PDFCreator Business cannot connect to timestamp server

Hi,
We have switched from PDFCreator Free to PDFCreator Business. Now we cannot connect anymore to the timestamp servers that were also used for the Free installation. Is there any difference in the timestamp server handling between these two versions? This is the error message we get:

Failure while releasing document "Release Test Document.doc" - revision 62. Exception:

Failure while releasing document "Release Test Document.doc" - revision 62. Exception: 

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "signingWatchdog.py", line 209, in convertToPDF
printJob.ConvertTo(targetDocumentWithFullPath)
File ">", line 2, in ConvertTo
pywintypes.com_error: (-2147352567, 'Exception occurred.', (0, 'PDFCreator.ComImplementation', 'Error while signing. Can not connect to time server. (12205)', None, 0, -2147467259), None)

During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "signingWatchdog.py", line 123, in processDirectory
self.convertToPDF(newSrcPath, docFiles, int(revision), username)
File "signingWatchdog.py", line 213, in convertToPDF
srcDocumentFileName)
ExportError: Error during PDF conversion of file Release Test Document.doc: Exception occurred.

Hi,

sorry for the trouble.
The change to PDFCreator Business probably didn't cause these issues, did you by any chance also update from 2.x to 3.x?
Starting from version 3.0, PDFCreator uses accounts to manage timestamp servers and other external online services, so you might need to reconfigure your profile after updating.
There are 3 preconfigured timestamp servers available in PDFCreator, but you currently can't select them through COM, it has to be setup through the GUI.

Best regards

Robin

Both version are 3.3.2 and the timestamp servers are configured using the UI and saved in the profile.

Note that we have to use a proxy server that is configured in the system settings. Any difference between free and business version regarding the use of proxies?

Hi,

I will double check with the rest of the team, but PDFCreator should in both cases use the users proxy server configuration. Have you checked if the timestamp server might be temporarily unavailable?

Best regards

Robin

Yes, we tried several times.

Hi,

sorry for the late response.
Did you use one of the inbuilt timestamp server accounts, or create a new one? I used the inbuilt freetsa account and ran the testpage2pdf.js com script after setting up the signature inside the default profile. However, I am not behind a proxy so this is probably the issue, as you pointed out earlier.
PDFCreator free uses iText# to sign the PDFs, while PDFCreator Business uses pdftools and they might handle proxy settings differently.
I had a quick look at the pdftools docs and it is at least possible to supply proxy credentials through their API, so the ones stored inside the user profile might not get used, which would explain the issue. Are your proxy settings stored inside the user profile, or where are they configured?
We will need to have a closer look at this, but if it is a bug we can probably fix it quickly.
P.S we can also write in German, if you prefer

Best regards

Robin

Sorry for my late response. We have to use a third party timestamp server. Have you been able to clarify if proxy settings are handled differently for your Business version?

Hi,

Currently pdftools does not use the proxy settings of the profile. However, our developers are able and willing to fix that.

Kind regards
Sascha