Installation Wizard

Updating from Connect versions predating 2019.1

In order to update PlanetPress Connect to 2021.2 from Connect versions prior to 2019.1 it is first necessary to update the Connect License.
For details on how to upgrade the Connect License see Users of Connect prior to 2019.1

Starting the PlanetPress Connect installer

The PlanetPress Connect installer may be supplied as an ISO image or on a DVD.

  • If an ISO image, you can choose between the following, depending upon your Operating System and the choices available:

    1. Burn the ISO image onto a DVD

    2. Un-zip the contents to a folder (keeping the internal folder structure intact)

    3. Mount the ISO image from within Windows Explorer

  • If on a DVD, either insert the DVD and initiate the installation from there or copy the contents to a folder on the target computer (keeping the folder structure intact)

Navigate to the PlanetPress_Connect_Setup_x64.exe and double-click on it. After a short pause the Setup Wizard will appear as a guide through the installation steps.

Note that PlanetPress Connect requires prior installation of Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5. For a full list of other prerequisites, see Installation prerequisites.

Running the Installation with extra logging

The installer can be run with enhanced logging options, if needed.
To do so, run the PlanetPress_Connect_Setup_x64.exe from the command line with one of the following command line options:

  • PlanetPress_Connect_Setup_x64.exe --verbose

    This adds extra debugging style logging to the installation process.

  • PlanetPress_Connect_Setup_x64.exe --trace

    This adds full trace style logging to the installation process. The log file this produces will be very large, as this option logs everything.

Selecting the required components

After clicking the Next button, the component selection page appears, where the different components of PlanetPress Connect can be selected for installation. Currently, the following are available:

  • PlanetPress Connect Designer: The Designer module (see The Designer) can be installed standalone (with no other installed modules) on as many machines as you like. It does not require a license to run as a standalone designer tool . This allows for any number of people to use the Designer for creating jobs, but without production capabilities such as automation and commingling.

  • PlanetPress Connect Server: The Server back-end that provides Connect production capabilities such as production content creation (print output, HTML content for emails and web pages), automation, commingling and picking.

  • MySQL: A supplied MySQL database used by PlanetPress Connect.
    The database is used for referencing temporary Connect files and for sorting temporarily extracted data, and similar.
    A pre-existing MySQL or Microsoft SQL server (referred to as an external database, in this documentation) could be used instead, for the same purposes.
    The external database could reside on the same computer or on a separate server.
    If you wish to make use of an external database, please make sure the MySQL option is not selected.

    If you chose not to install the supplied MySQL database, and instead opt for using a pre-existing (External) database then you yourself must ensure that the External database is accessible to Connect.

    Objectif Lune Inc. will take no responsibility for setting up database connections to any but the supplied MySQL database.

    See Database Considerations for more information about setting up external databases.

  • Installation Path: This is the location where modules are to be installed.

    To cater for MySQL requirements, the installation path cannot contain any non ASCII characters (such as Asian language Unicode characters). Nor can it contain characters that Windows disallows in filenames (such as '?', ''>' or trailing spaces).
    If an invalid character is entered, the Installation Path entry box will turn red and a description of the error will be displayed in the information area.


The installer can also calculate how much disk space is required for installing the selected components as well as how much space is available:

  • Disk space required: Displays the amount of space required on the disk by the selected components.

  • Disk space available on drive: Displays the amount of space available for installation on the drive currently in the Installation Path.

  • Recalculate disk space: Click to re-check available disk space. This is useful if space has been made available for the installation while the installer was open.

  • Source repository location: Displays the path where the installation files are located. This can be a local drive, installation media, or a network path.

End User License Agreement

The next page displays the  , which needs to be read and accepted before clicking Next.

Configuring Supplied Database Connection

The Default Database Configuration page appears if the supplied MySQL module was selected for installation in the Product Selection screen. It defines the administrative password for the MySQL server as well as which port it uses for communication.

The installer will automatically configure the Connect Server to use the supplied password and port.

  • MySQL user 'root' Password: Enter the password for the 'root', or administration account, for the MySQL server. The password must be at least 8 characters long and contain at least one of each of the following:

    • a lower case character (a, b, c ... )

    • an upper case character (A, B, C ...)

    • a numeric digit (1, 2, 3 ...)

    • a punctuation character  (@, $, ~ ...)

    For example: "This1s@K"

    When updating from an earlier Connect version, the appropriate MySQL password must be entered or the update will fail.

    If the password is subsequently forgotten, then MySQL must be uninstalled and its database deleted from disk before attempting to reinstall.

  • Confirm MySQL user 'root' Password: Re-enter to confirm the password. Both passwords must match for installation to continue.

  • TCP/IP Port Number: The port on which MySQL will expect, and respond to, requests. A check is run to confirm whether the specified TCP\IP Port Number is available on the local machine. If it is already being used by another service (generally, an existing MySQL installation), the number is highlighted in red and a warning message is displayed at the top of the dialog.

    The MySQL database controlled by the OLConnect_MySQL service communicates through port 3306 by default.

  • Allow MySQL Server to accept non-local TCP connections checkbox: Click to enable external access to the MySQL server.

    This option is required if MySQL Server will need to be accessed from any other machine.

    It will also be required if the MySQL database is on a separate machine to this PlanetPress Connect installation.

    This option may represent a security risk if the machine is open to the internet.

    We heavily recommended that your firewall is set to block access to port 3306 from external requests.

Configuring External Database Connection

The Database Connection page appears if the supplied MySQL module was not selected for installation. This page is for setting up the connection to the existing External database.

  • Database Configuration: Select the database type to use for thePlanetPress Connect Engine. Currently only MySQL and Microsoft SQL Server are supported.

  • Administrator Username: Enter the user account of a user with database administrative rights. Administrative rights are required since tables will need to be created/modified/dropped in the database.
    If accessing a database on a different machine, the server must also be able to accept non-local TCP connections, and the user account must also be configured to accept remote connection. For example, the "root" MySQL user entered as root@localhost is not allowed to connect from any other machine than the one where MySQL is installed.

  • Database Instance Name: Enter an existing Microsoft SQL Server's instance name.
    This option only applies to existing Microsoft SQL Server instances, and not for MySQL.
  • TCP/IP Port Number: Enter the port on which the database server expects connections.
    For MySQL, this is 3306 by default.
    For Microsoft SQL Server it is 1433 by default.
  • Server Schema/Table: Enter the name of the MySQL database into which the tables will be created. The Connect standard name is "objectiflune".
  • Administrator Username: Enter the user account of a user with database administrative rights. Administrative rights are required since tables will need to be created/modified/dropped in the database.

    If accessing a database on a different machine, the server must also be able to accept non-local TCP connections, and the user account must also be configured to accept remote connection. For example, the "root" MySQL user entered as root@localhost is not allowed to connect from any other machine than the one where MySQL is installed.
  • Administrator Password: Enter the password for the above user account. For MySQL the appropriate password must be entered or the Connect installation will fail.
  • Use Encrypted SSL Connection checkbox: Check to enable encrypted connections to MySQL (v5.6.43, v5.7.25, v8.0.x or later) databases using SSL.

    The secure connection to MySQL is for the "objectiflune" schema.
    It is not in the scope of the Connect installer to configure the MySQL database Server to accept SSL connections. This must be done prior to the installation of Connect.

    By default, the connection will not verify the server certificate (verifyServerCertificate=false), which would allow connecting to a server using a self-signed certificate. If such a certificate is required, then this setting can be changed after installation within the Database Connection preferences (which can be accessed from either the Server Configuration Settings tool, or Preferences window).
  • Test Connection button: Click to verify that the information provide into previous fields is valid by connecting to the database.
    This test does not check whether the remote user has READ and WRITE permissions to the tables under the objectiflune schema. It is solely a test of database connectivity.

PlanetPress Connect Server Configuration

The Server Configuration page is where the Connect Server component is configured.

Connect Server settings

The Connect Server settings will be available if Connect Server rather than Connect Server Extension was selected for installation. The options available are as follows:

  • Run Server as: Defines the machine username and password that the Connect Server module's service uses.

    The user account must have access rights to all local and network resources required for production, as well as Windows "Log on as a Service" rights.

    The user account selection must also be retained for future use, as the Security and Users Settings dialog can only ever be executed through the user account specified here.

    • Username: The account that the service uses to login. If the machine is on a domain, use the format domain\username.
      This account must be an existing Windows profile with local administrator rights.
    • Password: The password associated with the selected user.
    • Validate user button: Click to verify that the entered username and password combination is correct and that the service is able to login.
      This button must be clicked and the user validated before the Next button becomes available.
  • Default OL Connect Server authentication: Defines the username and password to connect to the Connect Server.
    • Username: Enter the username for connection to OL Connect Server. The default username for new installations is olc-user.
    • Password: Enter the password to be associated with the selected user.
    • Confirm Password: Re-enter the password, to confirm password selection.

    Note that prior to PlanetPress Connect version 2020.2, only one user account could be configured on a Connect Server. The default username was ol-admin and the default password was secret. When updating to version 2020.2 this user account is not changed. It is however highly recommended to modify the default password at least.

Click Next to display the Selection Confirmation page.

Selection Confirmation

This page confirms the installation selections made.

Click Next to start the installation itself. This process can take several minutes.

Completing the installation

This screen describes a summary of the components that have been installed.

  • Configure Update Check checkbox: This option is enabled by default. It causes the Product Update Manager to run after the installation is complete. This allows configuring PlanetPress Connect to regularly check for entitled updates.
    Note: this checkbox may not be available in the event that an issue was encountered during the installation.

  • Show Log...: If an issue was encountered during the installation, click this button to obtain details. This information can then be provided to Objectif Lune for troubleshooting.

  • When ready, click the Finish button to close the installation wizard, and initialize the Product Update Manager, if it was selected.

The Product Update Manager

If the Configure Update Check option has been selected, a message will be displayed after clicking “Finish” in the setup. The message details the information that needs to be sent back to Objectif Lune Inc. in order to determine when/if the software needs updating.

Click “Yes” to install or open the Product Update Manager where the frequency with which the updates can be checked and a proxy server (if required) can be specified.

If the Product Update Manager was already installed by another Objectif Lune Inc. application, it will be updated to the latest version and will retain the settings previously specified.

Select the desired options and then click OK to query the server and obtain a list of any updates that are available for your software.

  • Note that the Product Update Manager can also be called from the “Objectif Lune Update Manager” option in the Start menu.

  • It can be uninstalled via Control Panel | Programs | Programs and Features.

Product Activation

After installation, it is necessary to activate the software. See Activating a License for more information.

Before activating the software, please wait 5 minutes for the database to initialize. If the software is activated and the services rebooted too quickly, the database can become corrupted and require a re-installation.