Working with Workflows

You can create and customize workflows by adding or deleting activities. You can also edit the properties of workflows and activities.

When you define a workflow, you specify what activities the job passes through during processing. The activities are organized into workflow phases. Jobs must pass through all workflow phases even if a phase has no activities.

Note: Some of the activities are available only if TotalFlow Production Manager is installed with the additional options that allow them. For details, see Supplied Activities and Custom Activities.

The workflow phases are:

Receive phase
In the Receive phase, TotalFlow Production Manager accepts input files for processing. Each job is assigned to a workflow , which defines the phases and activities that process the job.

After the Receive phase queues the input file, it becomes a job in theTotalFlow Production Manager. All input files must pass through the Receive phase.

Prepare phase
The Prepare phase composes and transforms the job. You can also instruct TotalFlow Production Manager to run external programs during this phase to further condition or interpret the job. The Prepare phase is optional.
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 before reprinting the job. It might also send the job to an external program for customized processing. The Print phase is optional.
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. During this phase, you can also invoke external programs on completed jobs. For example, an external program can copy the jobs to an archive system. All jobs must pass through the Complete phase.

In this section:

  1. Workflow Page
    The Workflow page of the TotalFlow Production Manager user interface lets administrators see the workflows and activities in the system.
  2. Supplied Workflows
    TotalFlow Production Manager supplies default workflows that you can use as examples for creating and editing other workflows.
  3. Supplied Activities and Custom Activities
    TotalFlow Production Manager supplies the basic activities that you need to print jobs. You can add these activities to workflows without changing them or copy and modify them to create your own custom activities.
  4. Creating Workflows
    You can create a workflow and customize it according to your needs.
  5. Editing Workflows
    You can modify a workflow by adding or deleting activities.
  6. Creating Custom Activities
    You should create a custom activity whenever you want to change the properties of an activity or the job defaults that an unprotected activity sets.
  7. Viewing and Changing Activity Properties and Job Defaults
    Activities, like other objects, have properties that you can view and modify. Some activities are also closely associated with job properties. You can modify these activities to set default values for certain job properties when the activity processes the job.
  8. Configuring Workflows to Receive Jobs from Streamline
    You can configure a workflow to manage jobs received through Streamline.
  9. Configuring Workflows to Merge Jobs in Hot Folder
    You can configure a workflow to merge PDF file in Hot Folder, using the Hot Folder polling activity, according to rules that you define.
  10. External Activities
    You can add activities that run an application outside TotalFlow Production Manager. The external application can do special job-processing tasks. It must run on the same computer where TotalFlow Production Manager is installed.
  11. Deleting Activities
    Administrators can delete custom activities.
Parent topic: User's Guide