Teamcenter Dispatcher Installation – Async workflow & primary NX translations (bonus)

Objective: To provide instructions for installing Dispatcher server to manage Asynchronous services for
workflow. Some bonus steps are also provided to help define the commonly used NX translations for JT
and CGM/PDF.

Prerequisites

 Administrative (dba) privileges

 NX installation (NX 10 for this example)
 4-tier environment (web server + pool/server manager)
 Tc10.1 and up

Dispatcher services & client installation

1. To start you will be installing Dispatcher services. For this use case we will be using Tc11.2.x. The
features are located under “Enterprise Knowledge Foundation”.

Be sure to select the items highlighted above as we will be using all of them.
Teamcenter Dispatcher Installation – Async workflow & primary NX translations (bonus)

2. If necessary, make sure the original media location is selected.

Teamcenter Dispatcher Installation – Async workflow & primary NX translations (bonus)

3. Provide the OS installing user credentials.

Teamcenter Dispatcher Installation – Async workflow & primary NX translations (bonus)

4. Verify the TC_ROOT & TC_DATA directories.

Teamcenter Dispatcher Installation – Async workflow & primary NX translations (bonus)

5. Verify the license ports & hosts.

Teamcenter Dispatcher Installation – Async workflow & primary NX translations (bonus)

6. Provide the Teamcenter credentials for infodba.

Teamcenter Dispatcher Installation – Async workflow & primary NX translations (bonus)

7. Verify you have the Scheduler, Module and Admin client selected for install. Unless there is a
port conflict please use the existing ports.
Teamcenter Dispatcher Installation – Async workflow & primary NX translations (bonus)

8. For the logging level, I prefer to set to TRACE for testing. This can later be changed to INFO for
routine translations. Also, for testing I prefer to run Dispatcher services as a console (stand-
alone console for Scheduler, Module and Dispatcher Client).
Teamcenter Dispatcher Installation – Async workflow & primary NX translations (bonus)

9. Verify you have the NxToPVDirect, NxToCgmDirect and AsyncService translation solutions
selected.
Teamcenter Dispatcher Installation – Async workflow & primary NX translations (bonus)

10. Verify the NX installation path (UGII_BASE_DIR) is correct in addition to the NX license server.
Teamcenter Dispatcher Installation – Async workflow & primary NX translations (bonus)

11. For the Disatcher Client enter the dcproxy password.

Teamcenter Dispatcher Installation – Async workflow & primary NX translations (bonus)

12. Verify the location of the logs directory and accept the remaining default settings.
Teamcenter Dispatcher Installation – Async workflow & primary NX translations (bonus)

13. Teamcenter should already be installed so select “Use current FCC”, which should be the path to
TC_ROOT\tccs.
Teamcenter Dispatcher Installation – Async workflow & primary NX translations (bonus)

14. Verify the FSC parameters are correct.

Teamcenter Dispatcher Installation – Async workflow & primary NX translations (bonus)

15. Verify the 4-tier url and connection are correct.

Teamcenter Dispatcher Installation – Async workflow & primary NX translations (bonus)

16. Choose Start to begin the install.

Review: You should have the following Dispatcher directory structure after a successful install.
Teamcenter Dispatcher Installation – Async workflow & primary NX translations (bonus)

Post-installation tasks

There are a few post-installation tasks required to complete the configuration.

17. In the Organization application define the SOA URL for the site that will be using the Dispatcher
AsyncService.

18. Set the following site workflow site preferences as shown.

EPM_task_execution_mode=CONFIGURABLE

EPM_enable_apply_template_changes=OPTIONAL

19. Define the following stub & ACL in Access Manager.

Teamcenter Dispatcher Installation – Async workflow & primary NX translations (bonus)

20. Add the login credentials for the async_invoker by editing the
DR\Module\Translators\asyncservice\asyncservice.bat script as follows:

Was:

"%TC_ROOT%\bin\async_invoker.exe" %1 %2 %3 %4 %5

Now:

"%TC_ROOT%\bin\async_invoker.exe" %1 %2 %3 %4 %5 -u=dcproxy -p=dcproxy -g=dba

Or

"%TC_ROOT%\bin\async_invoker.exe" %1 %2 %3 %4 %5 -u=dcproxy -pf=<path to .pwf file>

21. Let’s also adjust the NxToCgmDirect translator to use .pdf versus the default .cgm format. This is
very handy! For this we will edit the DR\Module\Translators\nxtocgmdirect\nxtocgmdirect.bat
script.

Was:

"%UGII_BASE_DIR%\Ugmanager\export_ugdwgimages.exe" -all -text=text %*

Now:

"%UGII_BASE_DIR%\Ugmanager\export_ugdwgimages.exe" -all -text=text -pdf -nocgm %*

Validation: (Live Demo)

 Workflow async processing

 NX to JT (UGMASTER)
 NX to PDF (UGPART)

Upon successful translation the admin console should report success as shown below.
Teamcenter Dispatcher Installation – Async workflow & primary NX translations (bonus)

Debugging

For debugging the following debugging can be enabled to troubleshoot issues for the scheduler, module
or dispatcher client.

1. Delete all of your old translation requests

2. Delete old/failed translation requests from your staging directory

3. Shut down all dispatcher services and set the debug and follow the steps below to enable
debugging for dispatcher.

4. Restart all dispatcher services and duplicate the problem as noted below, then capture the
requested data.

*****
To enable Dispatcher debugging please modify the log4j.xml files for the DispatcherClient, Module and
Scheduler as follows:

<DISP_INST_DIR>\DispatcherClient\conf\log4j.xml
<DISP_INST_DIR>\Module\conf\log4j.xml
<DISP_INST_DIR>\Scheduler\conf\log4j.xml

Change all logging level values from "INFO" to "TRACE" as follows:

Was: <level value="INFO"/>

Now: <level value="TRACE"/>

There should be two entries in each file noted above. Ensure all are set to "TRACE".

Also, update disp_root\DispatcherClient\bin\tsenv.bat with the following journal settings:

set TC_KEEP_SYSTEM_LOG=TRUE
set TC_Journalling=ON
set TC_TRACEBACK=ON
set TC_journaling=ON
set TC_POM_JOURNALLING=N
set TC_Journal_Modules=ALL
set TC_SQL_DEBUG=BJTP
set TC_JOURNAL=MODULES

Now, do the following:

1. Stop all Dispatcher services.

2. Start all Dispatcher services. This will activate Dispatcher tracing & journalling.

3. Duplicate the problem and capture the following:

Teamcenter Dispatcher Installation – Async workflow & primary NX translations (bonus)

a) <DISP_INST_DIR>\Logs directory
b) <DISP_INST_DIR>\Stage\DC\<folder translation job that failed>
c) Copy of \DispatcherClient\conf\service.properties
d) Copy of \Module\conf\translator.xml
e) Copy of site preference .xml file
f) Copy of dispatcher tcserver .syslog
g) Copy of dispatcher tcserver .jnl

Note1: Do not capture all job folders in the \Stage\DC\ directory. Only the subfolder for the job that
failed.

Note2: The file sizes for the dispatcher client .syslog & .jnl will be larger because journalling is enabled.
This will help you distinguish them from regular rich client syslog.

Joseph Ringling