Workflow to split PDF jobs by size

To split a job without fragmenting any of its documents across two jobs, you must identify the boundaries of the documents in the job. To do that, you define page groups in PDF files using RICOH ProcessDirector Plug-in for Adobe Acrobat. You copy the plug-in control file with the page group definition to the location you specify in the IdentifyPDFDocuments step.

You include an IdentifyPDFDocuments step so it can apply the rules that you defined in RICOH ProcessDirector Plug-in for Adobe Acrobat to create the document properties file for the original job. The SplitDocuments step determines which documents are placed into each child job and updates the document properties file with that information.

You use a CreateJobsFromDocuments step, which makes document properties files for the child jobs but does not create PDF files. You must also include a step based on the BuildPDFFromDocuments step template in the workflow assigned to the child jobs. BuildPDFFromDocuments creates the PDF file with all the documents in the correct order. In this step, you also specify the RICOH ProcessDirector Plug-in for Adobe Acrobat control files that add markup to the PDF file.

The original workflow does not have any steps in the Print phase because the child workflow controls printing. After all the child jobs complete, the parent job goes to the next step in the original workflow.

The child workflow should begin with steps based on these two step templates: SetJobPropsFromTextFile and SetJobPropsFromOriginal. SetJobPropsFromTextFile sets values for job properties from the steps of the child workflow. SetJobPropsFromOriginal copies the values that were set in the original workflow to become the values for those properties in the child workflow. Then if you choose to run the building of the child PDF files in parallel by including a CreateJobsFromDocuments step in the original workflow, you need to use a BuildPDFFromDocuments step in the child workflow.