Mac Classifier

VERSION 3.12.7

RELEASE NOTE

Boldon James

May 2022

RN568117

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS

FURTHER INFORMATION

DOCUMENTATION

COMPARISON WITH PREVIOUS RELEASES

CONTACT US

1.   INTRODUCTION

Boldon James Mac Classifier enhances the Microsoft Office suite of products to provide support for email and document protective marking on Apple Macintosh. It supports the labelling of:

• Microsoft Outlook Emails
• Microsoft PowerPoint Presentations
• Microsoft Word Documents
• Microsoft Excel Spreadsheets

The label value may be applied as a combination of visual markings and/or metadata as defined by the Classifier configuration, which is managed by Classifier Administration.

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2.   SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

2.1 Hardware

• 64-bit Apple Mac, Intel or M1 processor

2.2 Operating System

• Catalina – 10.15
• Big Sur – 11
• Monterey – 12

2.3 Office

• Office 2016 / 2019 / Office 365, version 15.26 or later

2.4 Prerequisites

• Mono version 6.4 or later is required. Mono can be obtained from https://download.mono-project.com/.
• If you need to access the label on Office 2003-format documents (e.g. files with extension .doc, .xls, .ppt), to perform checks on those types of  files present as attachments when sending email messages, then you must install the libgsf software package for this to work. This can be downloaded and installed by following the instructions found at http://macappstore.org/libgsf/.

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3.   INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS

Before Installation

• Users must be logged on with administrator privileges.
• You must download and install a suitable Mono framework. See Prerequisites above for guidance.

Installation

• Run "Mac Classifier-M.m.v.b.pkg" from the installation media (where M is the major version, m is the minor version, v is the subversion, and b is the build number) which will launch the Installer and follow the on screen instructions.
• If a pre-5.12 Mono framework is detected, you will be warned of the need to update this before Mac Classifier will work.
• The newly-installed Mac Classifier app will automatically start running at the end of the installation process, and will subsequently automatically start whenever you log on to the Mac. It is configured to automatically restart if it stops - see the next section for further information. Mac Classifier requires accessibility trust and will prompt you with a dialog box to grant trust to it when it starts. Refer to the following section for more details.

Configuration

• After installation you will need to configure Mac Classifier to access your Classifier Configuration. A utility tool, ClassifierConfigurer.app, is provided to assist with the configuration of the Classifier.plist file described in the following steps. This is described in more detail in the Documentation section.
• Log off and log back on again for configuration changes to take effect.
• Due to limitations in Mac networking we recommend that Windows shares are not used to store Classifier configuration information.
• You will need to ensure that the Mac Classifier app is given permission to control your computer using accessibility features. This is achieved using the System Preferences app:
• Select the 'Security and Privacy' icon.
• Select the Privacy tab.
• Select the Accessibility option from the left hand pane.
• Add Mac Classifier.app to the list of apps allowed to control your computer.
• If you run the Mac Classifier app (e.g. by logging off and on after installing Mac Classifier) without having granted it the accessibility control feature, it will prompt you with a dialog box. The dialog box contains a button which will open the System Preferences app and select the Accessibility node for you to simplify this process. Once trust has been granted, Mac Classifier will automatically proceed with its operation.

Post Installation

• When users run Excel for the first time after installing Mac Classifier, they may be prompted to enable macros. This is required so that Mac Classifier can interact correctly with Excel.
• Mojave and Catalina introduced additional security warnings. Therefore, when installing on any macOS versions since that time, Mac Classifier may prompt the user to allow access the first time that each Office application is loaded.

Uninstallation

• Close down all Microsoft Office applications.
• Run the following application: /Library/Application Support/Boldon James/UninstallMacClassifier.app.
• If you subsequently get a warning message when starting up PowerPoint or Excel, you should unregister the Boldon James addin, by using the dialog from the Tools/PowerPoint Add-ins or Tools/Excel Add-ins menu.

Installation issues

Sometimes an installation can get stuck while trying to install a package. If a 'Verifying..." pop-up alert remains displayed for a long time without progressing, you could try running Installer.app directly from /System/Library/CoreServices, as described in http://osxdaily.com/2016/07/26/fix-stuck-pkg-verifying-installer-mac-os-x/.

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4.   FURTHER INFORMATION

For further information see the "Mac Supplement" guide.

4.1 Languages

Mac Classifier supports the following languages/locales: en (English), de (German), es (Spanish), fr (French), it (Italian), ja (Japanese), pl (Polish), pt-BR (Portuguese/Brazil), pt-PT (Portuguese/Portugal), tr (Turkish), zh-Hans (simplified Chinese).

4.2 Web Proxy Server settings

If you access your Classifier configuration from a web server, and need to access that web server via a proxy server, you can specify the proxy server settings in the Classifier.plist file; this is most easily done using the Classifier Configurer tool main window. You can specify the proxy server host name /ipaddress and port number, and whether to use the default credentials or not; those credentials are the Username and Password values configured using the Proxies tab of the 'Advanced' Ethernet Network settings of the System Preferences app (you can specify settings for Web Proxy and Secure Web Proxy protocols from there, as appropriate).

4.1 Unicode visual markings in Microsoft PowerPoint

When used with Microsoft PowerPoint, Mac Classifier may fail to display Unicode text on PowerPoint slides. This Unicode text issue is particular to PowerPoint, as Word and Excel are able to handle such text successfully. Therefore Mac Classifier provides an alternative mechanism to process these visual markings for PowerPoint. Since this issue is specific to PowerPoint and Unicode text, and the alternative mechanism may impact performance with large presentations, this feature must be enabled if required.

In order to enable this option, a user default value should be set for each user as described below.

Open a new Terminal window and type the following, then press enter:
defaults write com.boldonjames.macclassifier ppUnicode 1

Now when you modify your document’s classification it will use the new method and should display Unicode text on your slide’s visual markings.

To revert to default behaviour, enter either:

defaults write com.boldonjames.macclassifier ppUnicode 0

or

defaults delete com.boldonjames.macclassifier ppUnicode

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5.   DOCUMENTATION

This product is documented in the "Mac Supplement" guide which is installed with the Classifier Administration Console.
The main product suite documentation is installed with the Classifier Administration Console.

5.1 Classifier Configurer

This utility application is delivered into the "/Library/Application Support/Boldon James/Classifier" folder. The main window allows you to specify the configuration settings for the "/Library/Application Support/Boldon James/Classifier.plist" file. If you make any changes to the current settings, you should press the 'Update' button to save those changes. A 'Test' button is provided which should be used to check the validity of the settings.

Other menu items can be used to invoke windows to configure the 'native' and 'managed' logging facilities built into Mac Classifier; you would only normally need to modify any of these settings under guidance from Boldon James Support.

There is also a System information report generation menu item; this creates a small text file containing information about the host Mac computer which could be useful in diagnosing problems with Mac Classifier.

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6.  LIMITATIONS

• New Outlook is not supported. Therefore you must switch off this option in Outlook to allow Mac Classifier to function. See 'Revert to Legacy Outlook' in Microsoft Outlook Help for more information.

• In Outlook 2016 for Mac version 15.35.170509 Microsoft introduced the Send Later functionality. For details see here : Delay-or-schedule-the-delivery-of-email-messages-in-Outlook-2016-for-Mac. For integration reasons, this functionality has been disabled by Mac Classifier.

• If there is insufficient space on the System Menu bar to display the Mac Classifier icon and current label summary text, they are automatically removed by the operating system. This is most likely to occur if you have long summary marking descriptions; if this is happening, it is possible to configure Mac Classifier to limit the number of text characters displayed by running the following command from a terminal window:
  "defaults write com.boldonjames.MacClassifier ClassifierMenuTitleMaxSize -int 10"
  (in this example, the maximum number of characters displayed would be 10, you can adjust this value as appropriate).

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7.   COMPARISON WITH PREVIOUS RELEASES

7.1 Mac Classifier 3.12.7

• This release addresses Office maintenance updates impacting the functionality of the Boldon James Mac Classifier product.

7.2 Mac Classifier 3.12.6

• Updated for Microsoft Office 365 16.55 (CSD 00023702).
• Confirmed compatibility with macOS Monterey (CSD 00023444).

7.3 Mac Classifier 3.12.5

• Updated for Microsoft Office 365 16.50 (CSD 00022256, 00022272).
• Improved support for Unicode visual markings with Microsoft PowerPoint. See Further Information.

7.4 Mac Classifier 3.12.4

• Added the Polish language to internationalisation support.
• Confirmed compatibility with macOS Big Sur.
• Fixes the case where Word document headers inserted as prefix into existing headers containing tables resulted in the Classifier header being inserted in the wrong position (CSD 00009395).
• Some performance improvements have been made (CSD 00009423)
• Addresses issues sometimes occuring around the Reply All functionality in Outlook (CSD 00010030, CSD 00010076).
• Fixes the issue where "Error Removing Visual Markings" could occur when saving Word documents (CSD 00010678).
• Addresses an issue where Keywords properties failed to be added to Excel documents (CSD 00010864).
• Arabic characters are now displayed correctly in PowerPoint Keywords document properties (CSD 00010865).

7.5 Mac Classifier 3.12.3

• Basic status information is shown in the Classifier menu if you hold the Option button while opening it. This menu is now always created on startup, even when Classifier cannot find a valid configuration.
• The Classifier button now appears disabled in Excel, Word, or PowerPoint, when Classifier is disabled in the policy (CSD 00006145).
• Addresses an issue where Mac Classifier fails to load the configuration from the root folder on some web servers (00006317).
• There was an issue where subject labels may not be formatted correctly if the user did not add a subject to the message, and hence the label was not decoded on delivery. This no longer occurs with recent versions of Outlook – tested on 16.35 (CSD 00006940).
• Classifier will now display a message on startup if the evaluation licence has expired (CSD 00007604).
• Some changes to avoid issues encountered when running alongside Adobe Creative Cloud applications (CSD 00007906).
• Fixes the case where an evaluation licence warning is incorrectly given when using a subscription licence (CSD 00008904).
• For macOS Catalina users, note the change to Mono requirements in section 2.4.

7.6 Mac Classifier 3.12.2

• Support for macOS Catalina.
• Updated for Microsoft Office 365 16.33.
• Fixes an issue where the label dialog is not shown due to an 'open window' error when document minimised (CSD 00006810).
• The file ClassifierExample.plist now includes sample text that indicates more clearly what needs to be configured (CSD 00008167).

7.7 Mac Classifier 3.12.1

• Improved label propogation when replying to a message.
  There was an issue where subject labels may not be formatted correctly if the user did not add a subject to the message, and hence the label was not decoded on delivery. This no longer happens with recent versions of Outlook (tested on 16.35) (CSD 00006940).

7.8 Mac Classifier 3.12

• Use latest Classifier Common Components and Plugins; this requires Mono framework version 5.12 or later.
• Classifier C Appears on Form for Other Users Calendar (CSD 00005821).
• Error When Using Image in Powerpoint Footer (CSD 00005784).
• Uninstall no longer prompts user with a dialog showing a list of the files to be deleted (CSD 00005640).
• Excel With Enabled Macro Issue (CSD 00005470).
• Outlook dropdown menus become unresponsive after multiple use (CSD 00005307).
• Better compatibility with latest Office and Office 365 releases (CSD 00005163).
• Memory leak issue (CSD 00005082).
• Message send issue with zip files created using Mac Archive metafiles (CSD 00005063).
• Omnifocus integration issue (CSD 00005056).
• Label lost when Excel document saved for first time (CSD 00005000).
• Label Dialog not enabled when certain Office dialogs were open (e.g. Outlook minimised 'reminder' notifications) (CSD 00004813).
• Mac Classifier Supplement guide has been updated (CSD 00004736).
• Various performance improvements (CSD 00004654).
• Support for Mojave (CSD 00004592).
• Launch agent disabled for user other than the installer (CSD 00004639).
• Web config support for proxy servers (CSD 00004388).

7.9 Mac Classifier 3.11.1

• Improved web configuration support; there is no longer a requirement for directory browsing to be enabled on the web server (CSD 00004068).

7.10 Mac Classifier 3.11

• Internationalisation support for a variety of languages/locales - refer to section 4.1.
• Uses the current installed version of Mono framework (major version 5), rather than requiring a specific minor version.
• Excel and PowerPoint are registered with Mac Classifier the first time they are run after installing Mac Classifier, rather than during the installation process.
• Add capability to completely replace Word Headers and Footers (CSD 00026813).
• ClassifierConfigurer app is provided to assist with configuring Mac Classifier.
• Auditing is now output to ~/Library/Logs/BoldonJamesEventLogging.log.
• Issues with Web Configuration first-time access have been fixed (CSD 00004054).
• Mac Classifier startup issues if missing configuration (CSD 00003796).
• Uninstall was not removing Boldon James folder from Applications area (CSD 00003338).

7.11 Mac Classifier 3.10.3

• Install package name changed to include product version number as suffix (CSD 00003343).
• Improved Installation in an environment where Excel has never been used (CSD 00003281).
• Improved support for prompting for Accessibility trust (CSD 00002965).
• Improved support for handling existing watermarks in Word headers (CSD 00002853).

7.12 Mac Classifier 3.10.2

• Mac Classifier Fails in Office 365 Environment. Mac Classifier now operates with versions of Outlook 2016 beyond 15.35.170509 (CSD 00002304).
• Mac Classifier Reads Config Once Before Network Share is Available. So Configuration is Never Refreshed. Mac Classifier now additionally attempts to read the Classifier Configuration when launching an Office Application (CSD 00002655).
• Mac Classifier Fails to Read LLOT Label Location. Mac Classifier now supports the LLOT as a Label location (CSD 00001911).

7.13 Mac Classifier 3.10.1

• Fix bug with Web Configuration Download.
• Fix bug with Word header/footer formatting (CSD 00002059).

7.14 Mac Classifier 3.10

• First full release.

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8.   CONTACT US

All contact with Boldon James regarding this product should be directed to:

Electronic mail	Phone/Fax	Postal address
support@boldonjames.com (support desk) info@boldonjames.com (general enquiries) sales@boldonjames.com (sales team)	Support: +44(0) 1270 507810 Fax.: +44(0) 1270 507801 Tel.: +44(0) 1270 507800 (general and sales enquiries)	Boldon James Ltd, 1 Westmere Court, Westmere Drive, Crewe, Cheshire, England CW1 6ZE

The support services available are as defined in the current support agreement.

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