Papers in TotalFlow Production Manager and in Other Programs

Papers can be defined in many different places, including the TotalFlow Production Manager paper catalog, the applications that submit jobs, the paper catalogs of some printers, and the input tray settings of some printers. This means that papers with the same names can have different properties and papers with the same properties can have different names. This topic explains how TotalFlow Production Manager determines whether the paper requested by a job and the paper in a printer input tray, or the paper in a printer paper catalog and a paper in the TotalFlow Production Manager paper catalog are the same.

To match papers, TotalFlow Production Manager compares values in this order:

  1. The paper ID in the job ticket, if any. This ID is compared to the paper Name. If no paper with a matching Name is found, comparison stops.
  2. If there is no paper ID in the job ticket, paper properties match. Administrators can set the Custom matching options server property to specify which paper properties to compare.
  3. The paper name in the job ticket. This value is compared to the paper Name if the When matching options fail, match by Name only check box on the Advanced page of the Properties for Server dialog is selected.
  4. If the job ticket does not contain a value for a property, any value in the TotalFlow Production Manager paper catalog is considered a match for that property.

When the requested paper for a job does not match any defined paper in TotalFlow Production Manager, the job remains in Unassigned progress state and TotalFlow Production Manager provides a Wait reason similar to this: "There is no printer available with paper: Paper*". You can find detailed information about the requested paper properties that do not match the defined paper properties in the job’s log. To have the job further processed, modify its paper settings to match those of the defined papers and submit it again.

If you submit jobs from TotalFlow Prep, you can choose the attribute matching options for TotalFlow Production Manager to use when comparing the paper attributes, from the TotalFlow Production Manager Server pod.

If there are page exceptions in the ticket, then the paper information for the exceptions can be viewed in the Exception Pages section, in Job Properties Editor.

Related information:

Configuring Printers to Use Papers
Parent topic: Creating Papers