The following support articles, webinars, and resources will help and guide you through the update process to BarTender 2022. They are divided into the various categories below.

 

General / Compatibility

 

• FAQ for customers updating to BarTender 2022

          This should be your first stop when you plan to update to BarTender 2022. This article contains the most typical frequent questions that you might have before updating.

 

• Updating to BarTender 2022

          Contains a summary of the major changes, instructions on how to install BarTender 2022, some activation-based concepts, and backward compatibility information.

 

• BarTender supported Windows versions
• Windows Version compatibility with Drivers by Seagull

          If you want to know what Windows versions are supported by the latest BarTender version, or if your Seagull printer drivers need to be updated / will still be compatible, take a look at these articles.  

 

• BarTender 10.1 End of Support

          Knowing the end of support date for BarTender 10.1 will help you schedule your update plan.

 

• What’s new in BarTender 2022

          This document contains an overview of the new features we implemented in BarTender 2022.

 

Installation and Pre-requisites

 

• BarTender system requirements

          General system requirements for BarTender 2022. If you're instead looking for high availability or failover best practices, first read this article and then contact support if you still have further questions.

 

• Is SQL Server required for BarTender

          If you have strict IT policies that prevent you from installing another SQL Server instance on your Windows system, this article is for you. 

 

Product Activation

 

• Activating the BarTender Suite

          Complete article that explains how to activate BarTender 2022 and what you'll need for completing the process.

 

• Activation Denied Troubleshooter

          Some of the most common issues you can run into when activating BarTender 2022.

 

• Moving your license to a new computer

          New BarTender feature that allows you to easily move your 2022 license around different License Servers.

 

• What is provisional activation?

          This feature allows you to keep your older BarTender version running in production environment running you provisionally test BarTender 2022

 

• Perform an Offline Activation

          If the server-side of your BarTender installation doesn't have an active internet connection, you can perform an offline activation.

 

Printer Licensing

 

Administering your BarTender license has substantially changed in BarTender 2022 compared to previous versions of BarTender (2016 and older). The main differences are: 

1. Seagull License Server application and service no longer exist.
2. Instead, you activate and manage your licenses via the Administration Console application.
3. BarTender client and server sides communicate via a Windows service called BarTender Licensing Service which gets installed during the BarTender installation process.

 

• Understanding printer based licensing in BarTender 2022

          How to manage your BarTender license via the Administration Console.

 

• License Server redundancy

        This new feature introduced in BarTender 2022 provides the ability to have redundant and backup License Servers.

 

• Error 1401: You have exceeded your maximum number of licensed printers

          What to do and how to prevent BarTender licensing issues due to exceeded printer licenses.

 

 

BarTender Label Design

 

• Setting up a thermal label document

         This video-based support article is useful if you want some guidance for creating your first document with label printers in BarTender.

 

• Setting up a laser / inkjet label document

          Same as the previous article, but this one is for laser or inkjet-based printers.

 

• Using Different Fonts per Data Source

          Thanks to BarTender's improved text editing UI, using different fonts in the same text object is a very quick and intuitive process.

 

• Setting up Text Wrapping

          A powerful feature that allows wrapping of text around other objects.

 

• Table objects

          Creating grids and tables with BarTender has never been so easy!

 

 

Database Connections

 

• Getting started with database connections

          A 5-minute video that covers the main steps involved for connecting your BarTender document with a database.

 

• Text database connection options in BarTender

          A short video that covers the versatility of our text file connector, that can potentially connect to any type of text file structure, including those legacy formats used by ERP systems and alternative label design solutions. 

 

• Introduction to selecting database records

          This article covers all of the main aspects of selecting database records at design or print time, including how to add a record selector to your data entry form, how to create static and dynamic database filters, and how to combine them both.

 

Document Management and Cloud based Printing

 

• Print Portal's new UI

          Our web-based printing application was completely redesigned for BarTender 2022.

 

• Using Librarian's features via Print Portal

          Manage Librarian label files directly from Print Portal.

 

• Print Portal Rest API

         Interact with Print Portal through a comprehensive set of REST APIs

 

Automation / Integration

 

The most substantial difference between BarTender older versions (2016 and previous) and 2022 when it comes to integrating BarTender with your third party application or system is the fact that Commander middleware has been replaced with a more powerful and flexible package called the Integration Platform. This platform consists of the following components:

1. Integration Builder: It's an application that helps you to design and test your Integrations.
2. Administration Console: This application includes a section for the Integrations that have been deployed. Build your deployment plans from here and define what servers are allowed to be your test and production servers.
3. BarTender Integration Service: This Windows service performs all of the "Detection" based operations for an integration and those actions that don't require using BarTender print engines. 
4. BarTender Print Scheduler Service: This service will automatically start, stop and leverage the number of BarTender engines for your integrations. You no longer need to worry about manually defining these (such as you had done with Commander and the Command Handler configuration).

• Building a File integration using a CSV file
• Building a file integration using Print Command Script
• Creating an integration that uses an Excel document as a trigger file
• Print Document Using a Data File Integration
• Building a web service integration
• Building a database integration

           These are several examples that show you various ways to integrate your ERP or database system with BarTender. The Integration Platform is backward compatible with your Commander task list files, yet we recommend that you improve your integrations by creating new Integration Files unless you were already using BTXML-Script in your Commander integrations.

           Typical integrations that the majority of our customers use are web services, file, and database integrations. Web service integrations allow you to send HTTP requests, file integrations scan a folder location, and database integrations scan a database to trigger various actions. These actions can be a simple print action or response and message to an external system. Integrations allow the flexibility to transform and send your data payload in various formats.

 

• Does the Integration Platform require a BarTender System Database?

          This article will help you to make a decision on this key component of BarTender.

 

• BarTender .net SDK and BarTender Version Compatibility

          If you've automated your older BarTender version instead via our .NET SDKs and would like to know what steps to follow in order to make your code work in BarTender 2022, check this article.

 

We hope that you find this information useful. If you have further questions, please post your update question or issue under the topic "Updating to BarTender 2022" or contact support.