Concept of (Soon) Outdated Tasks

Concept

Some task technology in Automation Engine can become outdated after many years. There are two possible reasons for this:

the functionality is now available via a new and improved technology. For example a task based on a new trapping engine replaces the old ones.
the functionality is no longer used in today's prepress environment. For example a task to normalize EPF files, an Esko file format that is not created any more.

Such tasks are first declared “Soon Outdated” and later become “Outdated”.

Note: Before version 14.1, the term Deprecated was used for Soon Outdated tasks and the term Obsolete was used for Outdated tasks.

A task is named Soon Outdated as a warning that it will no longer be available in the next major version of the Automation Engine.

This gives you at least one year

to replace this task by an alternative. This could be a newer task equivalent or a slightly different workflow. The alternative is mentioned in this documentation.
to contact Esko support in case the proposed alternative is not valid for you.

A Soon Outdated task becomes Outdated in the next major version: it is then no longer available in that software version.

Customers who never used it will not see this task type.
Customers who earlier created custom tickets of that task type will still see those tickets but notice that they no longer work.

This two step process gives you the time to switch from using the old technology to the new version or method.

The Pilot shows you in many places which task types are (to be Soon) Outdated.

In the Tickets list:

Also workflow tickets that contain outdated tasks will show a warning:
In the task ticket itself, a colored top bar is added. A Soon Outdated task shows an orange bar and the link for More Info brings you to the online help page that describes the proposed alternative:

An Outdated task shows a red color bar and also a link with More Info:
In the Workflow Editor. Colored text indicates (soon) outdated workflow steps:

Transitions that depend on an outdated step are shown in grey. That part of the workflow also does not work any more:

These (soon) outdated steps are also mentioned in the Validate Workflow dialog. When you there select such a warning, the corresponding step will also be highlighted in the workflow editor with an arrow.