1. © 2005 IBM Corporation IBM Printing Systems IBM OUTPUT ENVIRONMENT IPPD How workflow techniques can by implemented using IPPD Simon Jones 14 th September 2006 IBM Printing Systems jones13@uk.ibm.com

2. OUTPUT SOLUTIONS FOR AN ON DEMAND WORLD 2 IBM OUTPUT ENVIRONMENT Workflow?  Management and control of a manufacturing process.  Real time interaction with components and products  Division of a complex process into smaller parts or units of work.  Optimisation and automation of activities.

3. OUTPUT SOLUTIONS FOR AN ON DEMAND WORLD 3 IBM OUTPUT ENVIRONMENT How IPPD Implements Workflow Techniques  Divides the manufacturing process into major phases  Receive  Prepare  Print  Complete  And others in the future, such as Insert, Reconcile, etc.  Each phase consists of one or more steps  Steps are sequential in a phase.  A job passes through a step and is processed by it.  Properties of the job configure the actions of the step.  Jobs can be queued to a step, waiting for it to become available.  Jobs can experience an error condition in a step.

4. OUTPUT SOLUTIONS FOR AN ON DEMAND WORLD 4 IBM OUTPUT ENVIRONMENT Object Properties  Jobs and devices have properties  Their behaviour is configured by properties in various parts of the workflow.  Properties may be examined and altered through the IPPD  Devices are given properties by a user when they are created.  Jobs are given properties by  A profile, called a JobType  From an attributes file at input, sometimes referred to as a job ticket.  Through evaluation of a set of rules or dependencies.

5. OUTPUT SOLUTIONS FOR AN ON DEMAND WORLD 5 IBM OUTPUT ENVIRONMENT Receive Phase  Concerned with creating jobs from input files  Single input file – Single job.  Input file group – Parent and child jobs.  Determines the job type to apply, set by  Hot Folder.  Input file name element.  Rules applied to property values received in a job ticket.  Copies the job properties stored in the JobType to the job

6. OUTPUT SOLUTIONS FOR AN ON DEMAND WORLD 6 IBM OUTPUT ENVIRONMENT Prepare Phase  Preparation of the job ready for output processing  Printing  Email/web  Content Manager  Datastream conversion for printing  Line data  PDF/Postscript  PCL  TIFF, JPEG, etc  Document re-engineering  Value add manipulation of the document content.  Addition or adjustment of factory readable data.

7. OUTPUT SOLUTIONS FOR AN ON DEMAND WORLD 7 IBM OUTPUT ENVIRONMENT Print Phase  Pre-processing  Build relationship between pages and sheets.  Work out which pages (and sheets) to print.  Scheduling  The “Print Queue” is a pool of jobs from which printers collect and process jobs when they can.  Allocation of jobs to printers is based on scheduling properties.  A subset of jobs that can be scheduled to a particular device can be seen on the GUI.  Printing  Sending data and resources to the printer.  Managing progress and errors.  Streaming multiple jobs to keep the printer at rated speed.

8. OUTPUT SOLUTIONS FOR AN ON DEMAND WORLD 8 IBM OUTPUT ENVIRONMENT Extending IPPD  IPPD is  Highly configurable.  May contain generic and customised bespoke components that take advantage of a rich set of APIs.  Embodies the philosophy “Fit the product to your business”.  New steps can be added  Any server executable program may be run as a step.  The program can be supplied with job property values.  The program can create files that become job.  IBM will enhance IPPD both through new base functionality product and value add modules  SLA  Visual Workbench  Reports