ActiveX Print Control

[fwatanabe]

Hi all,
We have a system w/ BOE XI (not r2 so I guess r1?). We use an embedded DHTML viewer in our custom portal application. Currently when our clients try to print a Crystal Report, they get a dialog that says...
To Print:
1. In the next dialog that appears, select the "Open this file" option and click the OK button.
2. Click the printer icon on the Acrobat Reader Menu rather than the print button on your internet browser.

I want to implement the ActiveX print control (not the viewer, just the print control) but I'm not entirely sure how it works. Does it call a Windows print control, or a specific BO one? And does each user need to install this (and therefore have admin rights) in order for it to work?

I tested on a vanilla IE 7 install and got an error msg:
ActiveX is not allowed to run at this page (Security Issue), I must go to tools>>Internet Option >>Security>>Custom Level >> etc...

It's not realistic to ask our clients to do this... so is there a better way?

Any thoughts are appreciated.
Thanks.

 

[MJRBIM]

Package up the ActiveX print-control as an MSI and force the install of it on client workstations.

In our case we did it via SMS-push, since the client's work in a "Managed Desktop" PC environment.

 

[fwatanabe]

We're an external service provider - no control over our client's workstations.

 

[MJRBIM]

Do the RPT files you are generating really need the features of the embedded DHTML viewer (eg. drill-down) in your custom portal application?

If you are just displaying static reports (no drill-down) - you could generate directly to PDF instead of RPT.

Just about everyone has a PDF-viewer in their baseline OS now, so you wouldn't need to worry about the Print Controls.