Technical FAQs

I am trying to retrieve documents and files to view in PrizmDoc Viewer. The files are located in a NAS device. The file server is available via an HTTP link but I would prefer not to use the HTTP put method.

A NAS device is short for Network Attached Storage. Typically, to access these devices would be no different than a shared network drive from a server.

You can setup Prizm Application Services (PAS) to point to a NAS device, if there are actual file shares set up on that device. Also, a key note to remember is that both PrizmDoc and PAS should be running with a domain id which has full access to that share so that the services can access the files when called.

For instance, you have a folder on the NAS device called PrizmFolders and it is shared with a network drive share of \mynasdevice\PrizmFolders. You can modify the pcc.win.yml file to point to that root folder by updating the document.path as outlined below. Keep in mind that the backslashes have to be escaped so you will need an extra backslash for each backslash in the path:

documents.path:"\\\\mynasdevice\\PrizmFolders"

Once this is done, when posting a viewing session through PAS, you can simply specify the subfolder\filename. For instance, if there was a folder called northregion and a file called metrics.pdf (\mynasdevice\PrizmFolders\northregion\metrics.pdf) you would be able to specify northregeion\metrics.pdf in the post command.

With a fully-running PrizmDoc environment (version prior to v10.5), I’m noticing times where the system becomes unresponsive. That is, at some point, it no longer processes requests being made to the backend and I have to restart PrizmDoc in order to alleviate it. What could be causing this?

Prior to version 10.5, PrizmDoc used ProxyServer as its image processing system. Our Development Team eventually began seeing that the ProxyServer exhibited architectural problems that lead to a multitude of issues, such as unresponsiveness.

Starting in version 10.5, the Development Team created the Prizm Content Connect Imaging Service (PCCIS), which is far more stable.

To resolve this issue we suggest upgrading to the latest revision of PrizmDoc. Please see the product page for more information found here: https://www.accusoft.com/products/prizmdoc/overview/

My document appears to be loading incorrectly. Are there any troubleshooting steps that I can take?

First, confirm that this is a document-specific issue by trying other documents of the same file type or documents of the same file type with similar size characteristics and content.

Second, if the document is a Microsoft Office document and you are using LibreOffice as your backend renderer, you can compare the way that the document displays in PrizmDoc against the way the document displays in the copy of LibreOffice shipped with PrizmDoc (C:\Prizm\libreoffice\program\soffice.exe on Windows, /usr/share/prizm/libreoffice/program/soffice on Linux). To inquire about the Microsoft Office renderer plugin, which may resolve office document rendering issues, send an email to sales@accusoft.com.

Third, reach out to a support technician at support@accusoft.com, as they will be able to quickly test how the document renders in the latest version of PrizmDoc, and consult the product engineers in the event that there is a rendering issue.

Have the following information handy, as it will help the support technician better assist you:

• What version of PrizmDoc are you using?

• What operating system are you using?

  • If Windows, are you using the LibreOffice or Microsoft Office backend renderer?

• A PDF export or a screenshot of what you see in PrizmDoc, compared to a screenshot of how the document looks in its native file type viewer.

• Log files that include the processing of the incorrectly loading document.

• Any changes that you may have made to the PrizmDoc configuration files.

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.

We are running PrizmDoc on a Windows operating system and we noticed that our ms-office-conversion-service remained unhealthy even through a restart of the service. We also noticed an error in the MsOfficeConverter.log referencing the following error. What could be the cause?

“WARN – COM error occurs on 1 initialization attempt. Retrieving the
COM class factory for component with CLSID
{000209FF-0000-0000-C000-000000000046} failed due to the following
error: 80080005 Server execution failed (Exception from HRESULT:
0x80080005 (CO_E_SERVER_EXEC_FAILURE))”

The PrizmDoc MSO feature requires either Microsoft Office 2013 or 2016 to be installed in order to function properly. Based on the error, there is a Microsoft Office specific .dll file which is not registered properly.

The following process will re-register the .dll files and potentially resolve this issue (Note: for Step 2, this may vary depending on what directory you used to install Microsoft Office and the version of Office. You want to find the directory containing winword.exe):

1. Run Command Prompt as Admin.
2. Type cd C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office15 or cd C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\root\Office16
3. Run winword.exe -regserver.
4. Reboot the server.

If you don’t have the Prizm service set up to run on boot then make sure that Office applications are started by PrizmDoc, or from the command line, before being opened manually.

What ports need to be open on my server in order for PrizmDoc to function correctly?

PrizmDoc Server needs to be able to communicate internally over the following ports:

• 18000
• 18001
• 19000-19199

And externally over 18681 (18682 if clustered).

Prizm Application Services (PAS) needs to be able to communicate externally over the following ports:

• 3000

We have been noticing in our PrizmDoc environment that the viewer seems to take longer and longer to view documents over time. After a few days, we restart the Prizm services, and the Viewer processes faster. What might be the reason for this issue?

This issue is typically caused by a change in the core count of the server after PrizmDoc has been installed. Specifically, the non-interactive heap size will not automatically update if the core count is changed after PrizmDoc has been installed. We update this value during install.

If you have made changes to the core count of the server after installation, please see the following page for correlation between the non-interactive heap size and the CPU cores count:
https://help.accusoft.com/PrizmDoc/latest/HTML/registry-changes.html?highlight=heap%2C.

The reason the non-interactive heap size matters here is because it affects performance of the Office and HTML conversion services, and the symptom of insufficient non-interactive heap size is soffice.bin crashing.

With a fully-running PrizmDoc environment (version prior to v10.5), I’m noticing times where the system becomes unresponsive. That is, at some point, it no longer processes requests being made to the backend and I have to restart PrizmDoc in order to alleviate it. What could be causing this?

Prior to version 10.5, PrizmDoc used ProxyServer as its image processing system. Our Development Team eventually began seeing that the ProxyServer exhibited architectural problems that lead to a multitude of issues, such as unresponsiveness.

Starting in version 10.5, the Development Team created the Prizm Content Connect Imaging Service (PCCIS), which is far more stable.

To resolve this issue we suggest upgrading to the latest revision of PrizmDoc. Please see the product page for more information found here: https://www.accusoft.com/products/prizmdoc/overview/

How do I get Viewing Packages working in PrizmDoc?

Viewing Package Full Setup Instructions

We recommend pre-converting documents through a feature called viewing packages and it can be turned on in PAS Configuration.

viewingPackages – default: disabled – Enable Pre-Conversion Services and APIs, which allow you to pre-convert documents and cache on-demand document views in PAS, to improve the speed at which documents can be viewed, as well as reduce the processing time in PrizmDoc Server for repeat document views.

Enable Viewing Packages Feature

feature.viewingPackages: enabled

Since viewing packages also use a database you will need to create a database for PAS, configure a database, and run the scripts that are included to create the tables necessary for viewing packages to work.

Configuring Database

• Create a database for PAS
• Configure the database

Install Microsoft SQL Express

Note 1: If you have Visual Studio installed, you might have to uninstall the recent versions of C++ that are installed before MSSQL Express will successfully install.

Remove Visual Studio C++ Redistributables

Note 2: When installing, use all default install settings except for setting a custom database instance id and set mixed mode authentication so a custom password can be set.

Turn On TCP/IP For Database Instance

Step 1:

Step 2:

Set Port 1433 for TCP/IP Connection

Restart SQL Express Instance

Right-click and select "Restart" or double-click and select "Restart".

Install Microsoft SQL Management Studio

Install from this downloads page

Connect To Database Instance In Microsoft SQL Management Studio

Create A Database In Microsoft SQL Management Studio

PAS Config Database Settings

feature.viewingPackages: "enabled"

database.adapter: "sqlserver"
database.host: "localhost"
database.port: 1433
database.user: "sa"
database.password: "Password1"
database.database: "prizmdb"


# Default timeout for the duration of a viewing session

defaults.viewingSessionTimeout: "20m"

viewingPackagesData.storage: "database"
viewingPackagesProcesses.storage: "database"
viewingSessionsData.storage: "database"
viewingSessionsProcessesMetadata.storage: "database"

viewingPackagesArtifactsMetadata.storage: "database"
viewingPackagesArtifacts.storage: "filesystem"
viewingPackagesArtifacts.path: "%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\\Accusoft\\Prizm\\ViewingPackages"

Create the database tables

Restart PAS

Create Viewing Package

Get State of Viewing Package Creator Processing

Get Viewing Package Info With Document Id

Create Viewing Session From Viewing Package With Document Id

View Document In Viewing Package With The Created Viewing Session Id

For examples of creating viewing packages, click on the link below to see the various ways of using them:

Viewing Package Creators

Are there any specific applications or folders which should be excluded in order for PrizmDoc to work on a system with antivirus software?

As a suggestion, the first place to start would be your antivirus logs to ensure there are no entries specific to the following services:

• conhost.exe
• node.exe
• policyhost.exe
• PrizmApplicationServices.exe
• wmiprvse.exe

If there are, you can exclude those files or the following folders where PrizmDoc is installed by default. If you modified the folder name for PrizmDoc, ensure to include that name.

• C:\Prizm
• C:\ProgramData\Accusoft

Please consult your antivirus documentation for instructions on how to add exclusions.

Why am I seeing requests sent through pcc.ashx when they shouldn’t be?

The default option for the imageHandlerUrl is pcc.ashx so if, for instance, you misspelled imageHandlerUrl or in some other way do not have the setting properly implemented, you will see requests sent through pcc.ashx.

This has been seen when trying to set up the pas-service reverse proxy redirect for Prizm Application Services (PAS).

A sample implementation of this setting can be found in the viewer.js around line 288.

options.imageHandlerUrl = options.imageHandlerUrl || "../pcc.ashx";