Symtrax Unveils New Way to Grab SAP Spool Files

March 8, 2011 Alex Woodie

Symtrax is now taking advantage of an SAP-sanctioned printing protocol to grab spool files from the ERP system. A new release of Compleo for SAP features the BC-XOM connector, which should reduce dependencies between the ERP installation and output streams, thereby boosting flexibility and minimizing maintenance costs.

SAP developed BC-XOM specifically to provide external document management systems such as Compleo with an open interface to the SAP NetWeaver spool system, and encourages software vendors such as Symtrax to adopt BC-XOM. That is exactly what Symtrax has done with Compleo for SAP version 4.1.

According to Symtrax, adopting BC-XOM delivers several benefits to SAP customers, most of which involve connections to printers. For starters, it reduces dependencies between the SAP ERP system and the printer, and simplifies printer configuration. With Compleo handling printing tasks, the SAP system can be upgraded independently, without requiring changes to printer configuration files. Likewise, changes in document distribution rules do not impact the SAP system. Any document formatting and processing that occurs before printing is done outside of the SAP environment.

SAP users adopting the new BC-XOM version of Compleo also benefit from being able to share printers among multiple SAP systems. Users can also create routing tables in Compleo that inherit SAP user group definitions. Compleo also features printer backup and load balancing capabilities.

The use of the BC-XOM protocol provides lots of benefits to production printing in SAP shops. But Compleo for SAP also delivers the capability to distribute SAP-generated documents via e-mail and fax, and generates PDF, Excel, HTML, and barcode formats. Some EDI functions are supported, as well as the capability to push data as XML-based Web services. The Compleo suite also includes archiving capabilities; report splitting capabilities; and a design tool for creating professional-looking documents and reports.

SAP for Compleo version 4.1 runs on all versions of Windows and OS/400 (IBM i) V3R7 and higher. In addition to SAP, Symtrax supports other ERP systems popular on the IBM i platform, such as JD Edwards.