7.4

About Processes
Aprocess is a single workflow within the configuration. Aprocess begins with a single input task, contains one or more tasks
and/or branches, and terminates with one or more output tasks. In its simplest form, a process can simply retrieve data from
a given folder and save it in a different folder. In most cases, though, processes are more elaborate and configurations, which
may include many processes, can be extremely complex.
The available processes in your PlanetPress Suite Workflow Tools Configuration are listed in the The Configuration Com-
ponents Pane. Processes in a configuration will always run concurrently. You can schedule processes to run only at certain
times or intervals (see Access Process Properties).
There are three types of processes available to you:
l A Normal process will run as soon as an input file is available through its input task or, if it is scheduled not to run at
that time, will start processing as soon as the schedule permits it.
l Startup processes are processes that run only once before every other process in a given configuration. They can
be used to perform operations that need to be completed once before the configuration can actually be run, such as to
map network drives. You may only have one single startup process in your configuration.
l Subprocesses are processes which can be called by any other process from any action task. They can be used to per-
form and reuse redundant operations that may need to be executed numerous times. For more information on sub-
processes, see About Subprocesses.
Regular and startup processes can be set to be Active (process runs normally)or Inactive (process will not run at all). An inac-
tive process will display in the Configuration components as red and strike-through. Inactive processes can be useful for
designing new processes in a live configuration, since the process does not execute there is no danger is submitting it to the
PlanetPress Suite Workflow Tools Service.
About Subprocesses
Subprocesses are special processes that can be called by any other process. These act exactly as subroutines in pro-
gramming languages, allowing users to reuse existing processes by sharing them to the whole configuration file. They can
thus be used to perform redundant operations that may need to be executed numerous times; for instance, archiving a copy of
a zipped file received as the input job file, then decompressing it before sending the unzipped version of it back to the calling
process .
Whenever a PlanetPress Suite process calls a subprocess, the main process (the caller) will wait for the called subprocess to
finish its execution before carrying on with its own. This means the subprocess feature is synchronous with the main process.
This also means the calling process actually appends the subprocess to its own workflow.
About Tasks
A task is a plug-in or a block that is used to build PlanetPress Suite Workflow Tools processes. Tasks can do multiple things
depending on the type of task and where they are placed. You can add as many tasks as you like to your processes and order
them in any way you can.
There are different types of tasks:
Understanding PlanetPress Suite Workflow Tools