Document pooling mechanism

• US 10,789,030 B2
• Filed: 10/26/2018
• Issued: 09/29/2020
• Est. Priority Date: 10/26/2018
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Ricoh Company Limited
• Original Assignee: Ricoh Company Limited
• Inventors: Waller, Marquis G., Sikkink, Jeffrey Alan, Albers, Walter R., Lotz, Michael Glen
• Primary Examiner(s): Augustin, Marcellus J
• Application Number:
  US16/172,026
• Publication Number:
  US 20200133602A1
• Time in Patent Office: 704 Days
• Field of Search: 358 11- 329, 358 111- 118, 399 82, 399403-411, 715200-277
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/1205 resulting in increased flexibility in print job configuration, e.g. job settings, print requirements, job tickets
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/1244 Job translation or job parsing, e.g. page banding
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/1262 by grouping or ganging jobs
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/1275 Print workflow management, e.g. defining or changing a workflow, cross publishing
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/1282 High volume printer device

Abstract

A system to is described. The system includes at least one physical memory device to store print workflow manager and one or more processors coupled with the at least one physical memory devices to execute the print workflow manager receive a plurality of print jobs, each including a plurality of documents to be printed, receive job tickets including a description as to how pages in the plurality of documents are to be printed, store the plurality of documents in a document pool, store a document property record associated with each of the plurality of documents in the document pool, wherein a document property record provides and process the job tickets and the document property records to generate a combined print job including two or more of the plurality of the documents.

Claims

1. A non-transitory computer-readable medium having stored thereon instructions that, when executed by one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to:

receive a plurality of print jobs, each including a plurality of documents to be printed;

receive job tickets including a description as to how pages in the plurality of documents are to be printed;

store the plurality of documents in a document pool;

store a document property record associated with each of the plurality of documents in the document pool; and

process the job tickets and the document property records to generate a combined print job including two or more of the plurality of the documents, including;

extracting document pages from the pool; and

analyzing the property record associated with each of the extracted document pages to determine the documents that are to be combined, including;

analyzing plex settings in a first document property record associated with a first document to track an association between the first document and a print job associated with the first document; and

adjusting the plex settings in the first document to a plex setting of the print job.

2. The computer-readable medium of claim 1, wherein processing the two or more documents further comprises:

analyzing plex settings in a second document property record associated with a second document to track an association between the second document and a print job associated with the second document.

3. The computer-readable medium of claim 2, wherein processing the two or more documents further comprises extracting one or more plex exceptions included in the first and second documents.

4. The computer-readable medium of claim 3, wherein processing the two or more documents further comprises adjusting the one or more plex exceptions.

5. The computer-readable medium of claim 4, wherein adjusting the one or more plex exceptions comprises appending document pages to the combined print job.

6. The computer-readable medium of claim 5, further comprising instructions that, when executed by the one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to generate a combined job ticket associated with the combined print job.

7. The computer-readable medium of claim 6, wherein adjusting the one or more plex exceptions further comprises appending the one or more plex exceptions to the combined job ticket.

8. The computer-readable medium of claim 7, further comprising instructions that, when executed by the one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to:

save the combined job ticket; and

save the combined print job.

9. The computer-readable medium of claim 1, wherein a document property record includes a source document file name, a starting document page number, number of document pages and source job ticket file name.

10. A system comprising:

at least one physical memory device to store a print workflow manager; and

one or more processors coupled with the at least one physical memory device to execute the print workflow manager to receive a plurality of print jobs, each including a plurality of documents to be printed, receive job tickets including a description as to how pages in the plurality of documents are to be printed, store the plurality of documents in a document pool, store a document property record associated with each of the plurality of documents in the document pool, and process the job tickets and the document property records to generate a combined print job including two or more of the plurality of the documents, including extracting document pages from the pool and analyzing the property record associated with each of the extracted document pages to determine the documents that are to be combined, including analyzing plex settings in a first document property record associated with a first document to track an association between the first document and a print job associated with the first document and adjusting the plex settings in the first document to a plex setting of the print job.

11. The system medium of claim 10, wherein processing the two or more documents comprises analyzing plex settings in a first document property record associated with a first document to track an association between the first document and a print job associated with the first document.

12. The system of claim 11, wherein processing the two or more documents further comprises extracting one or more plex exceptions included in the first and second documents.

13. The system of claim 12, wherein processing the two or more documents further comprises adjusting the one or more plex exceptions.

14. The system of claim 13, wherein adjusting the one or more plex exceptions comprises appending document pages to the combined print job.

15. The system of claim 14, wherein the print workflow manager generates a combined job ticket associated with the combined print job.

16. The system of claim 15, wherein adjusting the one or more plex exceptions further comprises appending the one or more plex exceptions to the combined job ticket.

17. The system of claim 16, wherein the print workflow manager saves the combined job ticket and saves the combined print job.

18. The system of claim 17, wherein the print workflow manager transmits the combined print job to be printed based on the combined job ticket.

19. A method for processing print documents, comprising:

identifying a first group of documents to be printed;

identifying a second group of documents from the first group of documents to be printed, wherein each of the documents within the second group of documents has a first predetermined characteristic;

determining a predetermined print aspect for the second group of documents by evaluating a first job ticket for the first group of documents; and

creating a second job ticket for the second group of documents such that when evaluating the second group of documents and the second job ticket separately from the first group of documents and the first job ticket, the second job ticket redefines the association of a predetermined print aspect from the first job ticket to at least one new page number of one of the print documents from the second group of documents, thereby maintaining the predetermined print aspect for the pages of the second group of documents as originally defined by the first job ticket.

20. The method of claim 19, further comprising sending the second group of documents and the second job ticket to the printer for printing.

21. The method of claim 20, wherein the predetermined first characteristic comprises one of a similar zip code, geographic destination, and an estimated cumulative weight of a subset of the documents to be printed.

22. The method of claim 19, wherein the predetermined print aspect comprises at least one of a plex, hole making, copies, n-up, output bin, page rotation, and page cells.