Dispatcher: Support Center Field Notes

The shipped documentation tells you how Dispatcher is supposed to work. The Support Center Knowledge Base tells you how it actually behaves. This page indexes the articles that changed or corrected something in this KB, so a claim can be traced to its source.

Searched 2026-08-03 with an authenticated Support Center session. The dispatcher query returns 2,734 Knowledge Base hits and 3,190 Documentation hits; narrowing to dispatcher custom translator in the Knowledge Base collection gives 385, which is the useful set.

Articles that corrected this KB

ID	Title	What it changed
PL8058970	TaskPrep Dispatcher client fails because of Multivalue on a Preference	The generic basic.TaskPrep only honors the first value of _ets_nr_types, despite the array type and the AND semantics its own description promises. Reproduced on OOTB SIEMENStozipfile_MSWordX_ets_nr_types. Corrected in zero-Java translator
PL8012105	Dispatcher Conversion is ignoring the BadChars property of the DispatcherClient	basic.TaskPrep does not support BadChars. Sanitizing requires a hand-written TaskPrep per the proetojt sample
PL8822873	Custom provider not visible in the Dispatcher Admin Client	A custom translator also needs registering in AdminClient/ui/swing/AdminClientUI.xml. No chapter mentions this file
PL8828085	DispatcherClient Windows service must be reinstalled each time the java CLASSPATH is changed	The service's classpath is baked into the registry at install time. Editing setDispatcherClientEnv.bat has no effect until runDispatcherClientWinService.bat -r then -i
PL8045532	Translation menu is appearing even the dispatcher client is not selected	The Translate menu renders even when the rich-client Dispatcher feature was never installed. Menu presence is not evidence Dispatcher is deployed
PL8123093	Custom translator will not load result file, thinks its missing when it is not	Text named references are defined by * not *.txt, so the loader looks for myfile instead of myfile.txt. Fixed TC 12.2, PR 9448791
PL8674963	Prepare exe is unable to read/write network shared stage directory from NetApp	A mapped network drive as staging directory breaks prepare.exe reads and writes, with no custom code involved

What the KB confirms independently

The zero-Java route is used in production. PL8123093 is a customer running an exceltotxt translator on exactly the binding this KB recommends:

Translator.CUSTOMER.exceltotxt.Prepare=com.teamcenter.ets.translator.ugs.basic.TaskPrep
Translator.CUSTOMER.exceltotxt.Load=com.teamcenter.ets.translator.ugs.basic.DatabaseOperation

That is a real site translating Excel to text with no Java, which is independent evidence that the preference route is a supported production pattern and not just a sample.

Where Support's own advice diverges

PL8012633 — "configuring dispatcher client for a custom translator" is the article whose title most exactly matches the question, and its answer is:

This requires some SOA customization in the Dispatcher Client [...] Basically you need to create a new TaskPrep class and a new DatabaseOperation class

It then points at the proetojt sample directory. It does not mention the basic.* generic classes or the ppttopdf sample sitting in the adjacent folder.

The article dates from the 10.1.7 era (its config block lists Windows XP64), so this is plausibly just age. But it is the top-matching search result today, and following it takes you straight to level 3 for a job that level 0 may cover. If someone quotes "custom translator = custom code" and cites Support, this is probably the article they read.

Tooling the shipped guide underplays

Tool	Why it matters
-ping	Supported by all three Dispatcher components. The fastest possible answer to "is Dispatcher actually running here"
dispatcher_util	Command-line listing and management of request objects. Documented in the Utilities Reference from TC 10.1 through at least 13.2. No rich client needed

Version notes

• TC 2606 adds "Manage dispatcher translation requests directly in Active Workspace" — the Dispatcher Request Administration Console moves into AW. Listed in What's New in Teamcenter 2606 and in the 2606/2512 EAP notes.
• A separate book, Dispatcher Server Translators Reference, exists for older releases (10.1.x, and a Teamcenter Enterprise 9.0 edition) covering translator configuration in more depth than the current admin guide.
• Configure Dispatcher for email polling appears in System Administration (14.x), separate from the translator documentation.
• Per-CAD Dispatcher install guides exist as their own books for Creo (12.1, 12.2, 2406), SolidWorks (12.2) and Inventor. If you are wiring a CAD integration, that book is more specific than the general admin guide.

Search notes for next time

The Support Center search URL is parameterised, so these are directly navigable:

https://support.sw.siemens.com/en-US/search?collections=%5B%22kb%22%5D&q=<query>&size=25

collections=["kb"] is Knowledge Base, ["dc"] is Documentation. Use kb. The dc collection returns the same handful of books repeated across 30+ release versions and buries anything useful.

Article bodies live in a #details element and load asynchronously, so any scripted read needs to poll for it rather than read immediately.

Queries worth re-running as this work progresses: dispatcher custom translator, TaskPrep, DatabaseOperation, dispatcher_util, Service.properties translator, ETS.PROVIDERS.