Set Up Job Combining

It is possible to combine a series of incoming jobs into a single job. This is done by defining either a link criterion or a stop criterion.

Note

Job combining is relevant to text input data only.

Link and Stop Criteria

Link and stop criteria are created using exactly the same method for Form criteria. You choose the link or stop criterion from the toolbar and mark the text that is used for combining multiple forms.

The following sample illustrates a defined link criterion in an input data file.

In the example the Vat No. is defined as a link criterion.

You can double-click the link criteria, which opens the edit dialog.

If a Link Expression containing one or more Link Criteria is defined for a matching form, the Lasernet Form Engine analyzes the positions referenced in the link criteria, to see if they have the same value as for the previous job. If the link criterion is true and the Link Expression is also true, the two jobs are recognized as sub-jobs of the same job.

In the example, the link criterion is recognized by an exact match of 9 alphanumeric characters located in a specific row and column. If the next job contains the same 9 characters in the same position (e.g. an identical VAT No.), they are combined as subjobs in one job.

Link criteria can be viewed by clicking Form > Criteria and then switching to the Link tab.

It is possible to Add, Edit, Remove and Sort link criteria manually, as well as create further Link Expressions to define more advanced rules for identifying pages that belong to each other.

A stop criterion is created in exactly the same way as form or link criterion.

In this example, ‘Terms of payment’, has been marked as a stop criterion, indicated by the blue color. The following picture shows the details of the stop criterion in the Criteria dialog (Form > Criteria menu).

Here we look for a match in the input data file which indicates that this is the end of a series of print jobs and stops combining print jobs when it locates the “Terms of payment” text in row 50, column 22 of an input file.

Page and Job Oriented Forms

It is possible to process both Page and Job oriented forms. To mix between Page and Job oriented forms in a batch of jobs you need to define Link or Stop criteria. The following sections illustrate the different ways to process data and the elements of form design.

Page to Page Oriented Forms

Print jobs are processed as single pages and produce single pages in response (one input page corresponds to one output page). The length of the page (body) is defined in the administrative system producing the print and there is an exact (one-to-one) relationship between the amount of pages printed and the amount of pages received.

This is normally used for enriching the input data by formatting font types and sizes, controlling the printer setup and adding graphical overlays etc. Data contents such as subtotal, totals and page numbering are typically defined within the administrative system.

Important Settings

• Form Criteria: Yes

• Job Combining: No

• Link Criteria: No

• Stop Criteria: No

• First Page: No

• Middle Page: No

• Last Page: No

• Single Page: Yes

Job to Job Oriented Forms

Job-to-job oriented forms are characterized by the receipt of all input data as one single page in the Lasernet Form Engine, which is subsequently split into multiple output pages. The difference between "Page to Job" and "Job to Job" is how the data from the administrative system is printed. In "Job to Job" a five-page invoice is received as a single page. Input data can be freely positioned on the first, middle or last page of the final print. Data such as subtotal, totals and page numbering are typically defined in the Lasernet Form Editor.

Important Settings

• Form Criteria: Yes

• Job Combining: Yes

• Link Criteria: No

• Stop Criteria: No

• First Page: Yes

• Middle Page: Yes

• Last Page: Yes

• Single Page: Yes

Page to Job Oriented Forms

Input consisting of one or more pages can be split into multiple output pages. For Page to Job forms a five-page invoice would be received as five individual pages numbered consecutively from 1 to 5. By default, when managing a Page to Job form, Lasernet Form Engine will create the header of the output based on the header of page 1, the footer based on page 5 and the bodylines from the pages in between (in the example page 2-4).

Input data can be freely positioned on the first, middle or last page of the final print. For this type of job the page length is defined inside Lasernet Form Editor and the size of the body can vary from page to page. Data such as subtotal, totals and page numbering are also typically defined in Lasernet Form Editor.

Important Settings

• Form Criteria: Yes

• Job Combining: Yes

• Link Criteria: Yes

• Stop Criteria: Yes

• First Page: Yes

• Middle Page: Yes

• Last Page: Yes

• Single Page: Yes

Combining (Page to Job mode)

In order to achieve a well-defined text structure when formatting text files in page to job mode, you must define the structure of the header, footer and body of your incoming form. On the Criteria menu, click Combining options. Combining is only possible for forms running in the page to job mode since this is a feature for formatting jobs which contain several incoming pages, but must be processed as one outgoing job.

The settings for combining can also be reached by navigating to the Form > Form Options > Combining tab.

Enable Job Combining

First, you must select the Enable Job Combining check box for combining incoming pages into one job.

When printing a document from your ERP system in text mode, it often contains several pages because the number of article lines cannot fit on a single page. Each page typically contains a header, body and footer. Very often the number of printed text lines for the header and footer are exactly the same size.

If the number of lines in the header is exactly the same for all the pages you want to combine, you can add it to the Header Size field.

If the number of lines in the footer is exactly the same for all the pages you want to combine, you can add it to the Footer Size field.

The net result can be a combination of:

• The header for the first incoming page

• The body lines for all incoming pages

• The footer for last incoming page

is/are combined/converted into one grab file/job, as per the elongated document in the second column of the illustration below. This is the data structure used for setting up the final form design for first, middle, last and single pages in the Lasernet Form Editor.

In some cases, the size of the header and footer for an incoming TEXT document are not always the same for page 1, 2, 3 etc.

To prevent the loss of data through accidental removal of the header and footer lines, you can turn on Keep Header For All Pages or Keep Footer For All Pages or both, if the size of the header and the footer varies for both areas.

The net result can be a combination of:

• The header for all incoming pages

• The body lines for all incoming pages

• The footer for all incoming pages

is/are combined/converted into one grab file/job, as per the elongated document in the second column of the illustration below. This is the data structure used for setting up the final form design for first, middle, last and single pages in the Lasernet Form Editor.

When activating both Keep Header For All Pages and Keep Footer For All Pages, the effect is equivalent to removing all of the page breaks and merging everything into one long page, containing all of the headers and footers between the body lines.

Time Out

A time out is defined to prevent the form from not keeping pages together during heavy processing of simultaneous jobs. The time out is only required in the Page to Job mode and only if the form has a link criterion or several link criteria for combing pages. The form always analyzes the next page in the spool job, to find out if the page should be linked to the current one or not. If the time out has been reached for a job, no further combining takes place, and the job is closed. The time out is defined in seconds and default setting is 5 seconds, which is the recommend value in most cases.

Please note that as the last page in a batch is processed, there will be a delay before the page is sent to the printer or another output module, especially if only operating with a link criterion and a time out. In many cases this is not a problem, since a delay of X seconds is generally harmless when printing or mailing the last document in a batch. However, we would recommend that you set a stop criterion in the form to signal the end of the combining and avoid the final timeout at the end of the document. This means that any output actions (such as printing and email) will be executed without delay.

Fixed Number of Lines

Sometimes a page splitter is not available. This happens if each page in the print job is generated with a fixed page length. By activating the Fixed number of lines setting, you can define at which line number the Lasernet Form Engine has to force a page break, for successfully splitting up pages to the correct length.