Preflight jobs using Preflight activity

The Preflight activity provides several configuration options that can be set directly from TotalFlow Production Manager. It does not require a PitStop Server installation.
To add Preflight activity to the workflow, follow these steps:
  1. Log in to TotalFlow Production Manager as an administrator.
  2. In the menu bar, click Operations..
  3. In the Workflows tab, right-click the workflow and select Editor and Properties....
  4. Open the Editor page.
  5. In the Activities pod, select the Preflight activity and click Copy.
  6. In the activity properties dialog that opens, select the Profiles page, set the Profile property default to the name of the preflight profile that you want to use. It can be either the full path name of the profile, or a profile name from the Preflight Database.
    To add a name from the database, click the Preflight Database button at the bottom left of the dialog panel.
    A preflight Profile contains a number of preflight checks and actions that are used for processing the production print file and viewing the reports generated for each preflighted job.

    To set the preflight Profile, do one of these:

    • Enter the profile name manually.
      Choose Preflight profile name dialog
    • Click Add, then use the arrows to move through the Database and choose one of the Default Profiles from the Database, or of the Local Profiles previously saved on the server.
      Select profile from Database dialog
    • Browse for a profile previously saved on the server, that is not in the Database. Follow these steps:
      1. Select the Profile from File radio button.
      2. Either enter a profile name manually or click Browse icon the browse icon and select a profile previously saved on the TotalFlow Production Manager server.
      Select Profile saved on server
      Note:
    1. The preflight profile that you choose at this stage is used for all workflows that contain the Preflight activity.
    2. Each Windows user with Administrator rights can view or edit only their own Local Profiles For more information about how to create and manage Local Profiles, see Manage Preflight Profiles and Action Lists Using the Preflight Database .
  7. Select an Action List for the Preflight activity to do. An Action List is a file that contains a series of sequential tasks, such as changing color or objects, that will be automatically performed when a job reaches the Preflight activity of a workflow. For more information about how to create and manage an Action List, see Manage Preflight Profiles and Action Lists Using the Preflight Database .
    Select Action Lists
    1. Click Add under the Action Lists field.
    2. In the Select Action List dialog that opens, do one of these:
    • Choose one of the Default Action Lists and/or Local Action Lists
    • Browse for a file previously saved on TotalFlow Production Manager server.
  8. Click OK.
  9. On the Color Management page, first choose whether you want to use the general color settings defined in the System properties or apply specific ones. If you need to define specific color settings for this activity, select the Override General Color Settings check box.
  10. Select or enter new settings for Color Management properties.
    For more information about Color Management settings, see Setting Color Management System.
  11. In the Fonts dialog window, click Add, then select font folders previously saved on the server.
    Note: If you already set font folders in the general settings of the server, they are also used along with the font folders set at this stage. For more information on how to set font folders, see Setting Fonts for Preflight Activity
  12. To create a new Fonts folder, click New Folder, enter a name for it, then click Create.
    Browse for Folder on Server
    Note: When you browse for files or folders previously saved on server, you can select them only if they have read and write permissions. The Locked file and Locked folder flags indicate that the files or folders are locked.
  13. Now you can edit the Preflight activity settings in the Job defaults dialog window. Preflight settings dialog
    1. Select the Report type. The reports from the preflighting are created as PDF files, using a report layout style that you can choose from the following options:
      Report type Description
      Regular Report that contains general file information and an overview of the fixes, failures, warnings, and errors (if any). It does not include the processed PDF. This is the default report type.
      Minimum Regular report with minimal information.
      Grayscale Report with only gray level images, which reduces the file size of the report, as less information needs to be provided for each pixel. It does not include the processed PDF.
      Annotated Report Report with annotations. The report is a copy of the processed PDF, with changes and fixes annotated.
      Low Resolution Annotated Report Report with annotations and with low resolution images, which also reduces the file size of the report.
      Scaled Low Resolution Annotated Report Report with annotations. The entire document is scaled and has a low resolution. The pages in the report do not exceed the A4 size and the images are compressed to a smaller size. This may be useful when you send reports for large format documents through e-mail.
    2. In the Preflight report error threshold field, set the number of errors that the report can contain before the job goes into error state.
    3. In the Preflight report warning threshold field, set the number of warnings that the report can contain before the job goes into error state.
    4. Select On error, enable copy to folder and use the Browse icon to select a folder or enter the name and location of the folder you want the files to be copied into, in case the job goes into error state. If the folder is not yet created, click the New Folder button to create a new folder.
  14. Click OK to save your settings.
    Note: You can also edit the activity properties on the Workflow Properties for Job page.
    Edit activity properties
  15. Click OK.

    You see the new activity in the Custom section of the Activities pod.

  16. Drag and drop the new activity to the workflow.
  17. Save the workflow.

    When the job reaches the Preflight activity, TotalFlow Production Manager sends the job to the preflight program for preflighting and stores the preflight report. If there are more preflight errors or warnings than the Profile report's error threshold and Profile report's warning threshold job property defaults specify, the job goes to the Error progress category. Otherwise, it goes to the next activity in the workflow.

    To view the preflight report, select the job and click More, and then Preflight report.

    Note: This activity can be used only for PDF files. If you submitted jobs containing other data streams, the Preflight activity will bring them into error state.

In this section:

  1. Manage Preflight Profiles and Action Lists Using the Preflight Database
    You can use Preflight Database to define and manage the preflight criteria for all jobs processed through a workflow, only on the machine where TotalFlow Production Manager is installed.

Related information:

Preflighting jobs
Parent topic: Preflighting jobs