Technical FAQs for "PrizmDoc"

We are planning to upgrade our PrizmDoc Server and PrizmDoc Client to the latest major version. What is the best practice for doing so?

For best results, you will want to follow the instructions below to ensure the cleanest upgrade of the newest version:

NOTE: Before starting, make a backup of the following configuration files for use as reference when re-configuring your new version installation. This should be done before the PrizmDoc installer is run, as all configuration files will be replaced with new ones (resetting them to their default configuration).

• Prizm Server Configuration: prizm\prizm-services-config.yml

• Prizm Client Configuration (Windows): prizm\pas\pcc.win.yml

• Prizm Client Configuration (Linux): /usr/share/prizm/pas/pcc.nix.yml

• ServiceHost Configuration: prizm\PCCIS\ServiceHost\pcc.config

How To:

1. Uninstall the previous version of PrizmDoc Server and PrizmDoc Client. Be sure to delete all PrizmDoc folders that are still present. For Windows you can Find PrizmDoc Server and Prizm Client under Add/Remove Programs. For Linux, please follow instructions below for uninstall instructions.

Linux Prizm/PAS Service Uninstall:

https://help.accusoft.com/PrizmDoc/latest/HTML/webframe.html#linux-uninstall-prizmdoc-serve.html

https://help.accusoft.com/PrizmDoc/v13.10/HTML/webframe.html#pas-linux-uninstallation.html

2. Download the latest version of PrizmDoc for your operating system from https://www.accusoft.com/products/prizmdoc-suite/prizmdoc-viewer-builds/

3. Install PrizmDoc Server first and then the PrizmDoc Client.

4. At the end of the server installation, the install may request a reboot.

5. Make a backup of your new configuration files as listed above.

6. Modify each of the new configuration files and make the same changes as you did in the older configuration files.

NOTE: Do not just replace the new configuration files with the old version configuration files, as new configurations may have been introduced in the new version and they would be lost.

7. Restart the Prizm Services and Prizm Application Services to ensure the newly configured file changes take affect.

NOTE: If either service fails to start with an error after modifying the configuration files, replace the configuration files with the original copy of the configuration files and try making the changes again.

NOTE: If you are using viewing packages and have an existing database, we provide additional scripts in the \prizm\pas\db folder to modify your existing database. For example, upgrading from PrizmDoc 12.x to PrizmDoc 13.x we provide an additional script addTenantId to add a new field to one of the existing tables.

I want the Thumbnail tab in PrizmDoc Viewer to be open by default. How can this be done?

A simple solution could be to simply implement a ‘click-on-the-button’ when you first open the Viewer, if you’re fine with the user being able to close the thumbnail pane:

$("[data-pcc-toggle=\"dialog-thumbnails\"]").click();

If you’d rather have the tab always open, in viewer.js there’s a function called toggleDialogs(opts) that checks for whether the thumbnail pane is being toggled through the opts.toggleID, and if so, adds openClass to the thumbDialog. You could modify this logic so that the thumbnail pane is permanently open.

When I view a document on PrizmDoc Cloud and it hits a cached document, is a transaction still consumed?

What defines a transaction on PrizmDoc Cloud?

A transaction is defined as: a document viewed, a document converted, a document OCR function performed, a form detected, or an image compressed.

PrizmDoc Cloud considers it a transaction anytime any of these actions are performed, regardless of how they are carried out.

In some other viewers, there are highlights or markers that appear on the UI to indicate that annotations are available for a given page or document. Is there a way to implement this in PrizmDoc?

Sure can, you just need to make a MarkupLayerRecords request to determine if there are marks that pertain to the given Viewing Session. Keep in mind that documents don’t really have a specific set of annotations associated with them though — Markup IDs do, and you can specify any Markup ID you want when you create a viewing session:

// Add rules to your CSS for the following classes.
// The actual style information can be whatever you like.
//
// .mark-indicator {
//     background-color: gold !important;
// }
//
// .marked-page-indicator {
//     background-color: gold !important;
// }

let pasUrl = "http://localhost/pas-service"; // Example PAS proxy URL
let viewingSessionId = <%= viewingSessionId %>; // Example viewingSessionId
let thumbnailButton = $(".pcc-icon-thumbnails");
let pageIndicatorsAdded = false;
let thumbnailsClicked = false;
let marksRetrieved = false;
let markedPages = {};

async function addPageIndicators() {
    console.log("Attempting to add page indicators...");
    if (thumbnailsClicked && marksRetrieved && !pageIndicatorsAdded) {
        console.log("Conditions met.");

        let wrappers = $(".pccThumbnailWrapper");

        wrappers.each(function(index, wrapper) {
            if (markedPages[index]) {
                $(wrapper).addClass("marked-page-indicator");
            }
        });

        pageIndicatorsAdded = true;
    } else {
        console.log("Conditions not met");
    }
}

thumbnailButton.click(function() {
    console.log("Thumbnails button clicked.");

    thumbnailsClicked = true;

    addPageIndicators();
});

async function apiCall(type, url, body = {}) {
    return await $.ajax({
        "type": type,
        "url": url,
        "contentType": "application/json",
        "data": JSON.stringify(body)
    });
}

async function createMarkIndicators() {
    let output = await apiCall("GET", `${pasUrl}/MarkupLayers/u${viewingSessionId}`);

    if (output.length > 0) {
        console.log("Found layers.");

        thumbnailButton.addClass("mark-indicator");

        let layers = await Promise.all(output.map(function(element) {
            return apiCall("GET", `${pasUrl}/MarkupLayers/u${viewingSessionId}/${element.layerRecordId}`);
        }));

        layers.forEach(function(layer) {
            layer.marks.forEach(function(mark) {
                markedPages[mark.pageNumber - 1] = true;
            });
        });

        marksRetrieved = true;

        console.log("Marks retrieved.");

        addPageIndicators();
    } else {
        console.log("No layers found.");
    }
}

createMarkIndicators(); 

I would like to be able to query my PrizmDoc Server for all documents currently in a state of processing. I want to be able to do this to determine if a document is “hanging” during conversion, to determine my system’s efficiency (My RAM and CPU are at X% with ten documents converting), or for other tasks. This is currently possible for individual processes if you know the process ID. Is this possible for all processes?

The current version of PrizmDoc does not have an API to determine if any file is currently converting on PrizmDoc Server. PrizmDoc provides viewingPackageCreator, contentConverter, redactionCreator, and markupBurner APIs that report the status of a specific process, and whether it is in progress or not. However, it is currently necessary to know a specific processId to obtain that information.

There is an active Feature Request for this item available for viewing here.

Is it possible to only use PrizmDoc on an internal network? Does the product make attempts to connect to sites that are on the Internet? Does it try to reach Accusoft?

The only cases where PrizmDoc must be connected to the Internet are as follows:

• If you are running the PLU in online mode.
• If your PrizmDoc deployment uses cloud licensing. In this case, PrizmDoc requires Internet access to get to the S3 bucket.

Beyond these cases, PrizmDoc can be installed on an internal network and used normally.

Can PrizmDoc handle password-protected files, such as PDFs or Excel files?
How would a user specify a password for a particular document?

It is possible to specify the password for a password-protected document when creating a viewing session in PrizmDoc. When sending a request to create a viewing session, you’ll use the password field in the request body to specify the password. For example…

POST http://localhost:3000/ViewingSession
Content-Type: application/json
{
    "source": {
        "type": "url",
        "url": "https://www.usability.gov/sites/default/files/creating-wireframes.pdf"
    },
    "password": "hunter2"
}

(Replace "hunter2" with the actual password)

Please note that even if a file needs a password and is not provided one (or is provided one that’s incorrect), the viewing session should still be created successfully. The easiest method to determine whether the password is needed/correct is to make a call to get the page. You can do this by making a GET request to the GetPage route using the viewingSessionId created earlier, like so…

GET pas_base_url/Page/q/0?DocumentID=u{viewingSessionId}

…be sure to replace pas_base_url with the root of your Prizm Application Services (PAS) instance (usually this is http://localhost:3000) and replace {viewingSessionId} with the actual value for viewingSessionId created in the previous step.

The above call will return 200 OK if the page load is successful. If a password is required/incorrect, you should see a return status code 480. There will be additional response headers called accusoft-status-number and accusoft-status-message, which should be 4001 and "Document requires a password", respectively.

You can see the above in greater detail in the product documentation here.

You can use this information to re-create a viewing session with the correct password.

Currently, there is a feature request planned for a potential future release of PrizmDoc to prompt the user for a password if one is required.

PrizmDoc logs have timestamps, what timezone are they in?

PrizmDoc logs are timestamped in GMT, in the ISO 8601 standard.

When I try to install PrizmDoc Server on Windows, my username/password are rejected as incorrect. How can I troubleshoot this?

It’s possible that there is some problem with the account you’re trying to log in under.

First, make sure the server is in the same domain as the username you login with. For example, if you are logging in under abc.com\flastname, ensure that your server is also a part of the abc.com domain.

Second, do a “whoami” from the command prompt – verify the id that comes up is in the local admins group (Control Panel -> All Control Panel Items -> Administrative Tools -> Computer Management -> Local Users and Groups -> Groups -> Administrators). You need to be a local admin in order to install the product.

Third, if none of the above work, you can type the password into Notepad and copy from Notepad into the installer. Sometimes the installer has difficulties with text copied directly from web browsers. Copying from Notepad resolves this issue.

If none of the above work, then as a workaround, try creating a new local account: (Settings App -> Accounts -> Other People -> “Add someone else…” -> “I don’t have this person’s sign-in information” -> “Add a user without a Microsoft account”) You can then enter the new credentials you just created into the PrizmDoc installer. Once the services are running, you can change the login information back to the desired administrator account (Services -> Prizm (Double click) -> Log on -> This account). You’ll want to repeat this for all three services (Prizm, Prizm Application Services, and PrizmDemo).

I have an evaluation license for PrizmDoc. Can I evaluate MSO features with this evaluation license?

No, regular PrizmDoc evaluation licenses do not have MSO functionality. They will instead use LibreOffice to convert documents. Contact an Accusoft Support Technician or your Account Representative to discuss evaluating PrizmDoc with MSO enabled.

Is it possible to automatically annotate a document, similar to the Auto-Redaction feature, using PrizmDoc?

An auto-annotation feature isn’t an out-of-the-box feature but with some work, it can be done. This would involve creating a searchTask and using the information from it to programmatically create XML markup that can be used in the MarkupBurner.

To do this you would need to create a searchTask for the pattern you would like to annotate. You can then get the results of the searchTask as JSON which will contain all occurrences of that pattern/search. Each search result will include the selected text, the page on which it occurs, the starting index of the result, and the dimensions and coordinates of the bounding rectangles for that search result.

All this information can be used to construct the markup XML to add the annotations with the markup burner.

Once you have constructed the XML you would post to the MarkupBurner with the XML as the body to burn the document.

When licensing my PrizmDoc server, I get the error “Unable to write licensing information to the properties file.” Why is this happening?

To resolve this issue, please try the following:

1. Re-run the Prizm Licensing Utility as an administrator.

2. The Prizm Licensing Utility is writing to Prizm/prizm-services-config.yml. See whether you have permissions to edit this file.

3. Check whether Prizm/prizm-services-config.yml is locked by another process. If you have it open in some text editing software, PrizmDoc may not be able to write to it.

Additionally, if you have an OEM key, you can just manually enter this key into the file by placing the following at the top:

license.solutionName: ENTER_YOUR_SOLUTION_NAME_HERE

license.key: 2.0…rest_of_the_key_goes_here