSL has been added to convert transformation templates into normal XSL transformations.
Workflow
•New workflow input component "Read from Windows share" to read files from a Samba network/UNC share. Also support for printing via Samba protocol/UNC via a print server.
•Workflow export/import with dependencies.
•Correction to workflow export/import to preserve the "on error workflow" reference when importing on a different tenant name.
•A new workflow component, Cut textual payload has been added. This can be used, if you want to remove a leading or trailing part from the payload e.g. an unwanted header, that prevents an input file from being a valid XML file.
Designer
•New WYSIWYG result view in the template designer. Now the result view shows the real, merged result in the result view, where all repeats and conditions are executed.
•No longer displaying an error message when loading a template with an empty template component.
•Image vertical alignment options added for fixed-position images.
•Correction to make text style work correctly for texts in a repeat loop.
•Correction for handling multiple levels of repeats in a container with columns as well as detecting page overflow when multi-line texts are used in columns.
•Support for setting template page size with an XPath expression.
•If the input argument is null, and empty string is now returned by the functions: ng:dateFormat, ng:dateTimeFormat, ng:numberFormat and ng:base64ToUTF8.
•The template designer color palette now displays the hex code for each color as a tooltip.
•In the template designer, the number field up/down arrows will now change the value in smaller increments.
•The template designer will now re-calculate table column widths when setting the table properties.
•Optimization of page overflow handling with grid pages, which means improved performance when the grid layout option is used on page elements.
•Performance improvement when using translation resources in a template.
•The cogwheel for selecting sample input file in the designer now stays in the same spot, so it is easier to load a new input file.
•Correction to handling of XPath-based position of containers.
Barcodes
•Additional settings on DataMatrix barcode, to force a specific shape and to optionally set a specific number of modules (fixed size).
•Support for code39 barcode extended charset.
•Correction for error handling setting on fixed positioned barcodes.
•Invalid data for a barcode no longer prevents saving the barcode properties.
Printing
•New printer queue and monitor, for monitoring pending and completed print jobs both local and via the remote client. Also supports pausing and redirecting prints.
•A new template element, print settings (simplex/duplex and paper type) has been added for PCL printing. With this component you can dynamically change the duplex/simplex setting and tray selection dynamically in the middle of a print out.
•Correction to handling of interform.destination.printer.copies metadata on ZPL output. With this change the ZPL print output is reduced a lot if multiple copies are printed, which results in improved printing speed.
•ZPL print out: A fix for invalid page width has been implemented.
Excel designer
•A new result view has been added for the Excel designer. Currently you need to click the refresh icon to update the result view, but automatic refresh will be added in the future.
.
•Elements can now be moved around in the tree in the Excel designer.
•The Excel designer now supports cut, copy and paste actions.
•Correction to row number in the excel designer.
•You can now also delete a style in the Excel designer.
Spool2XML
•For Spool2XML it is now possible to Add and edit description for fields in XML definitions.
•Spool2xml: Better support for high volume usage.
•Spool2xml processing *AFPDS Spool now gives an hard error message. (not a call to "XMLA_N_SUP".)
•Spool2XML Better support for high volume usage as the files PFXKVAWK and PFXFRGWK are changed from REUSEDLT(*NO) to REUSEDLT(*YES).
•Spool2XML added optimize option to remove redundant information during Xml generation. ( Approx: 5% faster and 25 % smaller XML-file generation).
•Spool2XML: Option to reuse an existing parent/child definition when converting a printer file added via the new parameter, REFFILE on the command, CVTPRTFXML.
Remote client
•Correction to remote output client generating exceptions in the log when the optional notification service is not configured.
•Correction to remote output client failing to send e-mail when one or more optional attributes are set on the e-mail server configuration.
Other modules
•New workflow component to create an attachment with Infor System-Link and the related workflow component, Infor System-Link request has been added.
•The supported number of properties has increased to 10 on the To d.velop Documents workflow component.
•The Document Management (IDM) module is now a part of the standard distribution (was previously a plugin module). So now you do not need to install it after an upgrade.
•The To Infor Document Management (IDM) component now supports up to 25 attributes.
Version 2.4.2
•A correction to handling expiry of d.velop documents authentication tokens has been added.
•Correction for barcodes within a repeat loop failing to render.
•Correction to handling expiry of d.velop documents authentication tokens.
•Correction for image position by variable in document template repeat loop.
•On the document template page element, it is now possible to disable grid layout after it has been enabled.
•Correction to the height of the region when editing an SPLF subsequence repeat (previously height was increased by one).
•Correction to IBM i command input. XPath expressions referencing the spooled file in workflow components, now works.
•Correction for variable scopes in Excel templates.
•New property barcode.gs1Delimiter which can be set in application-default.properties to select which character should be used as FNC1 in GS1 datamatrix barcode values (default character is |).
•NG2CMD/400 command - LOGINFO (Log info key) value now added to the "job log" (as specified in the manual).
•NG2CMD/400 Improved error message when exception: STS9001 ( Socket TimeOut ) occurs.
•NG2CMD/400 New ErrorCode STS9500 (STS9003 used to cover HTTP:500) now STS9500 is used for that.
•NG2/400 Specific ErrorCode when a SPLF is not pressent(deleted). New error/info codes: INF1000 & INF1001.
•NG2/400 Spoolfiles with "0&&" pattern issue - Corrected and implemented in NG2-Designer.
•Various improvements. "Redundant objects deleted/removed".
Changes to the manual
•The option to setup the position of an element via an Xpath expression is now also documented in the manual.
•The descriptions of enrich of spooled files and enrich of all spooled file pages have been improved to cover both version 1 and version 2 of the spooled file format.
Version 2.4.1
•Correction to handling expiry of d.velop documents authentication tokens.
•Correction for image position by variable in document template repeat loop.
•On the document template page element, it is now possible to disable grid layout after it has been enabled.
•Correction to the height of the region when editing an SPLF subsequence repeat (previously height was increased by one).
•Correction to IBM i command input. XPath expressions referencing the spooled file in workflow components, now work.
•Correction for variable scopes in Excel templates.
•A new property, barcode.gs1Delimiter has been added, which can be set in configuration file, application-default.properties to select which character should be used as FNC1 in GS1 datamatrix barcode values (default character is |).
•NG2CMD/400 command - LOGINFO (Log info key) value now added to the "job log".
•NG2CMD/400 Improved error message when exception: STS9001 ( Socket TimeOut ) occurs.
•NG2CMD/400 New ErrorCode STS9500 (STS9003 used to cover HTTP:500) now STS9500 is used for that.
•Specific ErrorCode when a SPLF is not pressent(deleted). New error/info codes: INF1000 & INF1001
•Spooled files with "0&&" pattern issue - Corrected and implemented in NG2-Designer.
•Various improvements. Redundant objects has been deleted/removed.
Version 2.4.0
•IMPORTANT before upgrade: An offset issue for *AFPDS Spool under some specific condition (targets *AFPDS spool with *No DBCS attribute/Chars ) has been solved. For existing customer this may result in the the spooled file data to shift one character to the left after an upgrade. The new position of the spooled file is the correct one, but it can be an issue to switch to the new, correct behavior at once, so an option for temporary reset to old behaviour is available. This is covered in the section, Installation and upgrade.
•IMPORTANT before upgrade: In input data for DataMatrix barcodes the string || can now be used to escape/insert a single | (as | is used as FNC1 for GS1 barcodes).
•New user interface for Excel template designer as well as a new variable element in the excel template.
•Multiple workflow components has been added for custom REST API calls: HTTP Get Request, HTTP Post body only Request, HTTP Post multipart Request, HTTP Post request.
•Support for authentication and authorization for AzureAD integration as an alternative to the standard authentication mechanism has been added.
•A new XML usage report can be requested via the preview option in the template designer. The report lists which parts of the input XML that are being used. This report can be used as inspiration for reducing the input xml file in order to improve performance and reduce upload time for cloud integrations.
•New XPath function, ng:spoolMapRel for spooled file mapping has been added. That is helpful, if you want to map spooled file lines, that are found relatively to a true condition (in the same line or below).
•The chosen anchor line for relative spool mapping is now stored on logic (if/when) elements.
•In relative mode the spooled file dialog now highlight the lines that match the condition inside a subsequence repeat.
•A multi-select option has been added in the Library file browser.
•Temporary files folder is now set to {{env:INTERFORMNG2_HOME}}/temp by default on the Windows service. All files in the temp folder are automatically deleted on startup, if the selected folder is stored under {{env:INTERFORMNG2_HOME}}. This prevents a build-up of old temporary work files. Links for the description for each platform are here: IBM i, Linux and Windows.
•One of multiple ZPL/DP preview printers can now be dynamically selected for preview in the designer. New workflow components have been added to extract the PDF result from a preview printer.
•New workflow components for generating a ZPL preview as PDF has been added.
•A Network port selection has been added to the M3 Input workflow component.
•Basic web-service input now allows no xml in parameter requests (By putting an empty <xml/> instead, if XML is missing). This is to allow web-hooks from third party systems.
•Custom key/value metadata can now be added to PDF output . (This only includes standard metadata key/values, not XML metadata).
•Correction for the designer showing an error, if the optional 4th parameter for the ng:translation function has been set.
•Job log search now cuts off at max 50 children for a component to prevent system lockup/slow searches for extreme jobs.
•PDF resolution: Added support for application-default setting pdf.forceBarcodeDPI=600 to force barcode DPI in PDF rendering to 600 dpi. This can be used for overriding the resolution set on the template element in the designer template.
•New barcode property has been added for controlling the error behavior if the barcode data is invalid.
•A correction to rotation of Datamatrix barcodes has been added.
•Correction for template file becoming invalid if a variable with NaN value is used for fixed positioning of an element via an Xpath expression.
•The XPath extensions/functions: ng:dateFormat, ng:dateTimeFormat and ng:numberFormat now access a node sequence as the first parameter.
•A solution has been added for restarting workflows after renaming where the delete of the old workflow takes a long time.
•The path and filename length are maxed at 250 chars when using database based filesystem in order to use indexes.
•The Database Resource provider now correctly returns "File not found" when requesting non-existing font.
•Last change timestamp (and other metadata for resources) are now first found (like the file content). This is relevant for customers using repositories.
•In the workflow component To d.velop Documents it is now possible to use the unique id instead of the display name for a property/category.
•The workflow component To Infor Document Management now supports up to 10 metadata properties.
•A new setting for secure (encrypted) connection to a remote IBM i has been added.
•The new version 2 spooled file format is now also supported on workflow input: IBM i command input, which is triggered from the NG2CMD command.
•The SAVSPLF command now also supports date format/value *ONLY.
•The parameter descriptions of the SAVSPLF command has been corrected.
•ZPL printing: A new predefined variable for ZPL printing has been added: interformng.zpl.includeLabelWidth. If this variable is set to true in a workflow, then the label width will be included in output print stream.
Changes to the manual
•The module for integration with Infor IDM is now also covered in the manual.
•The manual now also covers the limitations for type 4 printer drivers on the Windows platform.
•The workflow component, Output temporary web storage is now also described in the manual. You can use this as an aid to preview output PDF files in e.g. SAP or Dynamics365 via a link.
•For the Read from file workflow component it is now described, that sorting by the creation date for input files may not be granular enough on the IBM i platform (files created within the same second may be processed in the wrong sequence). If the input files might be created with short intervals it is suggested to either use the NG2CMD command like shown in the XML_NG2CMD source in IFORMNG2/APISRC or to sort the input files by the name, if you use Spool2XML to create files in the IFS for processing in InterFormNG2. (The source will be included in the next version of InterFormNG2).
•A clarification of how you verify if a node exists has been added. There are also examples of how to verify if a node is blank and how to verify if a node is not blank. For comparing a node with an empty string (''), it is in short recommended to use the string function to convert the node into a string for the comparison e.g. like string(Node)=''.
•A description of how to implement decimal point alignment has been added in the manual.
•An extra example of how to select a node set based on the node names has been included here.
•Workflow: A recommendation to use of sub-workflows in combination with the choice component has been added in the manual.
•Designer: The cell padding of a table element is now also documented in the manual.
•The vertical alignment of all cells of a table, a row, a column or a specific cell is now also covered in the manual.
•The integration with Infor M3 is now also documented in the manual.
•The manual now describes what to do, if you want to print to an output queue on the IBM i platform without installing InterFormNG2 on the IBM i platform.
•The manual now includes a description of how you can change the password for a user in the configuration file, if all other options fail.
•The section, Spool2XML implementation has been added in order to provide a good description of how to implement the Spool2XML module.
•An example of a generic workflow has been added. This may inspire you to build a smaller, generic workflow. This can e.g. be used by ERP solution providers to provide a pre-configured workflow for customers, that match the normal reports, but it should also be considered if you want to process many different document types and you want to reduce the number of branches of conditions in the workflow.
•The updated license agreement is now included in the manual and the list of prerequisites refers to it.
Version 2.3.0
•Spooled file support: Unsupported characters in input spooled files like e.g. hex 1B are now removed during processing.
•NG2CMD Command: Improved access token caching. Now the access token is cached per tenant/user.
•Split spool with fixed key position now works with a character position, that is outside the non-blank part of a spooled file line. (In the background the spooled file lines are trimmed, which previously could cause a problem).
•A correction to the retry-repeat workflow component has been added. There was an issue when this was used in a choice branch.
•IBM i: All JAR files are now restored with reduced authority on the IBM i platform.
•IBM i: Option 92. Change NG2 installation now shows the correct status of the InterFormNG2 services.
•IBM i: An issue with the command, IFORMNG2/RSTSPLF (Restore spooled file) has been solved.
•IBM i: The output queue monitor job does no longer stop with MSGW, if an unsupported or non-existing spooled file is processed. Instead a warning is included in the job log and the spooled file is ignored.
•IBM i: The IFORMNG2/SAVSPLF command (save spooled file) has been improved (now it also supports the current job and last spooled file).
•IBM i: The command, NG2CMD has been changed: Now the IFORMNG2 subsystem will not be started, if it is not running, when the command is run. Instead the job will stop with an error Message. So now you should make sure to start the subsystem yourself e.g. during IPL via QSTRUPPGM.
•IBM i: Support for symbols in password for the command, NG2CMD has been added..
•The newer PDF renderer has been improved - previously it could for a very few fonts refuse to use them due to too restricted font copyright check.
•The PDF rendering is now using the DPI setting on the template element inside a template. Previous the PDF rendering always used 600 DPI. With this change the PCL and PDF result of a merge are now always the same. The default DPI setting on a template is 300 DPI, so most customers will experience that PDF output, that contains barcodes has a smaller file size after an upgrade. The downside is, that barcodes might be a bit larger in the PDF result after an upgrade to version 2.3.0. You can consider to change the DPI setting on your template(s) to 600 DPI in order to keep the size of the barcodes in PDF, but then the PCL barcodes might be a bit smaller - the same size as the PDF result. The barcode dependence on the resolution is described here.
•ZPL preview printer setup has been changed, so it now uses the correct preview printer setup.
•For QR barcodes - 0 is now also accepted for the barcode version. This is works as the "Auto" QR barcode version i.e. the barcode will be as small as possible (with as many modules as needed).
•New barcode type has been added: USPS, Postnet, GS1 Databar and Pharmacode.
•The checksum option on the barcodes: Code 39 and Interleaved 2 of 5 now works. That was previously not the case.
•A new text style element has been added to the list of design elements. This is similar to a global style, but this is more dynamic. With this you can define a text style in the middle of a template and e.g. use that style in a common template component. In this way the same common template component can format a text in different ways depending the style set on the main template.
•A new Grid layout setting has been added to the page element in the designer. This can help you, if you want to create a template with multiple labels per side (multi-up). You can freely set the number of labels in each row and column and also setup in what sequence the labels are to be output.
•An issue concerning incorrect variable values after a page overflow with a line element has been solved.
•Correction to rotation of containers inside rotated containers.
•Correction for handling if-logic in header/footer across page overflow.
•Correction for special case with page overflow of table rows.
•A New workflow component, PDF metadata to XML has been added. This component extracts the values from PDF form fields and PDF meta data and inserts this information into the payload as XML.
•A new button, Compress log database now has been added to the logging setup of the tenants. With this you can reduce the size of the embedded/internal log database as it release unused disc space from deleted contents. If you e.g. have reduced the retaining period for old job logs, then this should be considered.
•A new workflow component, Replace non-breaking space has been added. This component scans an XML file for any non-breaking spaces (nbsp) and replace any such spaces with a normal space to avoid an error during a merge with a template.
•The email server configuration for the tenant and the system email server has been extended in order to now also support OAuth2 email authorization with Office365.
•You can now setup an environment name for the InterFormNG2 installation. This name is shown in the bottom of the dashboard.
•You can now add a display name (description) for a tenant. The display name is shown, when the tenant is selected.
•Designer: The step size has now been set to 90 on template element for the rotation property. This makes it faster to select the required rotation.
•Performance improvement to resource folder listing.
•Tenant names are now sorted alphabetically in the login flow and a scrollbar has been added.
•The dashboard icon has been removed. The InterForm logo now redirects to the dashboard screen.
•The exact time stamp (date and time) is now displayed on resource items in the Library.
•Support for an optional fourth default value parameter in ng:translation has been added. This parameter sets the value to return, if the translation file is not found or if the key is not found while no *OTHERWISE* entry is found in the translation file. If you set the fourth parameter to null, then the command emulates be behavior of InterFormNG.
•An issue concerning import tenant when using database resource system has been fixed.
•A driver print issue has been solved.
Changes to the Version 2.3.0 manual:
•PDF417 Barcode: The description of how to set the size of a PDF417 barcode has been improved in the manual. The functionality is unchanged.
•Printing to an output queue on the IBM i platform: The configuration of this is now described in more details here. The related predefined workflow variables for setting the attributes of a merged spooled file are now also listed in the section, Printing. The functionality is unchanged.
•A section for inspiration of how to handle conditioned blocks of spooled file lines has been added in the manual.
•The manual now includes a section, that describes how to configure the InterFormNG2 module for Nextway Next in order to be able to archive in this product. It also describes the workflow component, To Next archive.
•The dashboard is now also fully explained in the manual.
Version 2.2.0
•Workflow: Support for Xpath for the additional parameter in the Execute native OS command has been added.
•PCL print: Correction to barcode image resolution in PCL renderer. On some, rare printers the barcodes would be printed in half the size.
•Spool2XML: Adjustment to spool2XML XML-Encoding of MBCS(EG 935). Now only the SBCS-characters are converted into XML.
•InterFormNG2 on IBM i: InterFormNG2 now use the 64bit Java 8 on the IBM i platform as default in a new installation. This can be changed as covered here. Other features of the same screen are now also described in the manual.
•Bookmarks and form fields in none-PDF output: If these elements are used in outputs like ZPL, PCL or DP a log warning is now issued instead of an error/exception.
•The new built-in function, ng:base64ToUTF8 converts a base64 encoded string (text) into a UTF8 based string.
•Designer: New options to set a maximum width both with a dynamic height and a fixed height a text element has been added.
•Designer: A new vertical alignment has been added to fixed positioned text elements.
•Designer: Issues concerning the margins of a rotated text-element has been solved.
•Designer: Correction for text alignment not working when the text is placed in a fixed width container.
•Spooled file support: A new, internal spooled file format (version 2) has been introduced. This makes the template design of detail lines much easier. This is illustrated in the section, How to iterate across detail lines in the spooled file.
•Spooled file support: For the spooled file format, version 1.0 (legacy) the bottom of the spooled file is now shown - also when mapping directly from the input.
•Spooled file extractor: The complete width and height of the spooled file is now shown in the spooled file extractor. Previously the view was limited to the width/height of the first page.
•A new module has been added for support for uploading output to d.velop documents.
•The workflow component, Execute native OS command has a new option, Disable default parameters and when this is activated the value of the optional parameter is the only value, that is included as a parameter on the command call. It is highly recommended to activate this option to avoid sending too much data to the external command as the size is limited.
•A system monitor page has been added with heap and thread information (for system admin users).
•It is now possible to setup InterFormNG2 to report a critical system health. You can configure that via the global email server setup.
•A new health check endpoint /healthCheck has been added. The endpoint returns a HTTP error code if the service is unhealthy, otherwise code 200
•Designer: The time available in InterFormNG2 for a preview in the designer (including the excel designer) has as default now been limited to 60 seconds. That means, that InterFormNG2 will use up to 60 seconds to build a preview and abort the preview, if the output could not be built within that time. The default value can be changed as described in the section, Designer global settings.
•Designer: Multiple limitations can be activated for all tenants in order to limit the processing, when templates are used. This can be used in order to prevent a long running function (or even a loop) to affect other processes.
•Remote client: Remote output client can now process multiple output jobs concurrently (default 5).
•Remote output notifications can now be sent on an Azure Service Bus.
•Much faster startup of InterFormNG2 in a multi-tenant setup.
•The workflow component, Repeat loop can now preserve variables and payload.
•Read/write of settings file is now synchronized to avoid potential file corruption.
Version 2.1.2
•Designer: Clicking on a result view item now expands the item tree again. This was missing in the previous version.
•The predefined workflow variable, interform.input.spooled.sourceDrawer now contains the source drawer (DRAWER attribute) of the input spooled file. In previous versions this variable was blank.
Version 2.1.1
•PDF print: Issue concerning print of a PDF file via DriverPrint has been fixed.
•Workflow: Workflow issue has been fixed: If the initial input file was not an XML, then a subsequent load of an XML did not update the XML contents of the payload.
•PDF: The new PDF render no longer makes a border around text links.
•PDF: The option to not embed standard fonts now also works in the new PDF render.
•Library: The type description of Excel files in the file lists inside the Library has been reduced to Excel.
•Purge old workfiles: A new command, IFORMNG2/NG2DTQLST has been added in InterFormNG2 on the IBM i platform. This can be used for house cleaning on the IBM i. This will list all data queues owned by the IFORMNG2 user.
•NG2CMD command: If an error occurs in InterFormNG2 while processing a request from the command, IFORMNG2/NG2CMD then the joblog will now refer to the InterFormNG2 in order to help the user to find the cause.
•Spool2XML: Customers that are using the Spool2XML module are running a monitor job for each monitored output queue. These jobs will now stop with an error message (instead of ending silently) if an input spooled file cannot be processed.
•Install: The InterFormNG2 installer on the IBM i platform now performs a CHGOBJ optimization of all NG2 objects.
•Purge old workfiles: Regarding the IBM i platform: Improved handling of temporary files e.g. TTF-fonts/tomcat. Better cleanup of temporary files (generated from certain java versions). The source: APISRC/NG2CLEANC has been changed/improved.
•Designer: The Swiss QR_CH barcode is now auto level instead of hardcoded to level 23, which makes it easier to scan the barcodes. That change means, that the barcode will no longer consist of a fixed number of modules, but instead the number of modules are now reduced the the minimum required hence the module size will now be as large as possible (and still keep the fixed size). This change is done because of a change in the specifications of this barcode.
•Workflow: The parameter, "Disable default arguments" has been added to the workflow component, Execute native OS command. It is recommended to activate this.
•Workflow: The workflow component, Create Excel document can now select a dynamic Excel template via an XPath expression.
•NG2CMD command: Major performance improvement for the IFORMNG2/NG2CMD command, when processing small documents - processing can be up to 3 times faster.
•Designer: The XPath function, ng:numberFormat now uses half up rounding method (5 is rounded up) instead of banking rounding (5 is rounded towards nearest even number)
•Log: A rare issue concerning the status of the job has been fixed, where customer earlier could experience, that the status of a failed job was not reported corrected for a web service. Fatal, Error and warnings are now sent synchronized to the job logger, preventing them from being overtaken by the final FLUSH command.
•Email: EML messages are now forced encoded to UTF-8. This has been implemented in order to prevent an issue with non-latin1 characters in emails.
•Designer: The position of the tree position in the template designer is now kept after a preview.
•Workflow: A comment field has been added to all workflow components. This can help users to document the workflow.
•Workflow: Improved error handling when saving and importing workflows. Optimized workflow validation has also been added.
•Workflow: A warning is now shown, if multiple workflows are monitoring the same IBM i output queue.
•Email: A 1 minute timeout has been added to SMTP connections. This has been added in order to prevent email workflows to wait forever for a reply.
•Designer: A potential infinite loop has been fixed, when a table row is taller than the page body.
•Designer: A multi-line text element is now correctly split, if it partially is overflowing a page.
•Workflow: A superfluous OnErrorRoute on the workflow input, AS400 Command input has been removed.
•Workflow: A new workflow component, List resources has be added. This component generates a list of all resources in a folder as an XML document and stores it in the payload (previous payload is overwritten). This can e.g. be used for deleting old, temporary resources.
•Library: An option has been added for renaming a folder in the library.
•Log: A stack trace and caller fields has now been added to the job log XML export. This makes the export much more useful for e.g. support questions.
•PDF: Invalid rotations are now handled as rotation 0.
•Email: The e-mail server host name is now trimmed in order to prevent errors, if white spaces has been added in front or behind.
•A new section, Spotlight versions has been added to the manual to remind you of how important it is to keep your software up to date.
Version 2.1.0
•Important note has been added regarding rounding of numbers with the function, ng:numberFormat().
•A charged module has been added for integration to Nextway Next for document upload / and document reference by custom URL.
•A charged module has been added for integration to Kafka.
•A new workflow component, Repeat has been added. This repeats a workflow subtree a number of times.
•A new workflow component, Retry-repeat has been added. This can help you, if you have a workflow component, that sometimes fail. You can use this to retry a subtree of workflow component until no error occurred, but it will fail when it has been tried a specified number of times.
•Text underline is now placed correctly also when the text has a left margin.
•For the IBM i platform: Better handling of IFORMNG2 autostart jobs both for a new install and for upgrades.
•For the IBM i platform: The (default) maximum number of jobs in subsystem IFORMNG2 has been increased from 50 to 200.
•For the IBM i (iSeries) platform: The text "Created by IFNG2" is now added to IBM i data queues created by InterFormNG2. These are created for monitored output queues.
•Support has been added for printing a PDF using driverprint on the OS (Only local, no remote printing for now).
•A new PDF renderer has been included. The means: Faster rendering of PDF files, smaller PDF files, better naming of embedded fonts. It is possible to revert back to the old PDF render with the line pdfRenderUseOld=true in the application.properties configuration file.
•The new PDF renderer will refuse to create a PDF file, if the template use one or more fonts, that does not allow embedding.
•Font embedding can be disabled in the new PDF render (in order to reduce the PDF file size), but it also means, that PDF files without font embedding are not PDF/A compatible and are not allowed to be used for long term archiving.
•Correction for null-pointer exception in XENT, when an SQL expression returns a column with the value null.
•General improvements to log messages.
•Support for the e-mail log in an external database.
•Option to auto-detect cell type in Excel templates.
•Added existing Excel template document option on 'create excel document' workflow component.
•Correction to row and cell indexes in Excel designer.
•Correction for handling custom URL protocols with Excel templates.
•Preserve case on the filename when using the "append version" conflict option. Previously file names was only stored in lower case in case of a file name conflict.
•Email attachments are now inserted in the order they are defined. Only exception is the new workflow component: Payload to first attachment.
•Support for GS1 variant of Datamatrix barcode has been added for all output formats.
•Allow empty string (null) as input to ng:trim functions: ng:trim, ng:trimLeft and ng:trimRight.
•IBM i platform: The command NG2CMD can now be used with both a multi-tenant setup and multiple InterFormNG2 environments with the introduction of optional extra configuration files.
•Correction to handling of <br> in template HTML text fields.
•Correction for incorrect table background placement when using table padding and page overflow.
•Fixed problem in HTML renderer when using an empty container.
•Correction to ignoring blank lines in XPath extension ng:SpoolMapCond.
•Show data in the output column of the job log.
•Support for optional *OTHERWISE* default key in root translation files. This is described here and there is an example here. The manual has also been improved when it comes to documentation of the translation files.
•Correction for using XPath in file conflict resolution field.
•It is now possible to use connection details from a database connection settings in XENT files. This can be used if you want to register all database connections in one place and with this you can also protect the users password for the database.
•Property to control persistent storage of log files when running in a Docker container.
•Blank spooled file lines are now also handled in the spooled file extractor.
•Input Spooled file variables are now shown in the workflow editor, when the workflow is initiated by an NG2CMD command on the IBM i platform.
•The manual has been updated to include the predefined variables for setting PDF attributes e.g. the title as seen on the properties of the PDF.
•Designer: A new anchor option for fixed-positioned barcodes.This makes it possible to e.g. place the bottom part of a barcode in a fixed position and let the barcode grow upwards from this position instead of always referring to the upper left corner of the barcode.
•Correction to handling of repeated texts in the template footer.
•Support for right/center alignment of the last page number, ng:last-page-number() i.e. the total number of pages. This was previously not supported.
•Correction to sequence of pasted elements in the template designer.
•Pop up windows has now been moved to the right lower corner of the screen instead of the lower left corner.
•Template designer: Correction to insertion of columns in a table that has merged cells.
•Issue solved regarding copying and deleting multiple template designer "if" elements at the same time.
•Mouse-over tooltip with full template path information has been added in the designer.
•The xpath expression of "if" and "repeat" elements are now (again) shown in the template designer when no description is set on the element.
•Issue solved: Insert of a row in a table could in rare cases corrupt the template.
•Added "remove" buttons in some settings that allow configuration of multiple server instances.
•Improved error reporting when importing a workflow that contains unknown components.
•Changed default values for relative position in "split spool variable position" component to +0.
•A warning is now shown in the workflow editor, if an e-mail server has not been selected on the "to email server" workflow component.
•CMD Log4J updated to 2.17.1 due to security flaw.
•A description of how to save a spooled file without InterFormNG2 has been added to the manual.
Version 2.0.3
•The error correction level of QR barcodes is now handled correctly. Warning!, QR code size might change for error correction other than L (Since everything was L before).
•Log4J updated to 2.17.1
•LogBack updated to 1.2.10
Version 2.0.2
•Text styles can now be uploaded and downloaded.
•Updated log4j dependency to v2.17 to patch for vulnerability CVE-2021-45046 and CVE-2021-45105.
•Correction for page overflow handling when the page break is between two table rows and the last column(s) of the last table row are blank.
Version 2.0.1
•Updated log4j dependency to v2.15 to patch for vulnerability CVE-2021-44228.
•Template to intermediate now caches text size calculations, improving the intermediate rendering speed up to 400% (Depending on content).
•Upper case is now also allowed for tenant names.
Version 2.0.0
•The InterFormNG2 settings, users and resources can now be stored in database.
•Job logs and remote output can now also be stored in a database.
•PDF to splf now uses CPI based on the input file (Existing PDF input needs reconfiguring as the behaviour has changed compared with version 1.9.0).
•Resource updates are now notifying other tenants about updates on identical files.
•Tenant import now disables template thumbnail generating due to system load and database export/import is now removed.
•ng:resourceExist: A warning/error for this XPath function was shown in the editor in the previous version. This is now solved.
•${VariableName} now works for tenant resource locations (Like ${INTERFORMNG2_HOME}).
•PDF as data stream to AS400 is now supported. That means, that you can print a PDF file directly to a PDF compatible printer - also from the IBM i platform.
•It is now possible to print to an iSeries output queue from a Windows PC, that is connected to the iSeries.
•IBM i printing to an unregistered printer can now be done without setting mime type.
•If you add a system printer on the IBM i platform, then the printer name, output queue and library are now added automatically.
•It is now possible to set various spooled file attributes on the output/merged spooled files on the IBM i platform.
•You can now print to an IBM i output queue from InterFormNG2, that runs on a Windows machine, if the machine is connected to an IBM i.
•IBM i printing to an unregistered printer can now be done without setting the mime type.
•Custom tenant icons can now be setup in InterFormNG2. This can helpful to quickly identify the tenant e.g. by the company logo.
•Preview printers are now marked with >> << in the printer overview.
•The Read from File input workflow component can now run multi-threaded. This can be used for improving the performance of InterFormNG2.
•Multi-tenant throttle support has been as a new option on the system performance settings. This can be enabled in order to prevent one tenant to take up too much of the processing power causing bad performance on other tenants.
•Workflows are now started in a thread per tenant instead of one global thread.
•The file referenced in the INFILE parameter of the iSeries command, IFORMNG2/NG2CMD is now transformed into the input payload of the workflow, that is processing the command.
•Job Log search speed have been improved.
•Added support for spelled out numbers with the new built-in XPath function, ng:spellOutNumber.
•Support for variables and built-in XPath functions in xent files has been added.
•NG2CMD command: Timeout values has been added to the properties file.
•Improved error handling in the NG2CMD command.
•You can now setup the maximum waiting time for a printer connection with the predefined variable, printerSocket.timeout.
•Manual: The html formatting option on texts is now also covered in the manual.
•Multiple From file to... workflow components has been added: From file to payload, From file to attachment, From file to workflow variable and From file to resource.
•A new workflow component has been added: From resource to file.
•Multiple From attachment to... workflow components has been added: From attachment to file, From attachment to resource, From attachment to variable.
•Multiple From variable to... workflow components has been added: From variable to attachment, From variable to file, From variable to payload, From variable to resource.
•The workflow component, List filesystem directory has been added. It lists all files in a directory (files in subdirectories can be included) into an XML file in the payload.
•Two new built-in functions has been added: ng:base64EncodeFile(path) and ng:base64EncodeResource(contentType, path). These functions converts the contents of a file or resource into a base64 data stream and returns it. This can e.g. be used, if you want to insert the contents of a file into a node in an XML file.
•Any non-breakable spaces found are now handled in InterFormNG2 and do not cause an error. In the designer preview the non-breakable spaces are shown as a square. In the workflow non-breakable spaces are converted into a normal space.
•Caching is now cleared for the file system, if an unknown file is requested. This allows copying directly into the file system.
•A new, licensed module for Excel support has been included.
•For the IBM i platform only: The user IFORMNG2 is now delivered without SPCAUT(*ALLOBJ). Existing installations can remove this authority, if you ensure, that IFORMNG2 has full authority to the IFS file, \iformng2\InterFormNG-shell\Core\application-default.properties.
•Description fields on text and logic elements has been added in the designer. NOTE: The use of these new description fields makes it impossible to use the template in earlier versions of InterFormNG2.
Version 1.9.0
•Version 1.9.0a for IBM i: The use of jar /QIBM/ProdData/OS400/Java400/ext/ibmjps.jar has been removed. The jar file can lead to user IFORMNG2 running lots of unused jobs. The issue has been reported to IBM.
•Misc renders has been improved - Fix for potential memory leaks has been added.
•Support for multiple resource repositories including Github has been added.
•Split now removes payload when split-sub-workflow completed to minimize memory usage.
•A new workflow component, New log line has been added. This is similar to the existing Log Info key component. The New log line can be used, if you want to create multiple log info key entries from a single input file. This can e.g. be used, if you split an input file and want a job log entry for each of the splitted files.
•Optimization concerning large byte output streams has been added.
•PDF has been added to the list of available mime types/print data streams, that InterFormNG2 can generate.
•Support for adding PJL sequences to PDF files has been added. This can e.g. be used, if you want to print a PDF directly in the PDF format, and still want to have full printer control e.g. for tray selection, output bin, stapling or other MFP (Multi Function Printer) related options. The PJL sequences can be added directly to the printers via the printer settings, on the Extra PJL commands component and the new workflow component, PJL wrap PDF can be used for putting PJL commands into a PDF file.
•IMPORTANT!! DO NOT use this feature in the 1.9.0 version, as an important change will be made in the next version, which will change the behavior of existing definitions. InterFormNG2 can now extract text from a PDF file and put the extracted text into the special splf format as used in InterFormNG2. The workflow component, PDF to splf has several limitations and prerequisites, so thorough testing is required in order to ensure, that it works with your PDF files. It is highly recommended to use this for very simple PDF files preferably with a single, monospaced font.
•Templates can now also be listed as thumbnails. This is both possible in the Library and when you open an existing template in the designer.
•Variables can now also be used in html templates.
•A timeout workflow variable support for socket printing (printerSocket.timeout) has been added. In this way you can limit how long InterFormNG2 should wait for a printer to respond.
•An issue concerning margins on tables in landscape rotation has been solved.
•E-mail log database now no longer slows down with many emails (10.000+).
•A new chart element has been added in the designer. The chart types include: Bar charts, line charts, pie charts and scatter charts.
•A new spooled file extractor has been added. This feature can extract/convert an input spooled file into XML. The conversions are saved as transformations with the extension, .sfe (Spooled File Extractor) and can be linked with a template.
•Spooled files can now be converted into XML with the workflow component, SPLF to XML. This conversion use .sfe transformations created with the spooled file extractor.
•A new workflow component, Payload to workflow variable has been added. This can e.g. be used if you e.g. want to put variable data into an output XML file via a variable in a transformation.
•A new file input type, xlsx has been added to the list of supported file types in the workflow.
•A new workflow component, Excel to XML has been added. This component converts an input .xlsx file into XML.
•It is now possible to generate an Excel file in InterFormNG2. This can be done with the new workflow component, XML to Excel.
•On the IBM i platform, the user profile IFORMNG2 is now created with PWDEXPITV(*NOMAX), which means that the password should not expire.
•On the IBM i platform: Class object IFORMNG2 has been created - Routing entry(10) on Subsystem IFORMNG2 uses IFORMNG2(*CLS).
•On IBM i: New meta data variable CPICHG has been added. This indicates if an *SCS spooled file have CPI-Change. (Files with either CPICHG Y/N may need different layout.)
•IBM i platform: Modified start of Java. Configuration file has been changed: Added " -Dsun.jnu.encoding=UTF-8 -Dfile.encoding=UTF-8 ". Fix for NG2/Commands.
•IBM i platform: Modified start of Java. Configuration file has been changed: Removed " -Xjit:enableSelfTuningScratchMemoryUsageBeforeCompile " (No longer relevant.)
•IBM i platform: Command NG2CMD has been improved. Most command parameters now allows mixed case input. You can now also refer to multiple instances of InterFormNG2 from the command via a new configuration file parameter.
•A preview option in HTML has been added for the HTML email templates.
•Images can now also be displayed as thumbnails in the Library.
•A new built-in Xpath function, ng:resourceExist has been added.
•Correct XML/SPLF is now set after PDF email and print components.
•Special XML characters are now properly escaped when converting CSV to XML.
Version 1.8.0
•InterFormNG2/400 Java 11 runtime support. + increased 50% default memory allocation.
•Correction for includeStandardFonts PCL printer setting not having any effect.
•New zip archive components for building a zip archive in a workflow: Append to zip archive, Initialize zip archive and Zip to payload.
•A new FTP input component, for reading files from an FTP server has been added.
•A new Office365 SharePoint integration module for uploading output to SharePoint has been added.
•In the designer you can move elements with the arrow keys. The undo option now rolls back the list of all identical clicks in a single undo.
•The XPath extension ng:numberFormat now accepts locale stings with both dash and underscore as separator (previously only dash worked).
•Fix added for the template designer's PDF preview being blank, if the resulting PDF is >2MB when base64 encoded (was only a problem on Chrome/Edge browsers).
•Correction added for styles not being correctly loaded when generating a document from a template that uses styles.
•Attachment to payload now also sets internal_xml to XML, if the new payload is XML.
•Corrected error on remote output notifier. Client sockets are now closed if writing to it fails (for instance when the remote client has disconnected).
•Extension ng:SpoolMapCond will now always create output for lines, where the condition is true. If the copy from position is beyond the length of the line, a line feed will be inserted.
•Added support for using polling with eSignAnywhere (for cases where callback is not possible).
Version 1.7.1
•XML nodes containing only whitespace are now visible in the designer/workflow XML tree.
•Support for eSignAnyWhere integration for signing PDF documents has been added.
•A new "Resource to Workflow variable" workflow component has been added. Can for instance be used to run an XSL transformation with multiple input XMLs.
•Correction for template/workflow import failing, if the file system path separator differs between the export and the import system.
•InterFormNG2 AS400 Commands now have improved Error messages. NG400/Commandline commands have a more uniform error handling implemented.
Version 1.7.0
•Spooled file support: The predefined variables, interform.input.spooled.startPage and interform.input.spooled.endPage now contains page 1 and the total number of pages of a spooled file, if no specific page range is specified on the input spooled file. In previous version they were both blank, if no specific page range was set.
•The workflow component, Resource to payload now also supports an XPath expression for the resource.
•For the Windows installer, the keystore file and the application-default.properties file are no longer overwritten when installing an update.
•A new workflow component, Rename attachment has been added. This can be used for renaming attachments before an email is generated and sent out.
•E-mail sending from a workflow can now handle ampersands being part of the e-mail server password.
•Support for input text files has been added in the workflow: A new input file type, TEXT has been added, and a new workflow component, Text to SPLF.
•Support for digital signing of PDFs using the DigitalSign HSM Cloud solution has been added. For this you can now setup a DigitalSign server and then use the workflow component, DigitalSign cloud PDF signing.
•A new bookmark element has been added in the designer. You can use this to add bookmark in output PDF files.
•APIs has been added. APIs makes it possible for third party program to work with job logs and printers.
•Multiple sample/demo header and footer components has been added. They are installed only on new installations - not if you upgrade InterFormNG2.
•Comments inside the XML files are now shown, when the XML file is displayed in either the designer or workflow.
•The elements remain suspended (as they should be), when opening a template with suspended if/select/repeat elements.
•The "auto" option is now available in the spool-file sidebar in the template designer. This makes it easier to map from the current page.
•Dynamic custom color definitions can now be added in the template designer.
•Transformation files (xsl) are no longer cached forever after first read. When uploading a new version with the same filename, the new version is used the next time a workflow is run.
•Spool file attributes are now selectable directly in the designer.
•Designer can now edit templates for HTML emails (.ifm extension), and NG2 can also use these for sending HTML emails and HTML output.
•A new Workflow component for moving a named attachment to payload has been added.
•Issues regarding export/import has been solved.
•SVG support fixed for backward compatible old InterFormNG templates has been added.
•A license server has been added, users can now reload their old license by clicking "Register license online" or by providing a key.
•A new option, 92. Change NG2 installation has been added to the iFORMNG2 menu.With this new option you can choose to start none or some of the servers in InterFormNG2/Spool2XML if e.g. you are running InterFormNG2 on a windows machine, that has monitoring output queues on an iSeries/IBM i.
Version 1.6.0
•A new e-mail log of all sent e-mails have been added. Existing workflows that send/queue e-mails must be re-saved in the workflow editor in order to start using the mail log functionality.NOTE: The mail log must be enabled in tenant settings in order for this functionality to become active (except for delayed e-mails).
•Delayed e-mail functionality has been moved to the mail log.
•An option to generate E-mails with status held has been added in the in workflows.
• Evaluate XPath expressions for both position and color in the template processor.NOTE: To support color/position expressions, the template format has been changed and the template version number is now v1.1. When existing templates are saved in the designer, they will be changed to v1.1 format. Once a template has been upgraded, it is no longer possible to use it with older versions of InterFormNG2.
•Workflow input component that allows a workflow to be initiated by an IBM i command.
•Minor changes to error messages to provide better error information (Specially for IBM i Command feedback).
•Option to ignore errors on post-process spooled file component in case of 'already held/released/deleted'.
•Spool XENT support for looping through all spool pages and executing an expression on each page.
•Add spooled file attributes to spooled file. The attributes can now be used directly in the designer.
•Support for limiting the page range to use when loading a spooled file into the library.
•Automatic cancelling of queued e-mails is now possible.
•Option to export a job log to an XML file.
•Support for driver print via the remote output client has been added.
•Added info message about missing license, if a resource folder contains unlicensed file types.
•Option to set only one dimension on image elements when preserving aspect ratio (unset dimension is then always calculated).
•Cursor and position indicator has been added to the spooled file view (to better track mouse position).
•The "unsaved changes" dialog has been change in order to also allow saving directly.
•When moving text elements: Texts can automatically align with existing text elements in the designer.
•Optional run-length compression of images in PCL output (can be enabled in the printer settings).
•Spooled files (.splf) content is now shown when displaying the file contents from the library.
Version 1.5.4
•A special license code for Spool2XML has been implemented. This enables the customer to be able to run only Spool2XML without running InterFormNG2 on the same machine. In this way you can e.g. use Spool2XML combined with InterFormNG2 running on another operating system on another server.
•Preview client has been improved in multiple ways.
•New custom XPath function ng:spoolMapCond for conditioned remap of text from a spooled file.
•If an incorrect file extension is set on a base64 encoded image template element, an attempt will be made to guess the correct image format, instead of just failing.
•Removed deprecated JSON to XML component.
•Added the workflow component: To Base64 string component.
•Added support for using read-only directories defined as resource.
Version 1.5.3
•Added missing configuration setting and keystore file to remote preview client. Logging has also been improved.
•JSON to XML workflow component has been replaced with new, improved converter. Please note, that the conversion is different with the new improved workflow component, but it is not backwards compatible, so it is recommended to change your workflow to use the new component as the old component is depreciated and only supported for a limited time.
Designer
•Reverted change to behavior of blank text elements that was done in version 1.5.2, Blank text elements are now again ignored in the final output instead of generating a line feed.
•Correction to rendering of templates with landscape orientation and custom page size. The page content was incorrectly shifted horizontally.
•Added additional right/center alignment for text elements with fixed position and no dimensions.
•Use of decimal numbers in XPath expressions no longer give the error message "Big is not defined" in the template designer.
•When editing the expressions on a select element in the template designer, the changes are now saved.
•EAN128/GS1-128 barcode support for | (pipe) to insert FNC1 has been added.
Version 1.5.2
•NG2/400 - New interface for adjusting CPI of *AFPDS spoolfiles.
•IFORMNG2/LIBSYSASP DTAARA with default "IFORMNG2" are added and used when refering to SBSD, JOBQ and JOBD. This enables iASP support on the IBM i platform with additional procedures. Please contact your InterForm support for information of how to install on iASP if required.
•Remote output client will now create the default settings file, even if the target directory does not exist. Also connection errors now have more detailed error information in the client's log.
•New XPath extension function has been added: ng:minimum(). This function returns the smallest number of two numeric parameters.
•New system setting for resource caching level has been added.
•A new system setting has been added for automatic cleanup of system log files.
•Most dialog boxes are now movable by dragging on the header of the box.
Designer
•For texts positioned by baseline, the grid-snapping will now snap to baseline.
•Improvement to setting fixed table/column widths. Designer result view of tables is now also better aligned with final rendering.
•Decreased increment when moving elements with arrow keys. Hold shift to move larger steps, hold CTRL to move smaller steps.
•Margin is ignored for template elements with fixed position.
Version 1.5.1
•Correction to binary setting on FTP component.
•Added renameUsingCopy option on file input component to prevent errors on the IBM i platform.
Version 1.5.0
The features below was added in version 1.5.0:
•A new module with samba support for writing to shared folders on Windows servers has been added.
•A new FIFO (First in, first out) option has been added in the workflow to ensure, that input files can be processed in sequence.
•The email templates can now refer to input XML data and can even e.g. list all detail lines of an input XML file.
•Errors are now shown as a "Hover message" on top of error workflows in the job logs.
•An option to delete old/processed files has been added.
•Workflows can now be paused/suspended.
•The used workflow name is now written in the job logs.
•Additional attributes of input spooled files are now included in the workflow.
Version 1.4.4
The features below was added in version 1.4.4:
•Handling of *SCS spoolfiles with special CodePage/CharSet. 037/1175 China Traditional, 836/1174 China Simplified, 833/1173 Korean and 290/1172 Japanese.
•Workflows in error are now highlighted with a red triangle in the workflow overview.
•Designer: XPath is now supported for the display name and description for embedded files.
•Designer: Description in embed file is now optional
•Designer: Insert relative XML paths inside repeated elements instead of the complete XML path.
•Designer: Added validation of rotation angle (only 90 degree increments are allowed).
•Designer: Confirmation dialog when changing component added to avoid accidental changes of common components.
Version 1.4.3
The features below was added in version 1.4.3:
•Nicely formatted XML view in library
The XML documents in the are now displayed in a better, formatted way, when they are displayed from the Library.
•Improved spooled file mouse picker.
The selection of an area in a spooled file has been improved for mapping spooled file data in the designer.
•Option to edit translations in InterFormNG2
The contents of translation files can now be edited by clicking the translation file in the Library.
•Allow blank/whitespace values for optional e-mail attributes in EML and delay queue components
Blank contents are now handled as null values.
•ZUGFeRD predefined output variables
Special ZUGFeRD related predefined output variables has been added. This ensures, that customers can create PDF files, that are ZUGFeRD compatible. ZUGFeRD require the InterXML module.
•A new internal function, ng:translate was added
With this you can e.g. use translation tables in workflows.
•Support for dynamic file nam conflict resolution
Now you can setup an XPath expression to define what should happen, if an output file already exists.
•Workflow list search now also search the group names
Previously only the workflow names and contents was searched.
•Extension .htm is now also allowed for email templates
Version 1.4.2
The features below was added in version 1.4.2:
•Added support for InterFormNG2 ng:counter internal function.
•Database plugin table name is now always lowercase
•Text search for the template elements has now been added.
Version 1.4.1
The features below was added in version 1.4.1:
•Added zip extenson to tenant export file on Firefox browser.
Version 1.4.0
The features below was added in version 1.4.0:
•Added support for multi-tenant license.
•Database plugins column names changed
•Oauth 2 webservice - Added support for payload in body and not in parameter
•File output workflow variables now updated with real output filename after save
This makes it e.g. possible to create an index file with the same name as the PDF file - even if the file was changed due to a file naming conflict.
•Upgrade JT400 library version
•Removed unwanted extra empty line at the top of converted spooled files (Requires modification of template coordinates)
