Print quality through Epicor 10

Epicor ERP 10
1

We are having some issues with print quality when printing directly out of SSRS Report Builder versus printing out of Epicor 10.

When printing a custom label direct from SSRS Report Builder to a Zebra GX430t printer, the quality is very good. When printing the label out of Epicor, there is a slight degradation in quality which is affecting the rating of a GS1-DataMatrix UDI code on the label from an A rating in Report Builder to a B rating when printed out of Epicor.

Page orientation and size options seem to be correct. In both cases the label is oriented and printing within the correct margins. The printer is set up as 300DPI in Epicor which is correct. After messing around with several parameters in the printer driver options I have had no luck with improving the label print quality.

Any ideas? Thank you in advance for your assistance.

Edited to add: I have gone through all the printer settings and confirmed that dithering is set to “None”, darkness is 20, speed is 4, etc (in a nutshell, all settings are optimal).

2

Is it being used as a system printer, or as client printer?

3

This is a Client printer.

4

If you choose Preview instead of Print, do you see reduced quality?

5

Preview looks perfect, we see no reduction in quality. It’s almost as if it’s compressing and stretching the image when it actually prints.

6

If you send the preview to the printer does it print correctly or get distorted?

Could be a margins issue.

7

It gets distorted from the preview, and gets a C on the score instead of a B. Still playing with the settings.

8

Amy if you figure this out I would be thrilled. We have the same issue and I have tried so many different things to figure it out. No idea what to do. I have tried to ask some Epicor folk, but I didn’t get any direct answers. If we print from any other application the label looks great. When going through Epicor, it gets distorted with small lines through some of the lettering. It looks scrunched in some cases.

9

Not good that you didn’t get any responses from Epicor. I am trying that avenue too. I’ll keep you posted (and maybe someone here has already figured it out). I set margins to 0 all around and it makes no difference at all. It worked fine in Crystal / Epicor 9 - but SSRS / Epicor 10 no dice. We noticed the distortion / lines too. Odd that it still does that even though Dithering is set to “No”. Also, the UDI code test scores with a C and the lowest score indicates that the UDI mark is not a perfect square.

10

What driver do you have installed for the printer?

I have seen some issues with specific drivers and ways around similar issues. I have had better success with the Zebra drivers. One item to check is on the printer properties > Printer Settings. At the bottom check the Always use Drivers settings checkbox.

11

I work with @utaylor and i agree. We tried everything to fix this issue but nothing seemed to work. We even reached out to Zebra and in the end they said it had something to do with Epicor. The Epicor folk didn’t know what to say. We only have Zebra printers for label printing but it only happened when we printed to Zebra printers. Not our other Xerox printers. We tried different drivers, resolutions, margins, images, shares, direct printing, network printing, server/client, standing on our head. nothing worked.

12

FWIW, that’s why we use bartender for all of our labels. SSRS and Zebra are tough to get working.

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14

What Version are you running? Epicor uses a third party PDF Printing component and there have been a few updates to that since ERP 10 was introduced.

If you generate the PDF and Preview and then Print from the PDF viewer, how does the quality compare with having the document printed by Epicor? Preview and Print uses the PDF Viewer to generate the printed output. Send to Printer from Epicor uses the third party component to generate the printed output.

Instead of PDF, use EMF format when submitting the report to the Printer - how does that compare with the PDF format?

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15

Just thought I’d let you guys know we’ve been able to get the report to come out clear via our custom code and pass with an A from Epicor.

It all revolved around setting the AttachmentType and SSRSRenderFormat to “EMF” instead of “PDF”

See below:

...
bqRptDS.BAQReportParam[0].AttachmentType = "EMF";
bqRptDS.BAQReportParam[0].ReportCurrencyCode = "USD";
bqRptDS.BAQReportParam[0].ReportCultureCode = "en-US";
bqRptDS.BAQReportParam[0].SSRSRenderFormat = "EMF";
...

Also, from the BAQ Report Test Form we weren’t able to force all the correct parameters to RptPageSettings and RptPrinterSettings, but in our custom code we do.

Still haven’t figured out quite how to do that directly from the BAQ Report Test Form, and it would be nice if we could.

Example settings below:
Custom Code:

bqRptDS.BAQReportParam[0].RptPageSettings = Color=False,Landscape=False,Margins=[Left=0 Right=0 Top=0 Bottom=0],PaperSize=[Kind="4x1.5" Height=150 Width=400],PaperSource=[SourceName="unknown" Kind="Custom"],PrinterResolution=[X=300 Y=300]
bqRptDS.BAQReportParam[0].RptPrinterSettings = PrinterName="xxx_xxx_xxx_xxx",Copies=2,Collate=True,Duplex=Simplex,FromPage=0,ToPage=0

BAQ Report Test Form (obtained via trace):

RptPageSettings = Color=False,Landscape=False,PaperSize=[Kind="Custom" PaperName="Custom" Height=150 Width=400],PaperSource=[SourceName="Manual feed" Kind="Manual"],PrinterResolution=[Kind="Custom" X=300 Y=300]
RptPrinterSettings = PrinterName="xxx_xxx_xxx_xxx",Copies=2,Collate=False,Duplex=Simplex,FromPage=1,ToPage=0

The first noticeable difference between the custom code and the BAQ Report Test Form I picked up here is the Kind option for PaperSize. I have found that it must be set to a stock size available to the printer, otherwise who knows what will render. As I’ve seen without this, when you print preview or print in EMF format it distorts and stretches the label so that it looks like it’s trying to make it a 4"x6" label.

The other differences (PaperSource SourceName and Kind) I don’t think matter much, but they work with “unknown” and “Custom” in our custom code so I left them as is.

Suffice to say, I don’t know how to “force” the correct parameters to be set via the BAQ Report Test Form. Has anyone been able to do this?

One other thing - from SSRS, as I mentioned earlier, we are able to print clearly too. However, in the interest of comparing Apples to Apples here, is there some way to print in EMF format from SSRS Developer Studio directly so we know we are doing the same thing there we are doing in our customization?

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