Direct Printing within Formpak

This document describes how to enable Formpak users to print directly to a printer, i.e. in “Print a Document for an Item”, you can click “Print” and the selected document will be printed to the desired printer.

N.B. In all Formpak systems, a user can select “Print to PDF” in “Print a Document for an Item” to produce a document or label and display it on the screen. To print the document or label, the user would then use the “Print” operation in their browser or PDF viewer.

The steps required are as follows:

1. Install the printer on the server running Formpak. There are two possibilities here, depending on whether a. the server is on-premises, or b. the server is in the cloud.
• Install the printer on an on-premises server:
• Label printers have more configuration requirements, so it is particularly important that they are installed directly on the Formpak server, typically attached via a LAN port. Attaching to a label printer shared on another computer is not advisable.
• Install the printer on a cloud server:
• For an Azure Virtual Machine, you need to configure a site-to-site VPN using Azure VPN Gateway to connect the LAN where the printer is located to the Azure virtual network of the Azure Virtual Machine. For more information follow this link – https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/services/vpn-gateway/#overview
• For an Amazon Web Services EC2, you need to configure a Site-to-Site VPN [N.B. NOT AWS Client VPN] to connect the LAN where the printer is located to the VPC of the EC2. For more information, follow this link – https://aws.amazon.com/vpn/
2. Configure the printer – on the server running Formpak, and running as the Formpak service user:
• Label printers must have the appropriate page sizes, page sensing, etc. all configured and tested with a Windows Test Page on the Formpak server before attempting to use them within the Formpak software.
• To do this, find the printer on the server and then choose printer preferences
• On the stock tab, configure a new stock to be the correct dimensions of your label stock.
• Set the appropriate orientations, please let us know if Landscape 180′ is the correct orientation.
• Check the sensor settings on the stock tab to match your printer and your labels.
• Then run a few test prints to ensure everything is setup correctly. This can take some trial and error.
3. Configure the Tomcat service to run as the Formpak service user, if this has not already been done previously:
• Open Windows Services, select the Apache Tomcat 7.0 Formpak service
• Right click and choose Properties, then go to the Log On tab.
• You should select This Account and enter the Account Id, Password and Confirm Password for a suitable account, probably the same as the one under which Formpak is installed. Then click OK to save.
4. Restart Formpak:
• Open Windows Services, select the Apache Tomcat 7.0 Formpak service
• Right click and choose restart
• Wait for Formpak to come back up, allow up to 5 mins.
5. Configure and test the printer in Formpak:
• Open Formpak
• In Print a Document for an Item, select a Document Type then click Select Printer. Select the printer then click Properties… Configure the Properties, then click OK then Yes to save. Regarding the properties:
• Set Media size name, leave media size tray as NONE.
• If you find that your desired Media Size Name is not available to select, in spite of having been configured, then please get in touch with Formpak support.
• Set the appropriate orientation for the label, then save

N.B. The printer configuration in Formpak is separate for each user and document or label. So the last step needs to be repeated for each unique combination of user and document/label required.