About Workflow Configurations

PReS Workflow Configurations are service applications, or if you will, input driven applications that continuously run on a given computer and perform actions automatically. Those actions are defined in a PReS Workflow configuration file. A configuration file consists of a set of processes, subprocesses, variables, (optional) documents and printer queues, that work together within the PReS Workflow Service. A process can be used as simple go between, passing along input data to an output device or folder, but it can also perform various types of data processing.
You can combine the various PlanetPress Workflow input, action and output tasks to set up versatile automated processes to print jobs as well as generate other types of output (emails, web pages, files).

Note: A PReS Workflow configuration must be composed of at least one process, but it may include as many as 512.

PReS Workflow cannot work without a valid configuration, and a PReS Workflow session running on a given computer can only use one configuration at a time.
For a configuration created in the PReS Workflow Configuration tool to actually be executed by PReS Workflow, it must be sent to the PReS Workflow Service. When you do this, your PReS Workflow forgets its previous configuration and starts executing the tasks included in the new configuration.

When you start the PReS Workflow Configuration tool, it either opens the configuration file that is active on the PlanetPress Workflow service, or starts with no configuration at all, depending on your preferences (see Configuration Components pane appearance preferences).
You can always create a new configuration or open an existing one (see Creating a new configuration and Open a PReS Workflow configuration file).

The following pages provide information on different parts of a PReS Workflow configuration:

• About processes and subprocesses
• About Tasks
• About data
• About variables
• Workflow Configuration resource files