Reports queuing in Running Status until Qlik NPrinting Engine restarted

[btaccent]

Hi,

We have around 10 tasks which are triggered at the same time. I notice that after few tasks completed successfully, one of the task stuck at 50%progress(in Running status) even after generating the excel reports in output folder. So this and rest of the tasks stays in the queue for hours until i restart the 'Qlik NPrinting Engine'.

Any suggestions, please

[Ray_Strother]

Hello,

The issue you are experiencing could be caused by a couple different factors:

1. How much CPU , RAM does your Nprinting server have? (Review performance link below)
2. If you don't run all 10 report together do you get the same issue or do they complete?
3. Have you confirmed that the report don't have any unsupported items ? ( review article links below)

Article links:

1. Performance

https://help.qlik.com/en-US/nprinting/February2024/Content/NPrinting/DeployingQVNprinting/Performanc...



2. Qlik NPrinting: Unsupported QlikView Document items, System Configurations and other limitations


https://community.qlik.com/t5/Official-Support-Articles/Qlik-NPrinting-Unsupported-QlikView-Document...


3. Qlik NPrinting and Qlik Sense Object Support and Limitations

https://community.qlik.com/t5/Official-Support-Articles/Qlik-NPrinting-and-Qlik-Sense-Object-Support...

[Frank_S]

@btaccent 

The behavior you are describing indicates that you likely  have unsupported items such as 'on open' triggers in your QVWs. If so, this will need to be rectified as per the article shared with you in the previous comment.

Furthermore, you will need a dedicated NPrinting server service account if you have not yet already done so. 

Please see.

Dedicated NPrinting Server & Engine Service Accoun... - Qlik Community - 1716056

Kind regards...

[Lech_Miszkiewicz]

Also are you using "Local" connection? If yes-then you are likely exhasuisting all NPrinting resources.

cheers

[btaccent]

Thanks everyone for the details.

We have upgraded the CPU of our nprinting 2021 server from 2 cores to 8 cores yesterday. So system configuration is now similar to our Nprinting v16 live server. After the CPU upgrade i see the tasks are completing successfully, however when I compare the time duration, Nprinting 2021 takes a lot of time compared to NP-16 sever. Eg- If NP-16 takes 40 seconds to complete a specific task, NP-2021 is taking 4-5 minutes.
The source for the task is a Qlikview application which is present in a dedicated Qlikview server.

Regarding unsupported objects, I see that a single sheet level trigger(SelectInField to select latest financial year) is present in various sheets of the qlikview document. Not sure if this is causing the performance issue, but the same qlikview application is used in NP-16 Sever and everything works smoothly.
Removing this sheet level trigger is a quick job, but there are many objects in the sheets used in the reports, so its time consuming to find the effected objects.

I see that NP-2021 does multi threading, so if it is opening multiple connections to source qlikview document inorder to run the tasks parallelly, then it seems the performance is degrading, instead of improving.

Based on this information, please suggest if you think its mainly performance related to architecture or it is due to unsupported objects like triggers(though they work fine in NP-16).

Sorry for the long message.
Thanks!

[Lech_Miszkiewicz · Accepted solution]

Hi @btaccent 

Removing ALL unsupported objects from app is critical. NPrinitng 16 and current versions of NPrinting are completely different tools, they work differently, have different architecture and have very clear requirements which MUST be met for it to work reliably. 

So if something is not supported it means you MUST remove it before moving on. Triggers normally can be replaced with filters if they are required so there is no issue with that. 

Source app you say is on dedicated QlikView server - what connection are you establishing to that app? Local or Server or Claster? 

cheers

Lech

[btaccent]

Thanks Lech.

The source QV app is connected in the same way as your screenshot. ie, Type: Server.

Sure, I think to resolve these unsupported objects, we need to go into each of the object and put set analysis filter etc that can replace the trigger.

These nprinting v16 excel reports were created years ago and in the report editor i see that not all tables pulled into the Table node are used in the excel Template. To figure out which tables are used or not used in the report, i have to manually click on field in each table to see if any reaction on the template sheet. Not sure if there is any quick way to identify used and unused objects in final report.

Thanks.

[Lech_Miszkiewicz]

Hi @btaccent 

We cannot advise on that without seeing the actual report. 

Sure, I think to resolve these unsupported objects, we need to go into each of the object and put set analysis filter etc that can replace the trigger.

Like I said before - if there was just a trigger setting persiod filter I dont know why would you have to do set analysis in each object since you could just apply nprinting filter which would apply same selection once.

If this is scenario of the different period selections depeneding on the object used as levels or pages then fair enough it may be hard do so.

but if it is down to table or image objects in NPrinting then those can have object filters applied too as last option.

Important:

NPrinting clears all selections and then tries to generate report so obviously you need to make sure that your object are super responsive and calculate quickly with selections cleared and as pro tip - minimize all your nprinting objects as then they will not consume time calculating when nprinting opens sheet to export an object - this seems obvious but even obvious things can be overlooked so maybe that will help you.

Also double check hidden sheets and objects in your app (if there are any) just to make sure those are not causing performacne issues.

cheers

[btaccent]

Thanks Lech.

Our Qlikview application has many sheets that contain unsupported objects. I am working on removing only those unsupported objects from sheets which contain objects used for nprinting reports.

Do you think I can keep the unsupported objects in QV app that are not used in the reports and reside in separate sheets?

Thanks

[Lech_Miszkiewicz]

Hi. 
no - for this to be supported you need to remove all unsupported objects from qvw. 

Regards