Software overview

Loftware Oracle Agent
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Loftware

Your Loftware product allows you to create and edit labels (desktop Designer), have access to document storage with versioning, approval processes, user management, and print history (Control Center) and provides an integration system (Automation).

Your Loftware product contains:

  • Loftware desktop Designer is an application for designing and printing labels. Install desktop Designer on your computer and connect it to Control Center. In Control Center, you can see all your printers connected to your desktop Designer.

  • LoftwareControl Center is a cloud-based application that allows you to share and store your labeling files and print labels. Control Center connects all printers of all users who have their desktop Designer connected to Control Center.

  • LoftwareAutomation is an application that automates repetitive tasks like automated printing.

For a complete overview of what modules are contained in each Loftware Cloud product, see Getting started with Loftware Cloud.

Loftware platform high-level overview:

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When LoftwareAutomation receives a data payload from the Loftware Oracle Agent, it first fetches the correct label from Documents in Control Center, populates the fields in the template with the business data provided in the Oracle payload, and prints a label to the requested label printer.

LoftwareAutomation exposes the HTTP REST APIs that are consumed by Loftware Oracle Agent. LoftwareAutomation synchronously sends the response for each call.

LoftwareAutomation

The integration bundle provides a pre-built LoftwareAutomation connector (trigger). You deploy the provided Automation configuration (.zip file) and start the trigger. The LoftwareAutomation configuration contains one Cloud Trigger that provides the API endpoint for the Loftware Oracle Agent.

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The action in a trigger is based on the built-in action Run Oracle XML Command File. This action can parse the XML payload from the Loftware Oracle Agent and execute the print actions accordingly.

All actions before this one are there to ensure the label names in the XML include a full URL prefix to the location in your Documents page in Control Center. The URL is read from the Loftware configuration file and appended into the XML payload.

After the actions in the trigger are complete, a JSON response is sent back to the Loftware Oracle Agent.

Designing labels in Loftware desktop Designer

With Loftware desktop Designer you can create and edit labels and connect them to dynamic data sources. See how to create a new label in desktop Designer.

When Loftware Oracle Agent consumes the Loftware API, it provides the JSON payload with the data for LoftwareAutomation, including key-value pairs for the label variables.

Each label, connected to a dynamic data source, contains the variables as data sources for the label objects. These variables connect to label objects and provide values for those objects at print time.

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The variables defined in the label must have the same names as the data fields in the Oracle applications. You can create variables in the label manually, but you can also import variables from the existing labels or the Oracle XML payloads.

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Label referencing names

You must store your labels in the Documents in your Control Center. Reference the name of your labels from the root folder in Documents.

For example, if you have a label label.nlbl stored in a folder called Labels , which is in the Project1 folder; the correct form of the full path to the template is /Project1/Labels/label.nlbl.