Building a Workflow

The Workflow Builder is a customized version of Konica Minolta^® Canvas, specifically for Dispatcher Phoenix, and provides a complete palette of graphical icons and drawing tools that allow you to create workflows.

When you select the New Workflow icon or edit an existing workflow from the main application screen, the Workflow Builder window will open. For new workflows, the initial “canvas” will be blank, with the default view opting to “Hide” grid lines.

The left side of the (canvas) window contains node palettes. Click on the pushpin to keep a node palette open. The node palettes are divided into Collect, Process, and Distribute groups. In addition, you can add nodes to a My Favorites group for easy selection.

Note: When the Workflow Builder is open, the Dispatcher Phoenix functions are unavailable. To work with other workflows (Run, Pause, Stop, etc.) the Workflow Builder must be closed.

Create a Workflow

Nodes are either dropped on the canvas, or you can drag the node to the size you want. The following illustration displays three nodes dropped on the canvas (on the left) versus dragged to size (on the right):

In preparation for creating your first workflow, you may want to create two folders on your desktop: one as Input and one as Output. Put some image files in the Input folder, with extensions such as .JPG, .TIF, and .PDF.

Note: If you already made two folders when following the sample exercise, you can use those again.

1. To begin, open the Collect nodes palette and click on an Input folder node. With the node selected, click on the canvas drawing area and drag the mouse to create and size the node.

2. Add a simple Process node for your first workflow, such as Rename.

3. Add an output folder as the Distribute node. Use the mouse with the gridlines and cross hairs to line up your nodes. Use the Select/Resize tool to make any node larger.

4. Double-click on the canvas work area to open the Properties panel and name your workflow, as in the following illustration:

   

5. Click on a Connector tool; then click on the Input Folder and hold the mouse button down while dragging the connector from the first node to the next, and then to the last one.

   The drawing should now look something like the illustration below with the three nodes connected.

   

6. Select the Save icon () or select Save from the File pull-down menu to save the workflow.

7. Select the Validate icon () or select Validate from the Project pull-down menu to validate the workflow (this can be done now or at a later time), as in the following illustration:

   

8. If you close the window, a message will appear telling you that the workflow did not pass validation, and asking if you want to fix it before closing the Workflow Builder. (If you haven’t named it, it will ask you to do so. This is because we have only drawn the workflow, and haven’t yet defined the individual nodes.)

Congratulations, you have created a basic Dispatcher Phoenix workflow! Now to define the different parts of the workflow.

Searching for Nodes

To make it easy to find the node that you would like to add to a workflow, a Search function is available from the Edit drop-down menu. Do the following:

1. Enter the name of the node that you are looking for in the empty field provided. This field includes type ahead search functionality so the node palettes that match your search criteria will automatically appear once you begin typing. In the example below, the user is searching for the Bubble Grader node:

   

2. To return to the full node palette, click the Clear Search button at the far right of search bar.