Global remote output setup

It is possible to print on other networks, that are protected by a firewall. For that you need a remote client in the remote network, that is able to access the InterformNG server.

To do that you first need to enable this feature globally in InterformNG2 as described below.

The main InterformNG2 installation can use a remote client in two ways:

The mostly used way is to install one or multiple remote clients on remote server, which will sign on to the main InterformNG2 server to allow access to the remote networks from the main InterformNG2 installation.
It is also possible to configure the InterformNG2 installation to be a remote client itself. That can e.g. be considered if you are running InterformNG2 in the cloud and you want an extra InterformNG2 installation locally, which normally acts as a remote client, but you also want this local installation to work as a fall back option if the cloud server should fail or you are unable to connect to the cloud server.

In the Global settings of InterformNG2 you need to decide which one of these options you want to use. You cannot use both. If you want to change from one option to the other, then you will need to restart the InterformNG2 service in order to activate the change.

Both options are described below.

Use InterformNG2 with one or multiple remote clients

The setup of the remote client is covered here.

In order to setup InterformNG2, you first need to sign in as described here.

Then you click Remote output on the left below Workflow:

- and then you will see this:

Output Notifications

By default, the remote output client will use a poll method to check for available outputs. In this mode the client will poll for outputs every 30 seconds.

In notification mode, the remote client will not be polling, but instead wait for notifications from the main application that new output is available, the process it immediately. I.e. less delay on output than the poll method. This mode also puts less load on the main application, as it does not need to process constant poll requests.

To enable notification mode on the main application, flip the switch "Enable remote output socket-based notification".

The notification system requires a constant socket connection from the client to the main application. On the settings you need to specify the port on which the client will connect, as well as the keystore for encrypted communication. The default "internal:remoteoutput.jks" means that the embedded keystore is used. This can be replaced with the file system path of another keystore.

Note that no customer data is sent in the notifications, so it is not strictly necessary to replace the keystore.

Sends notifications from the remote output server to the remote output client. The notification includes the ID of the output item as well as its associated metadata.

The actual notification technology is configurable, so it could be a message queue like Amazon SQS or a permanently open socket connection between client and server.

Notice, that any change is activated only after a restart of the InterformNG2 service.

After a restart of the service you should consider to check the system log to verify, that the keystore and matching password could be used.

The configuration of the client is covered in the article, Remote clients.

Use InterformNG2 as a remote client

You can configure InterformNG2 itself to be a remote client for another InterformNG2 server - while still running InterformNG2 locally. If you want to do that, then you can however not use other remote clients from the InterformNG2 installation.

The configuration of the remote client part of InterformNG2 is setup via the global system settings. In the global settings the local remote client is activated under Workflow and Remote Output on the left:

Then you will see this:

In the section above you need to decide if InterformNG2 should be allowed to use other remote clients (like above) or if the local InterformNG2 installation should be setup as a remote client.

If you want both, then you can consider to install the remote client on the local machine along with InterformNG2.

If you disable the option 'Enable remote output support', then you can enable the option 'Act as a remote output client' as below:

This is the configuration of the remote client within InterformNG2. The settings are described in the section, Configure a remote client.