EH&S GLM Printing process - for beginners

[former_member791119]

I've read quite a few of the posts here about 'how' and 'what is needed' about GLM printing and, honestly, being a non-SAP person brought into a SAP project as printing labels support, I'm still a bit confused by a situation we are in.

The basic situation is that we've merged with another organization (a portion of their entire organization) that uses SAP GLM, which we do not. So this is all new to me. What started my educational journey, in this case, was after going live with the new merged organization on Feb 12th, 2022, we've been battling a label that just won't print for two sites (out of the 20+ sites we acquired in Europe). One of these sites has three printers that under the previous organization could print these labels without issue on each printer. Since the cut-over, none of them work.

Our SAP EH&S and production environments for these locations is a carve out of the original organization's SAP environments. So everything in the SAP environment, I have to believe is setup just 'as it was' when these sites were serviced by the other organization's SAP. The GLM servers were all build from the ground up for us by a consultant's BASIS team. Also, the Windows print server, drivers, and printer definitions were put onto our existing regional print servers without having an idea of what the other organization used as a setup for the printers.

To me, this would mean that if something is causing the issue, it's probably not our carve out of the other organization's SAP settings so I'm concentrating on the GLM servers as well as our corporate print servers.

I've been trying for a week to make sense of what is going on and why. I thought I'd ask here in case anyone has ideas for me to look at.

From what I've learned from one of our EH&S team members who has some prior experience with GLM (long ago and far away as Meatloaf would say) is that the GLM environment consists of SAP and a few "GLM" and "WWI" servers. She's also told me that, in this case, the label request is started in one system (EH&S production environment) and then gets, somehow, transferred to our SAP Production environment. Then the report gets physically routed to a Windows print server and printer (via IP address?). We have been told that other SAP output (non-EH&S system) prints properly to these printers.

1. Is this an accurate depiction of how the GLM label printing process 'happens'?
2. When looking at the production and test GLM servers, all I see on them are drivers - no printers defined at all.
a. How does GLM printing use these drivers? We were told they have to be there for the printing to work.
b. Just FYI, the driver we are referencing is an HP LJ PostScript (not sure the printers, Kyocera, support PostScript even)

Since the printer configuration in SAP specifies the HP LJ PostScript driver, I made sure that the corporate print server configuration was the same (a version older than that on the SAP GLM server though as European IT team hasn't keep the driver up to date).

Can anyone think of why the output might come out as this? I cannot (don't know how to) find out if there are any other Kyocera printers that have successfully printed this label. The four printers we have been told about are all Kyocera printers - one of two models.

Output looks like

Thank you in advance for any ideas and I'm sorry if I haven't described enough information. I'm just learning how to swim right now - up river in a strong current it feels like. If additional information is helpful, I can try to find it or ask our EH&S teammate if she can get it.

Todd

[former_member791119]

The fix, for anyone interested later, was creating a 'virtual' shared HP PostScript 6 printer on the WWI server. It wasn't good enough to just have the appropriate driver installed on the server, we had to create a virtual printer (no IP address) and used the default settings.

We asked the EU sites utilizing the Kyocera printers to run another test and they printed properly. I thought it was fishy that there were no 'printers' defined and just the drivers available. We came about this solution while reading about causes somewhere. I forgot to bookmark it because now it seems so logical.

If it can help someone in the future, I hope it saves you the 20+ hours I've spent troubleshooting blindly.

Todd

[Mark-Pfister]

Hi Todd,

There is an option for GLM to print out labels via the SAP Spooler. This would explain why you only see printer drivers installed - but no actual printer on the WWI/GLM windows servers. You can findout out here more: http://saphelp.ucc.ovgu.de/NW750/EN/c5/e61051f31e2314e10000000a44176d/frameset.htm

The SAP Spooler could be the way by which the printouts are transferred back to your logistics system as well.

BTW: From the wording, it seems you run GLM+ / Genefix as you talk about print request management. Something that GLM has not.

The screenshot of the printout that you are showing looks like PostScript (PS) for me. If the Kyocera printers can not handle PS - you have your explanation why the printout is not happening.

You could try to install the native Kyocera printer drivers for this printer model and assign that to the default printer on the involved GLM server to check if that solves the printing issue for these two printers.

The fastest way to fix this whole issue that you face would be to clone 1:1 the WWI and GLM Windows servers from the original set-up before: Besides identical settings on the SAP side of things the printing driver set-up, defined printers, and default printer as well Windows Version, Word Version, WWI Version, and installed fonts all need to match the previous set-up - otherwise it is quite difficult to get the same output...

[former_member791119]

Thanks for the post Mark.

I still haven't found out from our BASIS team if we are running GLM+ or not. But, I thought it may be postscript or something. I did find out that the Kyoceras do support PostScript 3 today. Also, one of the first things I tried was to install a Kyocera print driver onto the "windows print server", but I didn't want to change what was on the WWI server because it was supposed to be a match to what they had on the previous organization's WWI server (according to the BASIS team's documentation).

The previous business that owned our new division, would not let us clone anything not SAP related - outside of scope. So the corporate print servers and WWI servers had to be built from scratch with descriptions of settings from the previous organization.

See my post about the 'fix'

[christoph_bergemann]

Hello

sorry to say.. there is to much text to read in your "problem description". Do not look to the "past".. try to describe current set up..

Let us start: a company can have several IT set up to use. This is true for "SAP" and other IT tools.

So first question: is the one "central" SAP system used or is there one SAP system for the logistic processes and a different one for the "EHS" processes?

Second: what is the "version" of SAP you are using for the "EHS" System?

Third: What WWI version you are using?

Forth: Is the SAP version a "Unicode" version (i would assume yes)

next question: is any RFC connection to any WWI server a "UNICODE" activated connection

etc. (many other questions to look at)..

Do you use (what is called) GLM+ ?

Looking on one statement of your issue:

"From what I've learned from one of our EH&S team members who has some prior experience with GLM (long ago and far away as Meatloaf would say) is that the GLM environment consists of SAP and a few "GLM" and "WWI" servers."

For WWI we can differentiate two set up variants. The "synchron" and the "asynchron" variant.

For GLM we need normally both variants. The SAP internal handling of these variants is different,, and not all people do understand the "difference"

On the top: the topic of "printer drivers" to use on "WWI farms" is as well a "nightmare" to understand

So no easy help is possible in your context. More information is needed about "the as is situation"

C.B.

PS: we need as well bette understanding regaridng this phrase/sentence: "She's also told me that, in this case, the label request is started in one system (EH&S production environment) and then gets, somehow, transferred to our SAP Production environment." and the "meaning" of it

PPS: i could find this thread which might be a starting pont to look at: https://answers.sap.com/questions/35867/sap-ehs---transfer-and-check-printers.html

https://answers.sap.com/questions/6961781/printer-installtion-on-wwi.html

https://userapps.support.sap.com/sap/support/knowledge/en/2815593

https://answers.sap.com/questions/100359/glm-printer-determination.html

https://answers.sap.com/questions/11084519/transfer-printer-config-for-glm-zebra-printer-not-.html

May be this document could be of interest as well: https://de.scribd.com/document/471217125/SAP-EHS-GLM-Configuration-Guide

[former_member791119]

Thank you.

I will take a look at the links provided as well as gathering the information requested.

"So first question: is the one "central" SAP system used or is there one SAP system for the logistic processes and a different one for the "EHS" processes?"

Again, new to SAP but I can respond with what I understand so far: We have a production environment ("ECA") and we have another where EH&S information ("ESA"). I believe that the request for EH&S data occurs in the ECA system and is 'transferred' to the ESA system for gathering the information. I'm not 100% certain the process comes back to ECA to print, or if that service occurs in the ESA system.

what is the "version" of SAP you are using for the "EHS" System?

I don't know the exact answer, but I know it's OLD. Old as in no more support so we are also going to be updating S4/Hana starting this year.

What WWI version you are using?

Also old. Our contractor BASIS team said that we'd have to upgrade to a newer version if we wanted to support something with our barcoding issue.

Is the SAP version a "Unicode" version (i would assume yes)

We are using Unicode, yes.

Is any RFC connection to any WWI server a "UNICODE" activated connection

I can't even guess as I've not heard anything like this discussed. I will check with our BASIS team.

Do you use (what is called) GLM+ ?

I do not believe so. I've not heard that referenced, but again, I will verify that with our BASIS team.

I appreciate your assistance.

Todd