10.0 ENHANCEMENTS

UnForm 10.0 offers many significant enhancements to its already powerful predecessors.  A list of major enhancements is provided below.

New Image Manager Component

Image Manager is a browser-based tool with extensive capabilities for identifying incoming documents, enabling custom data capture and automatic or manual property assignment.  It includes extensive scripting facilities for handling of the most complex document automation challenges.  Inbound documents are collected from folder, email, and user sources.

This tool replaces the previous Windows-based Image Manager, which is now included as the Legacy Image Manager, primarily to facilitate migration of existing job definitions so they can run with Version 10 servers.

New DocFlow Component

DocFlow And Annotation is a browser-based tool that enables document routing and workflow applications to be developed.  It supports step-based routing, with role-based security.  Custom scripting enables flexible rules to be enforced, or ERP integration to be designed.  Annotation capability enables signature capture and proof of delivery applications to be designed as well.

Print Management Enhancements

Enhanced Security with the addition of a shared-secret authkey value, so a client cannot connect to the server without a matching authkey value.

Proxy Connections, allowing a client to connect to an UnForm server via a properly configured web server with the -proxy option.  The internal Apache server is automatically configured to handle such connections.  This feature enables UnForm to reside behind a firewall, but enable print jobs to be submitted via a public http/https connection.

New Functions and Objects:

Inbound Sources enable running of print jobs from any monitored folder, or via email.

Archive Command changes to support archiving on a separate server, with spooling to ensure fault tolerance.

Performance Improvements when using archive and deliver commands, through a timing change in when PDF processing is performed.

History of print job input files is maintained at the server, with an automatic purge cycle controlled by the histage=days setting in uf100d.ini.

Load Balancing support is available, by specifying multiple servers in the -server option of uf100c.  Note also the archive command changes as it is usually important to have archive libraries maintained on a single server.  Part of load balancing is maintaining duplicate files across multiple systems.  This is automated through a syncing process described in the load balancing section.

Subjob Enhancement allows subjob ID values of thousands of characters (the former limit was 25).  Beware, however, of using large deliver docid's as those values are used to generate file names.

Fail Recovery enables client-side storing and resubmission of failed job submissions, controlled by the failhist setting in uf100c.ini, and the -rerun command line options.

The margin command is now used by AFO jobs to adjust the position and size of the page overlay.

Improved support for commands with expressions inside code blocks.  Expressions are resolved in-line so looping constructs are now supported.

Email passwords now support encrypted password storage maintained with the admin browser interface. Use "store:storename" in place of the plain text password anywhere it is configured or used.

Document Archiving Enhancements

Doc Data feature added, allowing user-defined name, value pairs, with indexing.  This feature is used extensively by the new Image Manager and DocFlow components, but is also available for use in custom archiving requirements.  Both Browse and Search have been enhanced to allow document viewing by Doc Data names and values, and the uf100c command line has also been enhanced for its use.

Mark Images has been improved, with a toolbar option to mark all images of selected documents, in both Browse and Search.

Embedded PDF Viewer, a customized version of Mozilla Foundation's PDF.js toolkit, is included and optionally turned on by user. This restores hyperlink support that was lost when browser vendors dropped support for the Acrobat PDF plug-in.

Search Results include a library column, rather than a library selector, making multi-library search results more intuitive.

LDAP Sync now supports multiple profiles, enabling support for multiple LDAP/AD servers in a single installation.

Design Tool Enhancements

Code Folding improves navigation through rule sets and provides a clear visual indicator of logical sections such as loops.

Print Rule Set feature provides complete rules et printing rather than the default browser visual space-only printing.

Browser View of Test Print supports PCL, Postscript, and ZPL previewing at the browser, through the use of GhostPCL, GhostScript, and the labelary.com web service, respectively.

Server Manager Enhancements

Several minor enhancements, including a Test Email capability and the ability to configure GhostPCL and MuPDF.

Evaluation Mode Changes

When UnForm 10 is installed on a new system, it is automatically activated as a 21-day evaluation version.  This mode supports all the features of UnForm, with 3 print jobs, 3 image manager users, 10 docflow users, design tool, and archiving.  All documents produced by UnForm have a watermark, and data files are limited to 5,000 records. Some limitations are different than previous versions of UnForm.