Occasionally Report Print Preview Not Opening - COMPLETE Status

Hello,

Several of our users are experiencing an issue where print previews suddenly stop popping up on their screens. Yet when they open the System Monitor and click on the Reports tab and find their print job and preview it, it opens just fine with no error. The report also has a COMPLETE status in History - so NO ERROR. The only way we have found to fix this is to close out of Epicor and re-open it and print previews start working again. Could someone please tell me what might be happening to cause this?

Would appreciate any help anyone can provide!
Thank ya kindly,
-Heather :slight_smile:

On your Company Maintenance record(s), what is your Work station method set to?

In an earlier thread:

buried in the list of things that Support does to a customer database when it is loaded is this Work Station method. We always set it to Machine Name + Domain User from Default.

Why do we change it? What does this setting do?
This setting is a “unique-ifier” for our print preview process. When the system monitor polls for print previews that are complete, it uses that setting to determine if a request should be brought back to that workstation. The key to having print previews only appear where they are supposed to be is to have a Work station method that will be always unique for every user that uses the system in your environment. If you have an RDS/Citrix server, the default option of Default will likely result in the occasional situation where userA submits report1 for print preview and userB will see it instead as Default uses the Windows session ID of the user that submitted the request :expressionless:

So, everyone should change their Work Station method to some value that will be guaranteed to always be unique for every user–for almost everyone, Machine Name + Domain User meets that requirement.

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Bringing this one up from the past. We’ve got the same issue for several users. Our workstation method in Company Config is set to Machine Name + Domain User. With EpiCare support over the last few weeks (Case CS0002648677), we’ve unsuccessfully tried:

  1. Restarting Epicor, Clearing Client Cache, Restarting again.
  2. Deleted personalizations for that UI
  3. Deleting the C:\ProgramData\Epicor\Your_Application_Servername-808 folders
  4. 64 bit mode (shortcut is C:\Epicor\Client\Epicor64.exe “/Config=ERP102700.sysconfig”)
  5. Different PDF viewer (our default was Foxit, tried Edge)
  6. Different computer, cloned from the same image (all our MES workstations are interchangeable).

In troubleshooting, the only solution that works is breaking the unique user / computer combination. If we log in with a different user ID on the affected person’s client, or have the affected person log in to a different machine with their user ID, it works.

The issues we’re seeing:

  1. MES employee print previews the SOPL from a common workstation. Print preview doesn’t pop-up. Closes Epicor and restarts it, then the print preview pdf pops up on the restart.
  2. CS0002648677 - > 10.2.700.6 Print Preview Doesn’t Always Open- one user: Customer Service user print previews something, doesn’t pop-up, but shows “complete” in the SysMon. Restarting Epicor will have the report pop-up automatically once the client opens.
  3. CS0002643849 - A/P Payment Entry Closes Epicor: AP employee clicks print for the A/P Payment Checks, which closes Epicor without any warning. Restarts Epicor, and then it works properly. Testing with 64 bit got one company work work, but then the issue moved to a different company! Weird.

Support is asking us to create new user ID’s - I’m OK with testing that (and assume it will work, since having a peer try the same print preview with their different login), but it’s not a long term solution and doesn’t address the root cause. We have hundreds of users and this seems to be getting worse… Creating duplicate users every week will get messy very quickly.

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I’m sorry you are having such a terrible time with this issue. I completely agree, that does not seem like a good solution to have to re-create hundreds of user accounts.

Have you by chance tried any of the other options in the Work Station Method list? Like Machine Name + User ID or even just Domain User? You’d think Machine Name + Domain User would be best but maybe there is an issue with that for you guys?

Have you also tried closing out of Epicor, renaming the following user.config file on the User’s computer, and then re-opening Epicor to see if having the Epicor Client re-create this file might help?

C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Epicor\Epicor.exe_StrongName_blahblahblah\3.1.600.0(latest version)\user.config

I’m not exactly sure what this user.config file is used for but this is what it looks like:

Maybe there is something corrupt in this file for your users? We occassionally run into some strange issues and re-naming this file and having the Epicor client re-create it fixes those issues.

I’ll keep trying to think of anything else to try…

Heather - Did you ever find a resolution as we just upgraded our Pilot environment to 2021.1.7 on 7/19 and we have users experiencing a similar printing issue. We click submit and the print is submitted but it does not show in the Task Agent nor does it print. After multiple submits we can most of the time get a print.

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Hi Debbie,

Are you saying that the report isn’t showing up in the System Monitor at all? So you can’t go under the Reports tab and click the Print Preview button to see the report?

We are on E10.1.600 and our solution to stop Print Previews from showing up for users other than the original person who submitted it was to go into Company Maintenance and change the Print Options to Machine Name + Domain User.

Even after that change we would occasionally have an issue where the Print Preview wouldn’t pop up at all but if we went into the System Monitor - Reports Tab we could see the report and run the Print Preview successfully from there. That wasn’t anything that either clicking on Options - Clear Client Cache or closing out of Epicor and Renaming\Deleting the C:\ProgramData\Epicor\Your_Application_Servername-808 folder (Epicor will re-create this folder when it is opened up again) wouldn’t fix…

image

Have you tried the Clear Client Cache or re-naming\deleting that EpicorAppServer-808 folder?

I’m not sure what @askulte has figured out in his environment? I wonder if deleting and re-creating your Task Agent might make a difference or creating a new Task Agent to help handle print jobs? Just throwing out other thoughts… Has Epicor given you anything to try?

When we have this issue, nothing shows in System Monitor…it is like the report doesn’t exist.

Our Company Maintenance is set to Machine Name + Domain User

I did try renaming the user.config file inside of the Your_Application_Servername-808 folder as well. I have not tried deleting or renaming this folder

I have a case open with Epicor and their support team is looking at the issue now.

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I just tried deleting the entire folder Epicor.exe_StrongName_kcicbw2ezbsx1kjcvvn1lpqzo5tzwlqi which for us is under C:\Users\dkg556\AppData\Local\Epicor and the issue seems to be resolved. We are doing further testing to make sure the issue doesn’t come back :crossed_fingers:

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Oh awesome! I hope that takes care of the problem for you! :partying_face:

The corruption that can happen with this C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Epicor\Epicor.exe_StrongName_blahblahblah\3.1.600.0(latest version)\user.config file has caused us quite a few mysterious issues in the past and if we rename\delete it those strange issues are fixed and go away. Since it is a file that can be removed and re-created upon opening Epicor I’ve questioned and always wondered why this file couldn’t be moved to the C:\ProgramData\Epicor\Your_Application_Servername-808 folder location…(probably not an easy thing to do, maybe they could instead put some sort of a pointer from the AppData location to a user.config file in the ProgramData location?)…that way a Clear Client Cache would “in theory” take care of any corruption of that file too… :woman_shrugging:

Hello all,

I just want to know if you found it the solution, right now I have the same situation on my company.

I will appreciate any comment.