7.6

The third important number is based on your actual output needs. In other words, how many documents do you intend to print
on a regular basis that will contain a pattern?
These three numbers, together, represent an easy way to determine if the 10,000 patterns are actually enough for you. Bas-
ically, if you generate X documents within a specific time frame but N of these documents are closed through regular process
(writing on them with a pen and docking it) during that period, does the difference between both ever reach 10,000?
EXAMPLE
Say you print 9,000 pages containing a pattern, every day. You may think you'll "run out of patterns" after a single day. But if
8,900 of these documents are being written to and processed within the day, at the end of the day you only have a 100 page
difference, possibly due to mistakes, lost pages, or errors during processing. In this specific example, you would run out of pat-
terns only after 10 days, assuming the numbers remained completely static. Since there are easy ways to deal with these
remainders (a simple automated process that, once a day, closes any document that is older than 48 hours, for example), a
correct implementation like this one would be perfectly functional and not be affected by the 10,000 page limit. Remember
however that this means that 9,000 physical sheets of paper are printed every day, and those 9,000 documents are written on
using one or more Anoto Digital Pens, which are then processed back into the system.
The example above actually uses numbers that are much higher than our typical PlanetPress Capture user. That is to say, a
vast majority of our users will never have to worry about reaching the pattern limitation, unless their implementation is miss-
ing important parts, such as the "cleanup" process. But this also means a smaller minority of our users may require more than
10,000 patterns, so let's deal with this now.
EXTENDING
There are actually 2 ways of dealing with extending the number of patterns using the currently available tools, each with its
own advantages and disadvantages.
1) Using separate PlanetPress Production servers and licenses.
In a scenario where there are multiple locations that use PlanetPress Capture and where neither pen nor paper has any risk of
being moved from one location to another, the easiest (but costlier) solution is to have a separate installation of PlanetPress
Production in each location. Each installation would be responsible for its own documents and pens. The limitation here is that
it would not be directly possible to send a page with an existing pattern to another location (either via email in PDF or via cour-
rier), sign it there and send it back - this would cause errors that would be hard to prevent and correct. In this scenario how-
ever, it's possible to centralize the activation of pen licences to one server, while keeping the pattern generation systems
separate.
2) Using Pattern Sequences
In the event where a single location generates all the patterns and this output *can* be split into multiple logical zones, Pattern
Sequences can be used. A Pattern Sequence is basically a "tag" that is added after the pattern's identification (Pattern ID).
When a Pattern Sequence is used, each Pattern Sequence can re-use each of the 10,000 available patterns. "Zones", in this
case, could refer to a specific region within a city, or a whole city or a province, whatever fits your needs.
Pattern Sequences can be handled in 2 different ways: by attaching a Pattern Sequence to a specific pen, or by attaching it to a
specific PlanetPress Production process. Here is an example for each cases, using a typical situation of a shipping company
that uses PlanetPress Capture to simplify the archiving of the client's signature on a "Confirmation of Reception" slip.
a) Pen-Based Sequences: In this case, each pen is attributed a specific pattern sequence. When documents are printed,
they are set to attribute a pattern sequence to each document in relation to which pen it will be signed on. For example, the
shipping company may have decided to print each "route" using the route number as a pattern sequence, and each pen is
Special Workflow Types