Re: Infoprint Designer and Server

We use Infoprint Server's PDF subsystem pretty heavily to generate PDF
email attachments and send these those out to internal and external
customers.

You should probably read up on Infoprint Server from the user manual to get
a feel for what it can accomplish.  There is also a recently published
redbook, that might help.

http://www.printers.ibm.com/R5PSC.NSF/Web/as400overview

Once everything is working, its easy for the end user to use.  The PDF
subsystem is activated by releasing a spool file to a virtual printer.  We
call ours EMLPDF for example.  In one implementation, we've designed it so
that users just alter the spool file to OUTQ(EMLPDF), and the spool file is
emailed to them as the spool file owner.  You can also tie into Operations
Navigator, if anyone has use for that.

I think the biggest challenge with Infoprint Server has been that its
built-in email functions aren't robust enough.  Using the mapping program
option is almost a must, to help Infoprint determine what to do with the
email.  It also doesn't handle multiple email sessions per spool file at
all.  The sender must be registered in the iSeries SMTP directory.  We
don't maintain that directory, so that was a big show-stopper initially.

It is robust enough that you can work-around many of the issues by
executing the emailing yourself within the mapping program and telling
Infoprint not to worry about it.  They have recently added built-in mapping
based on a new type of mapping object, however, it wasn't flexible enough
to do what our users expected.  It might be good enough for someone else.

This is our first implementation of a PDF generating product, so I can't
compare, however, its done what we've needed it to do.  Just be prepared to
study the manual very carefully during implementation.

> can you give us a short review of the
> infoprint designer and server. How functional is it?
> And what are you able to do with it. I have several
> customers who need this kind of function.
> jim