Yesterday August 23rd 2010, RES Software released the anticipated Service Release 2 for RES PowerFuse 2010. The focus of this release is primarily User Settings. Among other things, this release contains User Settings templates for some of the most common applications on the market. More further down.

For OS migration purposes, there is one feature you cannot afford to miss: A new option has been added, called “Capture targeted items once, then track further changes”.  Essentially what this option does is to flip the zero profile mode from Specified to Immediate, combined with a run-once flag.

To quote the releasenotes: “By using this mode it becomes very easy to use User Settings to migrate personal settings from one machine to another: With the Capture targeted items on application/session start/end mode it is easy to transfer all stored changes that were made on system A and track all new changes on system B with Track any setting changed by application immediately.”

The other key feature in this release are the User Settings templates. When you edit your managed applications, you now have a pleatora of standard applications for which PowerFuse now includes pre-canned user settings. In order to use them. To find the templates go to the User Settings part of a new managed application and select Targeted Items. When you hit the Add button, you will now see a Templates menu, which includes many standard apps. Below is a complete list of all the included templates and the versions of the applications they support:

• MS Access, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, Project, Publisher, Visio, Word, Office Common, Office Tools: Versions 2003, 2007 and 2010
• MS Frontpage 2003
• MS Groove 2007
• MS InfoPath: Versions 2003, 2007, Designer 2010, Filler 2010
• MS OneNote: 2007 and 2010
• MS SharePoint: Designer 2007, Designer 2010, WorkSpace 2010
• MS Internet Explorer: Versions 6..8
• MS Outlook Express (no specific versions)
• MSN Messenger: Versions 7.0 and 7.5
• Adobe Acrobat Professional: Versions 6..9
• Adobe Acrobat Reader: Versions 6..9
• AOL Instant messenger (no specific versions)
• Filezilla: Versions 2 and 3
• Mozilla Firefox: Versions 1..3
• Winzip: Versions 9, 12 and 14
  
• Yahoo Messenger: Versions 7.5 and 8

In addition to the above application specific user settings templates, you also have the ability to grab user settings for the control panel. This can however only be done using a global user setting, as found in the Composition | User settings node. The templates available here currently are:

• Display (XP only)
• Internet Options
• Keyboard Settings
• Mouse settings
• Regional and Language options
• All Control Panel settings

The above settings should make it much easier for you to get a proof-of-concept job going and to harness the full capabilities of RES PowerFuse Zero Profile technology. If your application is not listed here, do not despair though. You still have the ability to create custom User Settings and import them through buildingblocks. This leaves you two options. Either you can check in the Forums if somebody has or would like to share some user settings they’ve created. I’d probably go look in the BuildingBlock board. Second you can always create your own. Using the sampling mode to figure out what an unknown application is doing is a very valuable tool as the log of the sampling mode can be converted directly into user settings.

In addition to the above described key features, there are a bunch of usefull new registry tweaks and enhancements and about 53 fixes. To get all the details, see the releasenotes which you can download below.

Click here to download the SR2 releasenotes:

Last minute update: I was informed by my good friend Mr. De Koster over at CDG UK that an problem with the license count, using the Workspace Designer seems also to have been solved in SR2. Alledgedly, under some circumstances the workspace designer would not allow you to analyze the number of .DTS files than you actually had licenses for. This has been fixed.

This friday, April 24th, RES Software released Service Release 5 for PowerFuse 2008. This is a major overhaul which includes many new enhancements, and fixes alot of issues.

The update can be downloaded from the RES portal. As usual there 4 different downloads to consider: Either the full installer for new installations, or the PowerPacks, either the unattended or the manual version. Besides that, there is also the stand-alone Console installer, if you need it. Remember to have your credentials for the portal handy when you use these links.

The releasenotes for SR5 are available to review here:  

Important note. This Service Release includes several new registry settings and environment variables. The reference documents maintained maintained on this site are being updated accordingly:

RG005 – PowerFuse Tips & Tricks

RG006 – Variables, Tags and Functions (more info is being added as we learn about the new variables)

Okay, this is some old updates which have been sitting in the queue for a while without getting published. Nevertheless, there’s some good info in here on how to upgrade Wisdom.

March 27th, RES Software released an update package for RES Wisdom. The Service Release 1 package for Wisdom 2009 is available for download from the RES Portal. The update can be downloaded here (this requires you to have a valid SA logon).  So, what’s new in this update you might ask? There’s a good deal of fixes:

Have a look here for more info:  

If you havent’ tried upgrading Wisdom before, don’t worry. It’s piece of cake (really, it is! :) Essentially, you fire up your console and point to the update package, which is automagically uploaded and distributed thereafter. All the agents, dispatchers and consoles will upgrade themselves without you having to do anything.

1) You download the .WUP file (Yes, WUP is short for Wisdom Update Pack :). Start your Wisdom console and go to Infrastructure | Datastore | Setup | Components.

2) Here you use the button, and it’s pretty much a next, next finish job from there.

The mere thought of having a production system upgrade itself on a massive parallel scale,  may scare the  living daylights out of you. If it does, it just proves you’re still sane! :) Seriously, Wisdom is one of the most stabile platforms out there and it handles itself very safe and sanitary. One of the very little known facts of the product is that you can actually downgrade to an earlier update package version. So, if something isn’t working right, it’s possible to do a rollback. The version range where this is possible has yet to be determined, but we will ammend this post as soon as this has been clarified.

Happy upgrading

/TRG

By Max Ranzau

Febuary 19th 2009,  RES Software released an update of the Service Release 4 for PowerFuse 2008. It is now version 8.0.4.5. This update contains many important fixes. At the bottom of this posting, there is a link to download the releasenotes. There are also several cool enhancements to this update. These are mainly some interesting registry keys which you can use to tweak PowerFuse with. Here is an overview of these new settings, quoting from the releasenotes:

Configure cache timer interval. It is now possible to configure the cache timer interval. This interval determines how often the cache checks for changes in the database or for new transactions. The default for this interval is 5 seconds. This interval can be changed by setting the following registry key:

Key   : HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESoftwareRESPowerFuse

Value : CacheTimerInterval (REG_SZ)

Data  : A value between 5 and 60 (seconds)

Warning: Changing the default of 5 seconds should only be done in special cases, such as a heavy load on the database server. 

Disable screensaver when RES PowerFuse Workspace Extender is active: When a RES PowerFuse session is started from a workstation with the RES PowerFuse Workspace Extender or the RES Subscriber Agent, the RES PowerFuse session will enable a Screensaver by default. It is now possible to change this behavior, by setting the following registry string value in either HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE or HKEY_CURRENT_USER

Key   : SOFTWARERESPowerFuse

Value : NoAgentScreensaver (REG_SZ)

Data  : Yes

Force LogOff of disconnected sessions after timeout: It is now possible to force a logoff of disconnected sessions after a specified timeout expires. This can be enabled by setting the following registry keys in either HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE or HKEY_CURRENT_USER

Key   : SoftwareRESPowerFuse

Value : ForceLogoffEnabled (REG_SZ)

  Data  : Yes or No (to enable/disable the mechanism)

Value : ForceLogoffTimeout or ForceLogoffTimeoutOnDisconnect (REG_SZ)

  Data: value in minutes

Value : ForceLogoffOnDisconnect

  Data  : Yes or No

If you are already using the ForceLogoffOnIdle mechanism, the timeout in ForceLogoffTimeout can be used to use the same timeout for both mechanisms, or you can use a different timeout to disconnect by setting a value in ForceLogoffTimeoutOnDisconnect.

Silent refresh of RES PowerFuse sessions: A silent refresh of RES PowerFuse will not show a splash screen during a refresh of the Workspace Manager, which in some cases is less intrusive for the user. A silent refresh will only be used when the refresh is a result of a display change, a USB device change or a reconnect of a disconnected session. “Silent refresh” can be enabled by setting the following registry key in either HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE or HKEY_CURRENT_USER:

Key   : SOFTWARERESPowerFuse

Value : SilentRefresh (REG_SZ)

Data  : Yes or No 

The release notes for the 8.0.4.5 update can be downloaded here:

This friday RES released Service Release 4 for PowerFuse, which fixes a whole bunch of nice stuff. It’s been a bit quiet on the blog this week. Plenty of stuff to do, and even less time to do it in. Nevertheless, stay tuned for some nice upcomming technotes, buildingblocks etc.

In the meantime, have a look at the releasenotes for SR4 here: