InfoPrint ProcessDirector How It Works
Optional Features
Customize your InfoPrint® ProcessDirector™ solution by adding one or more of the following add-on functions:
InfoPrint Ink Suite
The Ink Suite option is designed for use with the InfoPrint 5000 to help you reduce total cost of printing, improve color output quality, increase ink estimating accuracy and improve productivity by automating certain manual processes. The Ink Suite includes these tools:
- Ink Savvy feature, which optimizes PDF Print files as well as AFP image and graphic resource files to reduce ink usage and tunes files to improve color quality.
- Ink Estimation feature, which automates ink usage estimates and enables you to produce ink usage/cost scenarios.
- Enfocus PitStop server integration, which provides a standard step to call PitStop server and automate the process that prepares files for print.
PDF Mailroom Integrity
This feature delivers true Automated Document Factory capabilities for the management and control of print and mail processes using the native Adobe™ PDF datastream. You can manage PDF jobs at a document level, integrate inserters and automate reprints. It includes the ability to index and edit PDF files and add barcodes. The feature ships with additional steps that allow you to split, resequence or group documents within a PDF print file.
Reports
The reports feature provides reports that you can use for capacity planning, production efficiency measurement and optimization, and problem determination.
With the reports feature, you can collect data about job events, user actions and printer activity, and then generate reports based on the data. You can use any of the reports, or you can customize the reports to create your own.
Reports lets you:
- View reports and change how the information is displayed.
- Modify the supplied reports to create your own customized reports.
- Save and delete reports.
- Export reports as comma-separated value (CSV) files so you can print them or manipulate the data in spreadsheets or other applications.
- Run a report as a step in your workflow.
Service Level Agreement (SLA)
The Service Level Agreement feature helps you manage service level agreements. An SLA is the part of a contract that specifies the performance commitments you make with your clients. For example, an SLA might specify how long it will take for jobs to be printed or to be ready for mailing. InfoPrint ProcessDirector can help make sure that jobs meet the performance commitments. It does this by setting job checkpoints that let you track the progress of jobs as they flow through the system. Based on the job and printer speeds, it can also make predictions about which printers to use. The expected work tool allows you to track SLAs for work that has not arrived into the system as needed.
AFP™ Indexer
The AFP Indexer feature lets you create page groups and indexes in AFP files. When you view an AFP file that contains page groups and indexes in InfoPrint ProcessDirector, you can navigate in the file to find pages containing specific index values. You can also reprint all the pages in one or more page groups.
AFP Editor
Often, fully formed AFP datastreams from mainframe systems or outside customers must be printed, but they need minor changes to the data or new barcodes added. Making these changes at the application level can be difficult, if not impossible. The AFP Editor allows you to take fully-formed AFP datastreams into a visual tool and make changes to the data.
The AFP Editor lets you create barcodes and hidden areas in AFP files. You can create barcodes that contain index values, job property values and static text. For example, if the ZIP codes in an AFP file are indexed, you can create barcodes that contain the ZIP codes. You can also hide areas in AFP files so that no one can use an AFP viewer to see the data in the hidden areas, and so that the data does not print. For example, you can hide areas that contain existing barcodes that you want to replace.
Inserters
The Inserters feature can automate the insertion of printed documents and additional inserts (such as marketing materials) into envelopes.
The Inserters feature can:
- Prepare print jobs for insertion
- Write and send control files to inserter controllers
- Receive results files from inserter controllers and interpret them to determine the insert status of each document in the job
- Automatically or manually, with operator control, reconcile the job and reprint any damaged documents
Manufacturing Optimization
Manufacturing Optimization allows you to expand the concept of a print workflow beyond controlling and tracking print jobs to encompass controlling and tracking individual documents in a print job. Without changing the application that creates the print job, you can change the way the individual documents are processed, using business rules to indicate what processing to do. The documents in the print job can be split into subset print jobs, sorted based on document-specific information like address data, or grouped into subset print jobs based on data in the document.
Without Manufacturing Optimization, the data in an AFP file is all one large unit. The tasks that you can do with this file are limited. If the AFP file is indexed (contains named groups and Tag Logical Element structured fields), you can navigate in the AFP viewer to see boundaries in the file that correspond to mail pieces or documents, and you can select individual documents to reprint. However, you cannot manipulate other individual documents in a file, such as rearranging their output order or grouping them according to different envelope size requirements.
Transforms
Datastream transform features integrate with InfoPrint ProcessDirector to allow Adobe® PDF, GIF, TIF, SAP, JPEG, PCL, PostScript® and Metacode1 print data to be easily utilized within the system.
Inputs: PCL (Level 5/6), Adobe® PDF (v1.7), Adobe PostScript® 3™, TIFF, GIF, JPEG, AFP, Metacode.
Outputs: AFP, PCL (Level 5/6), Adobe® PDF (v1.7), Adobe PostScript® 3™.
Whitespace Manager
This visual tool allows you to work with fully-composed AFP datastreams, visually identify places on the documents to search for blank space, and then set up rules about how to use the space. You can use the toolset to set up logical business rules that map information, such as the address information, in each document to content such as offers, images or text that should be inserted, on a document-by-document basis. Then, when your job runs through InfoPrint ProcessDirector, the whitespace will automatically be filled with the precise content you want.
Designer
When you compose your document outside of your production print workflow, you don’t have a single point of control through which to manage your work against SLAs and provide centralized reporting. With InfoPrint ProcessDirector Designer feature, you can link your production print workflow to the GMC PrintNet™ composition tool. It automates the process of running the composition engine, giving you tight control over the composition process and peace of mind knowing that the steps in your production print workflow are happening on time and errors are tracked from a single point.
Command Center
The command center can simplify complex environments and multiple sites to provide a combined view of all jobs and assets for maximum productivity. Identify bottlenecks and move work from one site to another to help better manage deadlines and asset utilization.
