Netpresenter Newsfeed Server Manual

Table of Contents Netpresenter Newsfeed Server Manual .................................................................................................. 1 1. Introduction ............................................................................................................................................. 3 2.   System Requirements .......................................................................................................................... 4 3.   Installation ................................................................................................................................................ 5 3.1. Getting started ........................................................................................................................................ 5 3.2. Global settings of a job ........................................................................................................................ 6 3.3.   Adding new Web images ................................................................................................................... 7 3.4.   Adding new Web pages ...................................................................................................................... 8 3.4.1.  Getting Started ............................................................................................................................... 8 3.4.2.  Setting Browser Size ..................................................................................................................... 9 3.4.3.  Setting wait time ............................................................................................................................ 9 3.4.4.  Cutting the Web page image ..................................................................................................10 3.4.5. Authentication settings and proxy settings ......................................................................10 3.5.   Adding a new channel .......................................................................................................................11 3.6.   Adding new RSS feeds .......................................................................................................................11 3.7.   Making your own template channels ..........................................................................................14 3.7.1.  Using XSLT files .............................................................................................................................14 3.8.   Adding new Excel document ..........................................................................................................16 3.8.1.  Excel 2007 file types ....................................................................................................................16 3.9.   Adding a job ..........................................................................................................................................17 3.10. Deleting a job .......................................................................................................................................17 3.11. Editing a job ..........................................................................................................................................17 3.12. Showing a job ......................................................................................................................................18 3.13. Loading and saving jobs ..................................................................................................................18 3.14. Newsfeed Server .................................................................................................................................19 3.15. Options window ..................................................................................................................................19 4.    De-installation ......................................................................................................................................22 5.    Known issues ........................................................................................................................................23 6.    Contact information ..........................................................................................................................24 

1. Introduction

Netpresenter Newsfeed Server helps to regularly update the contents of Netpresenter channels automatically. Netpresenter Newsfeed Server:

• Is often used to automatically display content from your CMS system, any publicly available RSS feed or other XML file through the Netpresenter screensaver. To give an example, Netpresenter channels can be automatically updated with the latest news from CNN or Yahoo News, without you having to take action;

• Also makes HTML pages available for display in the Netpresenter screensaver. HTML pages will be converted into compact screenshot image files. These image files can then be used in Netpresenter presentations;

• Can also periodically download web images from the internet;

• Version 2.0 and later versions can extract charts and tables from Excel files and save them as an image;

• Caches the XML files, internet pages and web images to a disk in the local network, so network load remains minimal. The individual Players will download from the local network, NOT from the internet;

• Netpresenter Newsfeed Server uses the efficient “Http Conditional Get” protocol for

retrieving newsfeeds from Http Servers. The effect is that (on servers that support this protocol) feeds will only be downloaded when they have changed;

• Version 2.1 and later versions resume downloads as soon as a lost connection is restored.

2. System Requirements

1. Windows 2000 (SP4), Windows 2000 Server (SP4), XP (SP2), Windows 2003 Server (SP1) or higher;

2. Microsoft .NET 2.0 framework installed. If not installed yet, the installer will assist you with this. (The installation of this framework requires Windows Installer 3.0 technology. If not available, the installer will assist you with this as well);

3. Connection to the internet/intranet; 4. To demonstrate the resulting channels, you need the Netpresenter Desktop Player

or Screensaver. Preferably Player version 5.1 or newer; 5. Internet Explorer if you want to use the HTML feature; 6. Excel 2007 if you want to use the Excel feature.

3. Installation

3.1. Getting started

Just double-click on the .msi file to start the installation and follow the instructions. If you have an older version installed, you have to uninstall this first.

Netpresenter Newsfeed Server will run “in the background” as a service, so that it updates continuously, whether someone is logged in or not. You can view what is going on and enter jobs with a little client application by clicking on the icon marked “Configure Netpresenter Newsfeed Server” (Start, All Programs, Netpresenter). After installation, the system will be configured to sample the latest newsfeed items and some additional standard jobs. This is to demonstrate Netpresenter Newsfeed Server’s capabilities:

The configure utility shown above shows 7 jobs:

1) 4 RSS feeds are being monitored and converted to a Netpresenter channel so that the latest news items appear on the screensavers automatically. (Right click the line and select “show in Netpresenter Desktop Player” to see the result);

2) An image of the BBC news website is being monitored and cached so that it may be used in one of your slides;

3) An image from the L.A. Avenue website is being cached so that it may be used in one of your slides;

4) A Netpresenter channel will be replicated. This may be useful for very large organizations (tens of thousands of Netpresenter Players) to off load the central server where messages targeting the whole company will be published to.

Every job has 5 columns:

1) Url: The Url of the web page, RSS Feed, Channel or image/excel file; 2) Last Checked: The last time that the service checked for updates; 3) Last Updated: The last time that content of the job has been updated; 4) Polling Interval: Time interval that the service waits before checking for a new

update. The minimum is 15 seconds;

5) Result: Gives an error message when a job has failed. Netpresenter Newsfeed Server can be stopped/ started with the Stop and Start buttons. In the status bar you see the status of Netpresenter Newsfeed Server and the update status.

3.2. Global settings of a job

There are a few settings that are the same for all jobs: • Url: the Url of the web page, RSS Feed, Channel or image/excel file. This url can be a

http, https, ftp or unc location;

• Polling Interval: The time between 2 updates If you never want to update, "Disable Polling" should be checked. The job will be executed once;

• Published File: The location where you can find the published file;

• Authentication Settings: Servers can be restricted to normal users. To grant access to this server, you need to set a username and password. This can be done with the authentication settings;

Enable Authentication: Enables/disables authentication User Name: name that gives access to the server Password: password of the user Enable Mask:

On: The password is not visible Off: The password is visible

• Proxy Settings: Here you can configure the proxy server;

Use Proxy: enables/disables the proxy server Address: address of the proxy server. If no address is filled in, the service uses the default proxy settings (= Internet Explorer settings) Port: port of the proxy server Enable authentication: Enables/disables the authentication of the proxy server User Name: name that gives access to the proxy server Password: password of the user Enable Mask:

On: The password is not visible Off: The password is visible

• Status: Gives status information ("Unable to connect to the remote server");

• Test button: Here you can test if your settings are valid.

If you click the "test"-button, the program checks if the url can be reached. If this is successful, you see the message "Successfully Loaded". If not successful, you see an error message.

!!! - Please note that the authentication and proxy settings may not be visible. To show these settings, enable them in the Options window.

3.3. Adding new Web images

There are 4 ways to add a Web image: 1) Drag and drop an image from a HTML page from your browser to the overview

table in Netpresenter Newsfeed Server; 2) Drag and drop the link from a HTML page with an image from your browser to the

overview table in Netpresenter Newsfeed Server; 3) Right click on an empty row -> Click "New" -> Click "Web Image"; 4) Via the menu: "File" -> "New" -> "Web Image".

A dialog screen appears automatically, suggesting a filename for the image file. You can change the properties in the dialog screen.

With the cutting rectangle settings, you can select a part of an image.

Note that when you change the extension of the published file, the bitmap will be converted (for example from a .png bitmap to a .jpg image).

With the preview button, you can generate a preview to see what the result will look like.

3.4. Adding new Web pages

3.4.1. Getting Started

There are 3 ways to add a Web page: 1) Drag and drop the link from a Web page (called HTML Page in the system) from

your browser to the overview table in Netpresenter Newsfeed Server; 2) Right click on an empty row -> Click "New" -> Click "HTML Page"; 3) Via the menu: "File" -> "New" -> "HTML Page".

A dialog appears automatically, suggesting a filename for the Web page image file and suggesting width and height for the image to grab (in pixels). You may change the filename, extension, image size etc.

3.4.2. Setting Browser Size

The browser size is the size of the browser window where the HTML page will be rendered in. The HTML page can be bigger than this size. So actually the browser size is the minimum size of the image.

Please enable "Resize Image To Browser Size" if you want the image to have the browser size. If the image is bigger it will be scaled and centered. If you want the image to have the rendering size, please disable "Resize Image To Browser Size".

Browser Size (800 by 600) Original Size (994 by 1745)

3.4.3. Setting wait time

A snapshot of the web page is taken as soon as the web page is loaded. This means that animations that are started after the web page is loaded, will not be included in the snapshot. With the wait time you can set the time the server has to wait after the web page is loaded before taking a snapshot.

Wait Time = 0 sec. Wait Time = 1 sec.

3.4.4. Cutting the Web page image

If you wish not to display the complete page, but rather just a part of it, set the checkbox marked “Cut the image”, enter pixel values for start position, width and height in the Cutting Rectangle property. These values default save a full screen image starting at coordinates (0, 0).

With the preview button, you can generate a preview to see what the result will look like.

You can always change these properties later by selecting the corresponding line in the overview table, press the right mouse button and select edit.

3.4.5. Authentication settings and proxy settings

Authentication settings and proxy settings are currently not available for Web pages.

3.5. Adding a new channel

There are 2 ways to add a channel: 1) Right click on an empty row -> Click "New" -> Click "Channel". 2) Via the menu: "File" -> "New" -> "Channel".

A dialog screen appears automatically, suggesting a filename for the channel file. You may change the url, filename and polling time.

You can change these properties later by selecting the corresponding line in the overview table, press the right mouse button and select Edit.

3.6. Adding new RSS feeds

There are 3 ways to add an RSS feed: 1) Drag and drop the feed from the web site that publishes it. 2) Right click on an empty row -> Click "New" -> Click "RSS Feed". 3) Via the menu: "File" -> "New" -> "RSS Feed".

To give an example:

• Go to http://www.bbc.co.uk; • Select one of the orange icons typically used for Rss; • Drop this onto the list of feeds in the Newsfeed Server configuration utility; • The configuration utility will then popup a little dialog where it proposes the

transform file (or template channel) to be used, the polling interval and a name for the published channel:

• Optionally change the proposed values such as the polling interval, or browse to another template channel.

BBC News news page with RSS News Feed icon (bottom right corner)

Please note that 2 types of template channels are supported:

1. Netpresenter channels that contain special keywords which will be replaced by contents from the XML file;

2. XSLT files (XSLT 1.0 is a XML derived standard especially suited for converting XML files to something else).

After pressing OK, the new feed will be added to the list and the Newsfeed server will start monitoring it and generate a channel.

If you add the published channel to the channel the Netpresenter Desktop Players or Screensavers in your company are subscribed to, everyone will be updated automatically.

Beware that the service should have Write Access rights to the location for the published channel. If the channel is to be stored on a network drive, you should probably make the service logon as a user with the proper rights instead of running it under the Local System account. Logon as user is also often required to be able to pass company proxy servers when retrieving information from the internet.

Sample of slide with news items from the Yahoo newsfeed

3.7. Making your own template channels

Most often, Netpresenter will make a template channel for you. In these instances, please skip the information in this chapter.

3.7.1. Using XSLT files XSLT is a XML derived standard especially suited for converting XML files into something else. Sample XSLTs for displaying RSS feeds in the RSS 2.0 format, as well as the RDF format, will be installed with Netpresenter Newsfeed Server. Any XML specialist (with a little knowledge of the Netpresenter channel format) should be able to adapt the sample style sheet to support other XML input formats. These style sheets may be used with 3rd party XSLT transform utilities as well, but note that extensions are used that are hosted by the Netpresenter Newsfeed Server. These extensions are used to:

- extract text from descriptions encoded in HTML - extract url's from images that are also encoded in HTML

In addition to a simple transformation of Newsfeeds, the Netpresenter Newsfeed server also performs:

- Optimization for network bandwidth, i.e. all url's to images will be replaced by references to files on the local server and these files will be cached. This has the advantage that all individual desktop PCs running Netpresenter do not need to access the internet individually;

- Optimization for Text wrap. Every image in a feed will have a unique width:height ratio. The Newsfeed server wraps the text in the description around the image.

When transforming News Feeds, the Netpresenter Server will generate a new slide for each news item, up to a maximum that can be configured. Whenever a user clicks on one of the titles in the menu, the corresponding slide will be displayed immediately.

3.8. Adding new Excel document

There are 2 ways to add an Excel document: 1) Right click on an empty row -> Click "New" -> Click "Excel". 2) Via the menu: "File" -> "New" -> "Excel".

A dialog screen appears automatically, suggesting a filename for the image file. You may change the filename, extension, polling interval, etc.

In the options group, you can select the sheet or chart and the range that must be displayed. The range is ignored if you select a chart.

If you wish not to display the complete page, but rather just a part of it, set the checkbox marked “Cut the image”, enter pixel values for start position, width and height in the Cutting Rectangle property.

If you press the preview button, you can see the resulting image.

You can always change these properties later by selecting the corresponding line in the overview table, press the right mouse button and select edit.

3.8.1. Excel 2007 file types Excel 2007 uses the extension .xlsx as default. Most servers don't have this extension configured as a mime type. This means the file will not be downloaded by Netpresenter Newsfeed Server and in the Result column an error message appears.

3.9. Adding a job

There are 3 ways to add a job: 1) Drag and drop. 2) Right click on an empty row -> Click "New" -> Choose the type of job.

3) Via the menu: "File" -> "New" -> Choose the type of job.

3.10. Deleting a job

Option 1: 1. Click on the job; 2. Hit the delete key; 3. Confirm the delete.

Option 2:

1. Right click on the job; 2. Select the "delete" menu item; 3. Confirm the delete.

3.11. Editing a job

Right click on the job. Select the "Edit" menu item.

3.12. Showing a job

Right click on the job. Select the "Show" menu item. The “Show” menu item will be disabled when there is no content generated.

3.13. Loading and saving jobs

The jobs and their configurations can be saved to a file. This file can be loaded again in the utility. To save the jobs:

1. Click File -> Save As; 2. A dialog appears; 3. Choose the location and the name of the file; 4. Click OK.

To load the jobs

1. Click File -> Open; 2. A dialog appears; 3. Select the file; 4. Click OK.

3.14. Newsfeed Server

The default installation directory for The Netpresenter Newsfeed Server is C:\Program Files\Netpresenter\Newsfeed Server. The Netpresenter Newsfeed Server is a Windows Service. It can be controlled by the Windows Service Control Manager:

Alternatively, the configuration utility described above also has buttons to start or stop the Netpresenter Newsfeed Server.

3.15. Options window

The configuration items can be changed with the configuration utility. Just press the Options menu item:

• Publication Directory: Default directory where the content is published;

• Cache directory: directory where the server stores the cached feeds and the files it needs to keep track of where and when a file has been stored;

• Installation directory: By default this data will be stored in the installation directory, the reason being that the location of the user profile directory of a service depends on under what user credentials the service will be started and other factors. Feel free to move it to another location;

• Configuration File: file that contains all the jobs and their configuration;

• Default Template: template that is used for the RSS Feeds by default;

• Location of Aggregate Channel: Place where the aggregate channel is published.

• Display Options: o Display Authentication Settings: Shows/hides the authentication settings in

the Job Dialog; o Display Proxy Settings: Shows/hides the proxy settings in the Job Dialog.

Part of its configuration is stored in NpSvcs.exe.config:

In case of problems you may want to set the value of the “logging” key to true and check the log file. Feel free to alter its location. The configuration utility has a similar configuration file:

4. De-installation

Netpresenter Newsfeed Server can be de-installed using the Control Panel’s application applet:

5. Known issues

• Anti-spyware software The installer attempts to install the service for automatic start. Anti-spyware software may complain about this;

• Firewall Netpresenter Newsfeed Server needs to access the internet or your local network to access the XML feeds and/or web pages. A firewall monitoring outbound traffic installed on your client computer may complain about this. This may happen while installing since the installer attempts to start the service.

6. Contact information

US Headquarters Netpresenter USA 410 Park Avenue 15th Floor, Suite 1530 New York NY 10022 USA Phone +1 (212) 710-5908 Fax +1 (212) 710-5914

European Headquarters Netpresenter B.V. Peter Treckpoelstraat 4 NL-6191 VK Beek (L) The Netherlands Tel +31(0)46 4370886 Fax +31(0)46 4360188

Support: support@netpresenter.com Website: http://www.netpresenter.com

Netpresenter Copyright (c) 2006-2009 of Netpresenter and Eureka Communications Holding. Netpresenter is an internationally registered trademark of Netpresenter and Eureka Communications Holding.