Crystal Reports Printing issues with Labels and Dymo Printers

[former_member959984]

We are a healthcare facility that utilizes Crystal Reports as the reporting tool for our clinical application.  Crystal is tied to the clinical application and gets it's parameters through the GUI of the clinical app.  We have developed a label in Crystal for a DYMO printer that uses the Shipping label 30256.  We have 3 models of Dymo printers 330, 400, and 450.  Our users logon to the clinical application using Citrix v12.1.44.1 and generate the label through their Citrix session to a screen preview for confirmation then send it to the printer.

When I developed the label on my local workstation (windows XP) it performs as expected, but when it is pushed out to a Cirtix server and is run it may or may not render according to my initial design.  From random machines running a Citrix session it will sometimes render the label correctly and other times it will not. This is consistent for the workstation, in other words if a workstation started with the issue it will continue to have the same issue.  I have attached the  RPT file along with the correct rendering and the incorrect rendering. Looking forward to any advice that can be provided.

outpatient_label_bl.rpt.txt.zip

Correct outpatient_label_bl.pdf.txt.zip

incorrect outpatient_label_bl.pdf.txt.zip

[Former Member]

Hi,

Check this out. There isn't much that you can do in this situation but try this:

Our current SDK (V8) doesn't include any FoxPro samples but our previous SDK (v7.8) contains a sample that you can use with current version of DYMO Label software version 8.2.

You can download SDK version 7.8 from the link below. The FoxPro sample is installed by default in the following folder: C:\Program Files\DYMO Label\DLS_SDK\High Level COM\Visual FoxPro

http://download.dymo.com/Download%20Drivers/Software%20for%20DYMO%20LabelWriter/Downloads/13/WIN_DLS...

You can find more information about the DYMO Label SDK in the link below:

http://sites.dymo.com/DeveloperProgram/Pages/LW_SDK_Windows.aspx

Please let me know if you have any other questions.

Hope this helps.

[former_member292966]

Hi,

The report has the printer and papersize hardcoded, this is by design if you do not use the default printer and papersize.  If the print engine finds the correct printer that's saved in the report then everything is good. 

If it doesn't find the printer it will load the default for that user.  It looks like the report is loading the default label for the Dymo printer.  For labels, I usually suggest having your own printer that will send the labels to the label printer.  This way you're guaranteed it will print properly.  It's a pain but it works. 

What happens if you press the print button in the report viewer?  Do you have the ability to select the printer and papersource?  Does that work properly?  I suggest this so we will know if the printer is properly configured in that session.  If it defaults back to the mailing label then I would have a closer look at the printer and it's settings. 

The driver for all 3 models should be the same.  Make sure there is only one version of the printer driver installed on the Citrix server. 

Good luck,

Brian

[former_member959984]

Thanks for the response Brian,

As stated in my first email we are in the health services industry.  This label will be used for pharmacy dispensing. The information services department I work for provides service to the whole region we live in.  So this label is centralized to the application/database but will be run across many facilities through Citrix to various Dymo printers at each location.  I am personally leaning towards a driver issue between the Dymo printers (330,400,450) and the stored session on the citrix server that is holding the wrong print drivers settings.  As you stated the printer, and paper are stored in the rpt which I have done but it appears to be flaky between workstations and printers.  From the clinical application you can set the default printer to whatever printer you have installed on your PC over-riding the default for the workstation.  From the report viewer in the Clinical Application there is a print icon but this will not allow you to change the settings for paper or papersource.  There is also the ability to export the document to excel, pdf, rich text, word, text.............I haven't tried exporting to PDF or other source then drive it from there but this would not make the end users happy. (after thought) This will not work anyways as it renders before the export.

Thanks

Bernie 

Message was edited by: Bernie Lozar >edit included further detail to help with the issue

[former_member11696]

Hi Bernie,

There have been a few issues with Citrix. I suggest you log a case with them with the Printer Problems. I believe you are on the right track with a permission or caching issue within the Citrix environment.

One other thing to be aware of, in the application the coder MUST get the correct paper Size ENUM, Now it's not clear if you are using an application and if so if you wrote it but here is some info for whoever did write it:

The local Printers are retrieved using this:

System.Drawing.Printing.PrintDocument pDoc = new System.Drawing.Printing.PrintDocument();

The Paper size ENUM can be a different value depending on the order the custom paper sizes were entered, example on PC 1 the paper size ENUM is 269, the same printer and paper size is installed on PC 2 but that custom paper size ENUM is 272. Now when CR goes to print the wrong size is used and this causes some offsets to happen...

There is a MS kbase article on how to retrieve the System ENUM and pass that to the hosting application.

But, as I said, you should check Citrix's forum for any known Printing issues and work with their developers on resolving.

Don