Workflow phases
RICOH ProcessDirector has several distinct workflow phases. These phases help to organize the path that
jobs take through the system. Jobs can flow through all the phases or through a few
of the phases. The addition of features to the base RICOH ProcessDirector product might add additional phases to the workflow. The default phase names can
be changed to better match the functions that you perform in that phase.
Steps in the phases do the actual phase work. The workflow determines which phases the job passes through and the order of the steps in each phase.
The processing phases in the base product are:
- Receive phase
- In the Receive phase, the RICOH ProcessDirector system accepts input files for processing. Each job is assigned a workflow, which
defines the phases and steps that process the job. Steps in the Receive phase also
set the initial values of job properties for use by later steps in the workflow.
For example, RICOH ProcessDirector might queue the job to the first step of the Prepare phase or queue the job directly to the Print phase.
After the Receive phase queues the input file, it becomes a job on the RICOH ProcessDirector system.
- Prepare phase
- The Prepare phase composes, transforms, and indexes the job to create printable pages. You can also instruct RICOH ProcessDirector to run external programs during the Prepare phase to further condition or interpret the job.
- Assemble phase
- If you have the PDF Document Support or AFP Support feature, the Assemble phase organizes documents prior to a phase such as Print that produces the physical documents.
- Print phase
- The Print phase routes and sends the job to an available printer, monitors printing status, and reports print completion. It can include a manual quality check, which can let the operator make printer adjustments prior to reprinting the job. It might also send the job to an external program for customized processing.
- Insert phase
- If you have the Inserter feature, the Insert phase communicates with the inserter controller and reconciles the job after it completes insertion.
- Complete phase
- After jobs have completed all other processing, they arrive in the Complete phase. The Complete phase manages the retention period for jobs; it deletes jobs that have no retention periods or whose retention periods have expired. For jobs that consist of a parent job and one or more child jobs, the Complete phase makes sure that no additional actions take place until all the related jobs reach the Complete phase. In the Complete phase, you can also invoke external programs on completed jobs. For example, an external program can copy the jobs to an archive system.