About Workflow Configurations

PlanetPress 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 PlanetPress Workflow configuration file. A configuration file consists of a set of processes, subprocesses, variables, (optional) documents and printer queues, that work together within the PlanetPress 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...).

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

When you start the PlanetPress 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 PlanetPress Workflow configuration file).

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

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