Introduction
As of November 20, 2020, Ephesoft Transact 2020.1.03 is available. The following details the improvements and fixes available in this update.
Availability
Ephesoft Transact 2020.1.03 is available as a full installer and can be installed directly in the case of a fresh installation. For a direct upgrade to Ephesoft Transact 2020.1.03, your system must be running 2020.1 or above. If your system is running a release prior to 2020.1, you will need to perform an intermediate upgrade before upgrading to 2020.1.03.
To obtain the 2020.1.03 Service Pack, visit the Customer Support Portal. Contact Ephesoft Support for credentials.
Installation
Ephesoft Transact 2020.1.03 is available on both Windows and Linux. Refer to Transact 2020.1.03 for links to the installation guides.
Licensing
License requests can be submitted through the Licenses page on the Customer Support Portal.
You will need a new license in the following scenarios:
- If you are upgrading from a version prior to 4.5.0.0, you will need a new license for 2020.1.03.
- If you would like to purchase the ID extraction plugin, you will need a new license for ID extraction. Please contact your Sales Representative and ask for “Quickscreen”.
Refer to Licensing Requirements for more information.
Feature Enhancements
The following enhancements were added to the existing Ephesoft Transact features below.
Logging Enhancements
Added additional logging in Transact which displays the following:
- All Transact details — Logged each time the Transact server starts or restarts.
- License expiration — Logged every day starting 30 days before license expiration.
- Remaining number of images warning — Logged when you have used a certain percentage of your allotted images. The default threshold is 90% but can be configured in the dcma-core.properties file.
For more information on these enhancements, refer to License Logging.
Pickup Service Performance Improvements
This release introduces a refactored version of the pickup service mechanism that further enhances changes made in the previous release. Core improvements include:
- Increased performance
- Reduced resource utilization for UI nodes
- Easier configuration and fewer configuration issues
- Support for flexible node-based prioritization
Increased Performance
Coordination between nodes occurs more intelligently in 2020.1.03. To accomplish this, the pickup enhancement includes:
- Elimination of cron-based waits
- New event-based triggers for processing nodes
- New event-based listeners
- Addition of an intelligent distribution system for the node assigned to the PICKUP_SERVICE
Reduced Resource Utilization for UI Nodes
A new mechanism has been introduced so that UI nodes can be configured to not perform any workflow pickup execution, eliminating the associated inefficiencies.
For information on recommended settings, refer to UI Servers.
Reduced Configuration Issues
You are no longer required to configure each node to take advantage of the refactored pickup mechanism. Along with the elimination of waits, the following properties are no longer needed with this change:
- application.cluster.mode
- activity.job.interval.time
- activity.thread.wait.time
Support for Flexible Node-Based Prioritization
2020.1.03 supports flexible node-based prioritization. This allows for partial overlap between the batch instance (BI) priority. For example, for three nodes with BI priorities ranging from 1-20 the solution to achieve this would be:
| Clustered Environment Makeup | BI Priority Assignment | Processing_capacity |
| Node 1 | 1-10 | 7 |
| Node 2 | 11-20 | 7 |
| Node 3 | 1-20 | 7 |
The overall capacity of this solution:
| Priority Range | Total Allocated Processing_capacity in Transact Cluster |
| 1-10 | 14 |
| 11-20 | 14 |
| 1-20 | 21 |
For more information on the pickup service, refer to Pickup Service.
ImageMagick Performance Improvements
This release includes improvements to ImageMagick, resulting in improved image quality compared to the previous release and mitigating security vulnerabilities.
This includes the following changes:
- Upgraded ImageMagick from 7.0.8 to 7.0.10.
- Added code to prevent performance decrease based on Group4 compression.
Software Updates
For a full list of software updates and third-party component upgrades included in this release, refer to Software Updates 2020.1.03.
Known Issues and Workarounds
For a full list of known issues and workarounds discovered in this release, refer to Known Issues and Workarounds 2020.1.03.