NPrinting 16

[Wilson_Webb]

Hi All,

I need some help. For the life of me, NPrinting 16 is not running tasks on a daily basis. On a good day, it runs 30% of tasks. I am currently running the NPrinting service with my account. It was not a problem in the past. I have to run schedules from the NSQ but this is very time consuming and very manual. So there is no problem opening connections and running the schedules. It works well from this but not on auto.

[Frank_S]

First, as a partner I would urge that you move your customers to a supported version of NPrinting as NP 16 has been out of support since March 31. 2020.

Please check the migration playbook link below which contains deprecation information about NP 16.

https://community.qlik.com/t5/Knowledge-Base/NPrinting-16-to-NPrinting-19-Migration-Playbook/ta-p/17...

In the meantime, I recommend that you check if the NP service account is dedicated and not share with any other NP server or QV server. The following applies to NP 16 as well.

https://community.qlik.com/t5/Support-Knowledge-Base/Dedicated-NPrinting-Server-amp-Engine-Service-A...

And ensure there are no unsupported items in your QVWs

https://community.qlik.com/t5/Support-Knowledge-Base/Qlik-NPrinting-Unsupported-QlikView-Document-it...

These are generally the causes of the behavior you are reporting.

Kind regards..

[Lech_Miszkiewicz]

I will add to it that poor design of QVW and NPrinting report can contribute to that as well.

The other thing we are not knowing is if you are actually running technically supported configuration? Which version of NP 16 and which version of QV Server and QV desktop. Other things to consider are: use of QVP connection instead of local, schedule planning etc...

I am surprised you are posting question re this topic so late (given how old tool is and since when it is not even supported). If it is running only 30% of the time why didn't you come earlier with this?

[yassinemhadhbi]

I want to comment on your "urge" and "advice" so the NPrinting custumer move NPrinting 17+

In my case the funcionality gap between these two version is a thick wall in the migration

All of our Projects and reports are based on the "Reload Task" that no longer exists in the latests versions an in my case with many reports i can't run these QVW in my QlikView server to avoid performance issues during the day.

So as a client who is admire nprinting and what it can do , without the Reload Task ,  i ensure you that 70% of the NPrinting Clients who uses NPrinting 16 won't be able to migrate

[yassinemhadhbi]

Have you tried to desactive some tasks ? and see what happenes 

Cause i know that Nprinting 16 is mono thread ( it canno't executes more than one task in a time ) so when there's too much tasks in the same time they will wait for each other even though they are not realted or not in the same project

[Ruggero_Piccoli]

Dear @yassinemhadhbi ,

If the reload task on the QlikView server causes performance issues maybe your QlikView server is undersized compared to its workload. So I suggest to evaluate this.

We developed the Reload Task on early versions of QlikView NPrinting because in those years (2010, 2011...) there were many QlikView customers that did not have a QlikView server but only clients. As best practice now we suggest to do the data reload on the server.

Best Regards,

Ruggero

[Ruggero_Piccoli]

Hi @Wilson_Webb ,

When you post a community question please remember to add the label with the correct version you are using. Thanks. Latest available of the 16 series is 16.10 so, if you are using an older one, I suggest you to upgrade. 

We have really few information about what can cause your issue but I agree on the suggestions from @Lech_Miszkiewicz and @Frank_S . I would like also to suggest you to:

• open the Windows interactive service while the QlikView NPrinting task is running. You can see what is happening on QlikView Desktop and correct. Maybe you have macros on the .QVW, or a interactive message with a description of the issue, a license problem...
• attach the logs with the error messages to the community post
• attach screenshots with the error on the community post
• you did not specify how you are scheduling the QlikView NPrinting 16 tasks. Are you using the Windows service? Or are you keeping the client in scheduled mode?

In general the QlikView NPrinting Windows service works well so I think the issue will be solved when all documented requirements will be met. Instead, if it is a bug, it will never be fixed because the 16 is out of maintainance.

Best Regards,

Ruggero

[yassinemhadhbi]

I think a ¨Server with 512 GO of RAM and 56 CPU is not an undersized server when only 50% of the RAM is used

[Ruggero_Piccoli]

Hi,

Great! So, I'm sorry, but I had not understood you sentence "many reports i can't run these QVW in my QlikView server to avoid performance issues during the day" in your previous post. 

If the QlikView server is not undersized I suggest you to evaluate if you can apply the best practice and move the QlikView documents reload tasks to the QlikView server instead than on clients (QlikView NPrinting 16 Reload Task can do data reloads only by using QlikView Desktop). Then you can plan the migration to Qlik NPrinting 17+ (latest GA is February 2021 but May 2021 technical preview is already out) that still has few gap features compare with the 16 but has also many advantages. For example the multi-thread and multi-engines that in a complex environment helps to increase the reports generation speed. 

Please also note that the workload of reports generation depends also on how you create the templates and the source QVWs. Optimizing them can help to reduce the resources requests. For example we suggest to create QVWs specific for reporting, load only the data you need to create the reports and create only the charts needed by the reports. 

You can also suggest or vote for new feature development in the ideation area of the community at https://community.qlik.com/t5/Labels-page/bd-p/Category_Labels?categoryId=qlik-ideas&corenode=boards...

Best Regards,

Ruggero

[Wilson_Webb · Accepted solution]

Hi All,

Thank you very much. I have resolved this issue. I removed the service account by stopping the service, not under Windows services but under the NPrinting Scheduler console. I then removed the account, added a new account, tested the privileges, and then started the service the same way. 

Reports are now going out.

Thank you.