Old Workflow Technology
The Esko product BackStage, a predecessor of Automation Engine, had a limited workflow technology where workflows were only linear and were named Task Chains.
For example:
If you still have such task chains, they will still work but Esko strongly advises to migrate them to Automation Engine Workflows. See below how to do this.
Note: Depending on your version
and configuration, it is still possible that your Automation Engine offers some task chains
by default. Page printing workflows still offer Export to PDF File Chain (Mark as
Proof)
and Publish Imposition on WebCenter
Chain as chains of multiple steps. Also, a 'FlexRip plus InkPlanner Chain'
ticket is still available (until you can add it to a workflow with an Imaging
Engine step).
Migrating old Task Chains to new Workflows
You can not automatically convert task chain tickets into workflow tickets, but the workflow editor offers a tool that helps you migrating a task chain to a workflow that will keep all your settings. Follow these steps to migrate a task chain to a workflow:- In the Pilot, click on
New Workflow. - In the workflow editor, in the Tasks pane, select your task chain ticket.
- Drag and drop your task chain ticket into the top part of the workflow editor window. A
grey area will appear, showing you a message where to drop the ticket.
- This starts a conversion tool that extracts all compatible steps:
- Each extracted step keeps all of its ticket settings.
- The step is named after the name of the task chain.
- The steps are not connected. You are invited to optimize your workflow construction. There may be better ways to build your workflow in the current version.
Note: When the chain contains "outdated" steps (FKA 'obsolete'), a warning appears:
When you click OK, the chain is migrated but the outdated step will disappear after a few seconds. This means that you should replace that step with a corresponding step that is available in your current version. For example you should replace the old Mark File
by Mark
. - Based on these extracted steps, build your new workflow.
In below example we removed
the old Export to PDF step because this functionality is now
available on board the ReportMaker ticket:
- Save your new workflow.
- Test it and, when ready, delete the old task chain from your list of Tickets.