Ch. 001c. Getting Started with AWI

Contents

Installation
Admin User and Credentials
Saved Settings

First Run
The Main Window
Download Rules
Download Rule Settings
Limitations
Support
More Information

Installation

The current version of AWI is available for download from the article Ch. 001b. Download & Installation. There are downloads on that page for Windows and Macintosh versions of the application. The downloads are zipped installers for each operating system version of the application.

Note that the date the last version was posted will be shown on the download page.. It is important to keep your AWI updated to the version as AWI will change if there are changes in Pressero to how the order data is structured. The only way to check if AWI has been updated is to check the downloads page above, but we hope to provide better notifications for AWI updates in the future.

After running the installer, you will have a desktop icon for Pressero Automated Workflow to launch the application.

Admin User and Credentials

If AWI was included with your Pressero subscription, the user and password credentials for your AWI admin user will have been noted on the Welcome email from us when your account was setup, or on the email confirming that AWI was setup in your account when it was added..

Only one Admin User in your Pressero account can be activated for AWI, AWI will not work with all admin users in your account. You can check your list of admin users by logging into your Pressero account and going to Preferences > Admin Users. The password for your AWI user can be reset from Admin Users list if it has been lost.

The AWI admin user must be part of an Admin Group that has access to the orders in your Pressero account. Changes to the admin groups that the AWI user is assigned to can affect AWI's ability to download order data and files.

If you are not sure what admin user in your account is activated for AWI, or if your subscription includes AWI functionality, please open a ticket at support.aleyant.com and we will confirm further. If you wish to confirm costs for setting up AWI for your Pressero account, please contact your salesperson for pricing.

Saved Settings

When AWI is started for the first time on your machine, it will create the folder /Documents/AutomatedWorkflowIntegrator in the user account folder. The folder /Documents/AutomatedWorkflowIntegrator will contain the file database.db, a folder for Logs if enabled, and sometimes a couple of other temporary database files.

All the settings, downloaded orders, rules, and other information for your installation of AWI are stored in the database.db file in this folder. It is possible to move the database.db file to another machine you need to move the installation of AWI. It is possible to backup your AWI setup by making a copy of the database.db file.

If you submit a question about AWI to support we will need a copy of your database.db file included with with your question. It is only necessary to send us the database.db file, and possibly the current log file if relevant to your question. If you see files ending in *.db-shm and *.db-wal in this folder, those are tempoary database files and do not have to be included with any questions to support.

If you are updating your installation of AWI with a new version installer, only the application directory will be updated. The contents of the folder /Documents/AutomatedWorkflowIntegrator will not be changed by updating AWI to a newer version. But you can always make a copy of the database.db file if you want to take a backup on your setup.

First Run

The first time AWI is started, it will prompt for your Customer Credentials. Those will be the username and password of the admin user activated for AWI. It will also ask for an Admin URL address. The Admin URL value is the same web address that you use to login to your Pressero account. For example, accounts on Pressero in North America use https://admin.chi.v6.pressero.com to login to their accounts. AWI will save your credtials if Remember Me is checked.

After you have successfully logged into AWI, the main window will open and it will show a message "No rule found. Please add at least one rule" that indicates at least one Download Rule needs to be added to that installation of AWI before it will begin processing any orders. The first step is to create at least one basic Catch All download rule to test AWI with your account.

The Main Window

When you are looking at the AWI window, there are three tabs that have different purposes. Download Rules shows any download rules you have set up. Processed Items contains any orders already processed by AWI. Queued Items contains any orders that are queued for processing at set intervals.

The Settings button at the bottom of the window gives you access to the preference settings in AWI. The button Process is used to tell AWI to manually process over the orders in your account, The Close button will quit the AWI application.

The lower area of the main window is the console log. Any messages about the process, the orders being processed, the rules the order items match to, files being downloaded and any errors that might have happened.

Note that AWI will process over your orders every hour provided it is launched and running on your workstation. AWI will also be listening continually for new orders in your account. The Process button is provided when it is necessary to start the processing of orders before the hourly interval.

When AWI starts processing over orders it will find any orders that match to criteria on your download rules, are paid and approved, and are within the Number of Days to Search value specified under Settings. The hourly process ensures that AWI will catch any orders that have been paid and/or approved since the last time AWI has processed.

AWI will not process any orders that are older than the Number of Days to Search specified in Settings. If approvals or payments happen on orders that are older than the specified Number of Days to Search, those orders will not be processed and their files will not be downloaded.

Download Rules

The number of rules needed for your workflow is determined by what requirements you have for what jobs should be processing to what hot folders you need those order files pushed to. You could have one rule, or a hundred rules set up in your installation of AWI. Adding a new rule to your Download Rules is easily done by clicking the blue plus symbol button at the upper-left of the AWI console window.

If you need all the files from all orders in your Pressero account to go to one destination for processing, then you need just one Catch All rule. If you need the order files to go to different destinations based on the site they come from, or what product they are ordered on, then you might have multiple rules set up in your AWI.

Each Download Rule has a series of tabs that provide access to the settings for that rule. The tabs General, Download, Control Files, Queuing, Status, Options and Report give you access to any settings that can be adjusted for the rule.

The General tab lets you set a Rule Name for the rule, File Name Patterns separated by commas that will match to files on the order, the Rule Type, a Value Matches that can be matched if using a rule of a type other than a Catch All, and an Attribute Matches setting when using rules that match to product or user profile attribute keys.

For example, a Catch All rule is going to match to all the orders in your account that are paid and approved. If you enable a Catch All rule, and set a download path for the files on the Download tab for the rule, it will be looking at every order in your account that is paid and approved, and will download any files on that order that match the file name patterns specified.

The Rule Type setting for the download rule has seven types of rules that can be used. Depending on the type of rule chosen, orders can be processed by download rules for specific sites, specific site users, specific site locations, product attributes that are assigned to products and are part of the order information, or user profile attributes from the site user who placed the order. The rule types are listed below.

  • Catch All
  • Site name (or url) matches
  • Product name (or url) matches
  • Buyer user name or email matches
  • Product attribute key matches
  • Printer location matches
  • User profile attribute key matches

It is important to note that the rule in AWI specifies what type of files to download from the order, with *.ps and *.pdf files being the default file names to match. For example, if you have a product set up with a file upload field intending to allow clients to upload Excel files on their orders, you would need to add *.xls and *.xlsx to the File Name Pattern field on the rule in order for those files to be downloaded through AWI.

Download Rule Settings

The Download tab allows you to specify where any downloaded order files for the rule will be placed. This could be set to point to a local folder, a hot folder or other location on your network, or potentially even an FTP site that the rule will upload files to.

The Control Files tab allows for setting the rule to create a vendor-specific XML, JDF, or Text file that contains additional information about the order and product. Control files can also be downloaded to a local folder, a network hot folder, or pushed to an FTP site. The format options for the control files are mostly vendor-specific options, but there is a generic option called Pressero XML that contains most of the information about the order; dates, quantity, price, tax, user information, site information, any pricing calculator options chosen for the order, and more.

The Queuing tab allows setting AWI to only push the order files to the destination folders based on the number of jobs, total quantity or various intervals. The Queued Items tab on the main AWI window will show any jobs that are queued for later processing. Queuing is disabled by default, and AWI will just process and push files for any orders that match the download rule. Queuing is only enabled if you specifically need to hold onto the order files until a certain limit or interval is reached.

The Status tab allows for choosing a status that AWI can change on any orders that it downloads. Most of what AWI does involves downloading orders and files from Pressero, but this tab allows for telling AWI to update the status on any orders that it processes. This option can be used so that you can see what orders have been downloaded by AWI, just by looking at the status on the orders in your Pressero orders listing.

The Options tab has additional options that apply to the order files downloading process The options to rename the downloaded files with the local time and date, and to rename the file with the order and item number are enabled by default. The options to download product assets, uploaded files and generated files are enabled by default. The options available are listed below.

  • Prepend file name with local date and time of download
  • Prepend file name with order and item number
  • Create folder for order
  • Create folder for item
  • Download product assets
  • Download uploaded files
  • Download generated files
  • Create folder for user
  • Download previews for uploaded files
  • Download proof files
  • Do not unzip downloaded files

AWI downloads eDocBuilder generated production PDF files, files that have been uploaded to the product on the order, or asset files associated to the product on the site. Note that AWI cannot download files that are not part of an order. Files from standalone download forms do not place orders and cannot be downloaded by AWI.

It is also possible to have AWI rename the order files in a specific manner by unchecking both settings options Prepend file name with local date and time of download and Prepend file name with order and item number. When both settings are unchecked the Format Filename field at the bottom of the settings window will activate and will allow entering a custom format for the filename of the generated files based on what file name tags are used. The file name tags that can be used are specified in the article Ch. 007 Tags for File Naming.

There are also settings that can be enabled to get the preview files associated to the order, place the downloaded files into subfolders for the order, item or user, and even control if downloaded zip files are unzipped or not unzipped when downloaded. The option to have AWI unzip files uploaded on the order, or to leave those files zipped can be necessary depending on specific workflow requirements for different printers.

The Report tab lets you separately enable downloading of the order reports that generate for every order placed in Pressero. Order report files are human-readable PDF files that show information about the order. The report files are directed to a particular folder, hot folder, or pushed to an FTP site. These are the report files that are generated for any Pressero order, and can also be manually viewed from the order listed in the Pressero orders area.

Limitations

AWI only downloads order information and files, so any files that AWI will be able to download will only be from orders placed on your sites, and not from standalone form submissions enabled on site pages. For standalone form downloads and files, you will need to go to Tools > File Manager in your account, and then to the Uploads folder, AWI cannot process or download files placed into the Uploads folder using forms assigned to pages or using the FTP command on sites.

AWI will download files for orders when those orders meet the criteria that is set on the download rules, if those orders are  marked approved and paid in Pressero, and if the orders are within the timeframe specified by the "Number of Days to Search" setting in the settings for that copy of AWI.

AWI is a desktop utility and must be open to process any orders in the Pressero account, it does not run as a service, the program must be open on the desktop of a machine in order to process orders. The AWI will process orders every hour, looking back over the orders that are within the Number of days to search value specified in the Settings. This allows AWI to check if any orders have been placed, or if placed orders have been subsequently paid and approved since the last time the orders were processed.

Support

If AWI is not behaving as expected and you are running the current version of AWI, please open a ticket with support at support.aleyant.com, and please include your database.db file with your request. Including the database.db file allows us to load up the settings you are working with and test it from our side.

More Information

For more information regarding AWI settings and usage, please see the specific chapters below.