Anoto Pen Fleet Manager client for Windows

We, as Anoto, are expanding our scope in order to make digital pen management on a large scale a lot easier, especially when we're talking about companies that have deployed hundreds or even thousands of our digital pens between their employees across the globe!

This portal will in effect be a 'one-stop shop' where an Anoto administrator (for now) will be able to:

  • group pens together per organisation and then form subgroups based potentially on a department, location or even by person
  • assign specific firmware versions to specific groups of pens
  • license or re-license groups of pens

Our developers have been working hard and Anoto is happy to announce that our 'Anoto Pen Fleet Manager for Windows' client has now reached a stage where we're deploying it's first official version.

Why do I need it?

All of our latest AP-701 pens (and all future pens) are now produced with a pen specific 1 year license on them on the production line (2018/2019). This 1 year license will activate as soon as the user has written on Anoto dot pattern for the first time, after having woken up the pen from 'Shipment mode' by docking it to a PC or power source. Going forwards, all AP-701x pens purchased will have a 'lifetime' (20yr) pen license included in the price.

You'll be able to use this client for:

  • re-licensing of pens in real-time once their pen licenses have expired
  • ensuring that your pens will always have the latest firmware installed on it. (PLEASE NOTE: A firmware upgrade will erase all data on the pen, so be sure that you have retrieved or routed all data from the pen before connecting it to this client)

Who can use it?

At the moment, this client can be used by anyone that has Windows 7 or later on their PCs. So there is no need any more to send all pens back to a central IT person in your company to do this for you.

How do I use it?

It doesn't get much simpler that this... Just have this client running on your PC, dock your pen & it will take care of the rest!

Where can I get it?

You'll be able to download this client from the following location: https://cloud.anoto.com/dl/7c43yIt2Mg/FleetManagementClientSetup.exe_ & its Release Notes from here.

FAQ:

  1. When I dock my pen, why is it not detected by this client?

    This is all a bit technical but we'll try to keep it as simple as possible... The reason being that Anoto uses a Windows service called the 'Anoto Pen Access Framework windows service' (PAF, for short) in order to communicate with our pens. 
    Our older products ('Anoto Live Forms'/'Anoto Live Enterprise'/'PenDirector') had this PAF service written in .NET and you can see this WCF service in the Services-section of Windows (accessible by running the command 'services.msc' from the desktop Start-menu).
    The PAF in all our latest products (including this one) have been written in C++, so within Windows' Services-section you'll see a PAF service named, 'Anoto Pen Access Framework Cpp windows service', once this client has been installed.
    Only 1 of these PAF services can be running at any 1 time, so if your pen is not getting detected in this 'Fleet Manager' then it probably means that the incorrect PAF (WCF) is running. So you'll need to access the Services-section, select to 'Stop' the WCF PAF service and select to 'Start' the Cpp PAF service.

    So our recommendation would be to install and run this client on a Windows PC that doesn't have any other Anoto products installed. If this is not a possibility, then please follow the steps above to turn on/off the relevant PAF service for the application you're using, i.e.
    - to use the 'Anoto Pen Fleet Manager client', turn off the WCF PAF service
    - to use ALF/ALE/PenDirector clients, turn off the Cpp PAF service (but do remember to turn the WCF PAF service back on again afterwards otherwise your pens won't get detected on the other Anoto ALF/ALE/PenDirector clients)
  2. When I dock my pen, it tells me that my pen is not allocated to a portal group and nothing happens?

    Yes, this is down to the fact that a lot of AP-701 pens were manufactured and shipped out to customers before this system was developed, so the portal does not (yet) know about any pens that were manufactured in the past. All we require from you then is a list of pen serial numbers that your company has received (that we'll cross-reference on our side) and get them added to the portal, to ensure you are ready for re-licensing (when the time comes) and upgrading to the latest and greatest firmware versions for your pen model.
  3. What pen models are supported by this client?

    This client will offer support for the following pen models: Live Pen 2; Live Pen 2 Pro; AP-701; Livescribe Dolphin; Livescribe Marlin and all our future pens.
    However, please be aware that in order for us to support the pen models (Live Pen 2/Live Pen 2 Pro) produced prior to this software, you'll need to supply us with a list of 'Pen Serial' numbers that we'll verify and add to this portal.
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