Bottomline PrecisionForms Email: File Did Not Contain an Email Header

Bottomline PrecisionForms is a powerful tool for formatting and delivering beautiful reports and forms (invoice, PO, BOL, RFQ...) from Dynamics AX.  I have been using this tool for almost ten years now.  You might encounter the following issue when setting up the Bottomline PrecisionForms Email server.

File did not contain an email header or errors were encountered.

First step is to review the spooler file which the printer was trying to process:

C:\Bottomline Technologies\PrecisionForms\spool

As shown in the screen shot, the file is a PDF file with a .tmp extention.  The way that PrecisionForms knows where to send the file is that it will add some text within the .tmp file with the email details.  These details should be passed from the Director project as part of resubmitting to a different queue.  The director project confirms it should be filled out:

The fix?
Open PrecisionForms Email and configure the email queue's default project and change the default merge configuration to "PDF with Job Ticket."

Optimizing installing ISV solutions in AX 2012 (Compare Tool)

When integrating a comprehensive ISV solution into your AX environment there is always the possibility that there is a conflict: perhaps the ISV solution was built for a different version of AX, or you already have several other solutions installed.  This means spending significant hours comparing objects, almost to the point that you could have coded the ISV solution yourself, LOL!

How can we make this process faster?  How can we optimize it?

Right click > Compare, click compare button, expand, expand...expand, expand, click, review, scroll...repeat 100 times.

Modifications to AX Compare Tool-
The first thing I noticed is that when I hit compare, the screen is so tiny that I'm constantly resizing it.
Modify the following to support the resolution you are using:  \Forms\SysCompareForm.init()
For my 4k monitor I found that using 600 by 900 enabled me to see as much code as possible.  So I added:

html.prefColumnSize(600, 900);
Tree.prefColumnSize(300, 900); // wider by 100px

You can also modify which two layers it immediately chooses.  In the past I have changed it so that the washed "layer" was never selected.

Also you could consider running the comparison in CIL.  It sounds great, however read it carefully because the generated code may not be what you expect.

The compare tool as it comes with AX already sets focus on the Compare button, so hitting enter will cause it to start the compare.  However you could modify the form to automatically hit the compare button after a second, saving you a few milliseconds.

What other hacks/tricks have you done to speed up this process?  Let me know in the comments.