General Consultant Discussion

Ok without getting into the ridiculous details of why, a customer has a folder on the server populated with non-work tables pack slips generated by Sage Alerts and Workflow. SAW is currently lacking the ability to print directly (the print script crashes the system), but they will have that ability in v10 - which is coming out in just a month or two. Client has a hundred or so other SAW jobs running, so it is counter-intuitive right now to switch to another monitoring software. So in the interim, I need a program that can print these files automatically. Has anyone ever tried a program like FolderMill or 2Printer? @Sage100Routine @Sage100AdvancedScripting

why not simply fire up a command line prompt something like the following, the trick assuming the files aren't all the same would be picking the file to print. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/12417335/batch-print-pdf-files-listed-in-a-text-file or if assuming your using this sort of script today, this could also be triggered by a windows scheduled task, and clear out the file post print (maybe archive them)?

Since they're non-wrks, if they're RPTs, I would use Visual Cut to process and then Print. https://milletsoftware.com/Visual_CUT_User_Manual/#Exporting%2FBursting%2FPrinting%20Options

Right @JeremyFox , there could potentially be hundreds per day, all with different file names. so running a powershell or other script could be problematic. @SteveIwanowski I have been looking for a reason to explore Visual Cut, maybe this is the time! Thanks for the direct link. I will review it and *fingers crossed* be done with this!

yes essentially the idea being to nest this script inside of an archive script, so when it fires alert number 1 to the pdf it simply prints and cuts it to the archive location or deletes it. so that the file only ever has one pdf in it at a given time.

aahhh I see! @JeremyFox good call. So would you then just have Windows Task Scheduler running it? I would need to pretty much be firing off every minute, or looping?

could be or i had the other thought of simply assigning each alert to simply create a specific file name, with that embed ed in the script and then again to delete/archive after it was done running. we use a similar idea for backing up imports. this would take a bit of work though to assign / create them all i use excel to do the text for this sort of thing.

with the task scheduler it would depend on which works correctly i've not tried to have something like that fireing off all the time while scanning files so it might take a bit of testing. (to be honest i've not needed to fire a print job via script before)

I don't think that would work, as on busy days they could have several files in there at once, and we can't risk archiving prior to printing, or worse overwriting because it didn't print/archive in time. I'll look into scripting it, and VisualCut as well.

Another vote for visual cut. It is an Swiss Army knife. It is amazing...

We have a client using Foldermill all day, everyday, to print hundreds of pick tickets to multiple warehouses that generate to a file from SAW. Works great, but we do have the monitoring turned on so if they backup, we get notified.

@DanaYoung Good to know! The cost seems minimal for what it does. Do you happen to know if it is resource heavy?

@MichelleForsey , it is not. It is pretty straight forward & easy to use too. We have been happy with the solution & using it for 1-2 years now.