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Table Of Contents

4.5 Configurations, Processes and Flowcharts

How do I plan the creation of processes and configurations?

A PlanetPress Watch/Server configuration typically comprises all the tasks that you need to accomplish to

generate your required documents, be it printed pages, faxes, email messages, PDF files, etc.

A configuration may be composed of a single process, but it may also be made up of multiples processes. This

will be the case, for instance, when you want to use different schedules for the different operations that need

to be performed. It may also be the case if you want to use a given process to perform some processing on

the input data and to then output the resulting data as input to another process.

So the main structure of your configuration is made up of processes and building blocks of each process are

the tasks that receive data, that modify it if required, and that then send it to an output device or application.

You should try to visualize each process as a flowchart: from a single starting point, PlanetPress Watch/Server

and its various companion software (PlanetPress Fax, PlanetPress Image) and plugins (Create VDX, Digital

Imaging, etc.) perform a number of operations in order to generate the required output. For a given process,

the generated output may be in the form of text files stored in a given folder. For another process, the output

may be in the form of documents printed on various printers, faxes and emails sent to various locations and

addresses. A given process may include two tasks, while the next one may include 47.

The building blocks include input, action and output tasks:

• The role of an input task is to get data from an “outside source” (not from another task from the same

process) and to send it down the flowchart to be worked upon by other tasks.

• The role an action task is to get data from another task from the same process, to perform a given

operation, and to send it down the flowchart to be worked upon by other tasks.

• The role of an output task is to get data from another task from the same process and to send it to an

“outside” device (a printer, for instance), application (PlanetPress Image or PlanetPress Fax) or location

(a local or remote folder or FTP site, for example).

Building blocks are connected by lines that indicate the order in which each operation should take place. The

single line that comes out of the initial input task may branch out in multiple lines that all culminate in a given

output task. So adding an additional output task to a process results in the addition of a a new branch.

A) Added branch resulting from the addition of a new output task. B) New output task.

4.5.1 Branches

There are branches and then there are conditional branches.

• A branch is represented as a crossing .

• A conditional branch (or condition) is shown as a crossing with a red diamond over it . The

True side of the condition leads to the new branch while the false side leads down the current branch.

Different things happen when data travelling down a process comes to a branch or condition:

• When data travelling through a process comes to a branch, it is duplicated so that identical copies of the

data may continue down both branches.

• When data travelling down a process comes to a conditional crossing, it is either sent down the True or

the False branch, based on the result of the condition.