Prinergy 6.1 Workshop - Help with Refine, APA and VPS automation

Started by PDFd, December 18, 2014, 09:08:17 PM

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PDFd

Hello all,

Long time listener, first time caller.

We have just completed a migration from Prinergy Evo to Workshop 6.1. In EVO we had some automated workflow templates set up and would like to duplicate that functionality in Workshop. They are pretty straightforward refine, automatic page assignment and vps. The Prinergy 6.1 users guide explains the pieces but doesn't really provide a real world example of how they fit together. I've looked high and low online and just can't come up with the answer so I'm asking for your help please. On to the particulars and what I have so far.

This workflow will use existing template jobs and not to create new jobs on the fly. I would prefer using just hot folders if possible since everything is kept within the job unless smart hot folders are really the way to go. I realize I will probably need to use a workflow process template to accomplish all 3 things together but so far I had just been trying to get each part working.

To start with I have a JDF already imported into the template job and have a hot folder set up and working for refine. Where I start to really get lost is with the APA Editor. I know this creates an .apa file but where this file goes and what process calls on it I cannot seem to grasp. And I know the APA naming convention rules are pretty basic but an example of an APA rule set assigning say FileName001.pdf - FileName004.pdf to p1-p4 would be fantastic.

At the risk of possibly complicating things exponentially (and probably involving smart hot folders for sure if not already) in a perfect world it would be nice if the JDF was not already imported into the job template but was imported as part of the automation. The idea here would be to have 2-3 separate hot folders in each template job that will import a different JDF depending on which hot folder you used. This is simply to reduce the total number of template jobs necessary to have on hand. But this is merely a wish list item and if it requires a lab coat, rubber gloves and safety glasses to accomplish please forget I mentioned it. With that said, how hard would that be?

(TLDR); Need to set up Prinergy 6.1 automation to utilize an existing template job with hot folders to refine, assign pages and output to vps.

Thank you very much in advance for your help!
~PDFd

Joe

First question...do you have RBA or need to do this with just basic Prinergy? Also are your jobs created in Insite or Workshop?

I have an existing RBA that takes customers files uploaded through Insite, refines the pages, auto-assigns them and when the pageset is full it creates the VPS. But I have to have the pageset and imposition plan already created before they upload files.

An example APA text file in your example would be:

FileName001.pdf

!APA 1.0
ASSIGN= "FileName[#].pdf" "pagesetname" [#] 1


Now that is pretty specific for that particular filename. An easier thing would be to have the file have an underscore after FileName and then you could do it like this:

FileName_001.pdf

!APA 1.0
ASSIGN= "[$]_[#].pdf" "pagesetname" [#] 1


Then it would pick any alphanumeric characters before the underscore and numbers after the underscore so it would work the same for either:

FileName_001.pdf

or

MyNewFileName_255.pdf

and assign the first one to the 1st position in the pageset and the second one would go into the 255th position in the pageset.

APA Text wildcards:

* or % match letters (A-Z, a-z)
[th]
Example[/th]
[th]Matches[/th]
[/tr]
[tr][td]"*.p1.pdf"
Or
"[%].p1.pdf"
[/td]
[td]book.p1.pdf, brochure.p1.pdf, and so on.
If enclosed in quotation marks matches book cover.p1.pdf, Acme brochure.p1.pdf, and so on.
[/td]
[/tr]
[/table]

[#] matches numbers (0-9)
[th]
Example[/th]
[th]Matches[/th]
[/tr]
[tr][td]"Book.p
  • .pdf"
or
  • .p
  • .pdf[/size][/td]
    [td]Book.p1.pdf, book.p2.pdf, book.p3.pdf, and so on.
    19823.p1.pdf, 9800.p1.pdf, 20030131.p1,pdf
    [/td]
    [/tr]
    [/table]

    [$] matches letters or numbers (A-Z, a-z, 0-9)
    [th]
    Example[/th]
    [th]Matches[/th]
    [/tr]
    [tr][td]"[$].p1.pdf"[/td]
    [td]book.p1.pdf, brochure.p1.pdf, 12345.p1.pdf, abc010103.p1.pdf, and so on.[/td]
    [/tr]
    [/table]

    Adding a colon after #, %, or $ and then a number matches an exact number of characters to the wild card
    [th]
    Example[/th]
    [th]Matches[/th]
    [/tr]
    [tr][td]"[$:6]
    • .p1.pdf"[/size][/td]
      [td]BookA01.p1.pdf BookB02.p1.pdf, BookC03.p1.pdf, and so on.[/td]
      [/tr]
      [/table]

      Note: "[$:5][#].p1.pdf" would give the same results because APA ignores the zero.
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