Environment considerations

This page is intended to provide technical information about the environment in which PlanetPress Workflow is intended to run.

Terminal Services

PlanetPress Workflow does not support Terminal Services environment as possible under Windows 2000, 2003 and 2008. This is to say, if Terminal Services is installed on the server where PlanetPress Workflow is located, unexpected behaviors may occur and will not be supported by our company. Furthermore, using PlanetPress Workflow in a Terminal Service environment is probably an infringement of our End-User License Agreement.

Terminal Services may also be referred to as Terminal Server or Remote Administration Mode (Windows Server 2003 and 2008).

Single-User Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) (where only one person can use RDP at a time) is supported for PlanetPress Workflow version 6.2 and higher, however it is only supported in Windows XP or Windows 2003. While later versions of Windows may not cause issues when accessing PlanetPress Workflow through RDP, these combinations are no longer tested and may not be functional.

Virtual environments

PlanetPress Workflow supports the following virtual environments:

  • VMWare Environments. This includes VMWare Player, VMWare Workstation as well as VMWare ESX Server.
  • VMWare VMotion. This means the virtual machine hosting PlanetPress Workflow can be automatically moved from one ESX server to another in a clustered installation.
  • Microsoft Hyper-V/Azure infrastructure environments.
  • Amazon Web Services (AWS)

PlanetPress Workflow is not officially supported on any other virtual machines such as Virtual PC, Parallels, Bochs, Xen, etc. While running PlanetPress Workflow on these virtual machines may work fine (they are properly detected by PlanetPress Suite 7.5.1 and higher) we have not tested them and cannot offer support for them.

The PlanetPress Workflow End-User License Agreement (EULA) specifies that a PlanetPress Workflow software license may only be used on a single virtual or physical PC at a time. While copying a virtual machine for backup purposes is acceptable, running two instances of the same machine, using the same serial number, is strictly prohibited.

About PlanetPress Suite

In previous versions of PlanetPress Suite, not all virtual environments were supported:

  • PlanetPress Suite 6 and higher support VMWare Environment.
  • PlanetPress Suite 7.1 and higher also support VMotion.
  • PlanetPress Suite 7.5.1 and higher started supporting Hyper-V virtualization in addition to the previous environments.

32-bit or 64-bit?

PlanetPress Suite version 7.1.3 and higher, as well as PlanetPress Connect, support a 64-bit operating system. However, PlanetPress Workflow remains 32-bits in this environment, which means that for all intents and purposes there is no difference between those two environments as far as PlanetPress Workflow is concerned.

Antivirus considerations

PlanetPress Workflow generates a very large amount of temporary data on your hard disk, especially when manipulating or creating PDF files. This can sometimes cause issues when any other software is trying to access the temporary files at the same time as PlanetPress Workflow and its components are trying to read, write, create or delete those files.

If you experience these issues you may want to temporarily disable your antivirus "live", "daily" or "deep" scans for the following folders and processes:

Disabling any antivirus scanning permanently on any folder or program is not recommended, and Objectif Lune cannot be held reliable for any consequence of disabling your antivirus or whitelisting the folders or executables listed here, or any other change in your antivirus protection setup!

  • On Windows 7/2008:
    • C:\ProgramData\Objectif Lune\PlanetPress Workflow 8\
    • C:\Users\planetpress\AppData\Local\Temp\ (where planetpress is the user under which Workflow is configured)

    • C:\Users\planetpress\Connect (where planetpress is the user under which Workflow is configured)

  • On all systems:
    • C:\Windows\Temp\
  • Processes:
    • PPAlambic.exe
    • ServerService.exe
    • PPWatchService.exe
    • PPImageService.exe
    • MessengerService.exe
C:\Windows\Temp\ is used by multiple software which may cause risks on your computer. However, PlanetPress Workflow may use this folder as temporary storage, especially in the case of creating PDF files. We do not recommend disabling scan on this folder, unless you notice performance issues when generating PDFs, and then only as a test.

Backup considerations

For similar reasons, it is important to know that backup software can also access files while copying them to a remote backup location, so you should make sure that no PlanetPress Workflow process is working during your backups.

Microsoft Office compatibility

The Microsoft Office 2010 line of products, other than Pro and Enterprise, has not been certified for use with PlanetPress Workflow. Some of its products may not be compatible with the connectors included in the Suite.