SA-36068

Summary

During testing of Pega 7.1.6. platform using Mac OS Sierra and Safari, user noticed Word document cannot be generated from Designer Studio using Document Application tool (Designer Studio >Tools >Document).

After clicking "Document Now" button, pop-up window "Silverlight installation required" is shown to the user, it contains also an URL to download "PRPC Silverlight prerequisites".

In MacOS Sierra/Safari, after clicking the link nothing happens, but that does not affect much because installer is downloaded (.cab).

One can extract files from this archive and inside there are .exe and .msi installers, but user cannot install "PRPC Silverlight prerequisites" using any of these on MacOS.

When user clicks this URL in Windows 7 or Internet Explorer 11 and user does not have PRPC Silverlight prerequisites installed, installation process is triggered and everything works ok after completing the installation.

Error Messages

Not applicable.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Generate a Word document from Designer Studio using Document Application tool (Designer Studio >Tools >Document).
2. After clicking "Document Now" button, pop-up window "Silverlight installation required" is shown to the user, it contains also an URL to download "PRPC Silverlight prerequisites".
   

Root Cause

The following PDN article provides some additional information on the Word merge support with Microsoft Silverlight and the prerequisites:

https://pdn.pega.com/release-note/word-merge-support-microsoft-silverlight-plug

Of significance to the issue here is the following confirmation within that article that the feature will not work with MacOS directly.

“While Silverlight is cross-browser, it is not fully cross-platform. Mac users may use Word merge features in Chrome via Parallels.”

Resolution

Use Windows platform to produce Word document.

or

Pega 7.1.8 and later versions includes an enhancement so that this documentation procedure runs on the Server rather than the client.