Overview

Why you should complete this activity

Smart hot folders provide a flexible and automated workflow with more customized options.
This activity is important because it illustrates how to:

• Streamline your daily prepress operations
• Increase automation in a prepress workflow

What you'll need

For this activity you need to locate:

• Prinergy Activity Practice Files /Act_27_Smart Hot Folders

The instructor or coach will provide you with the location of the practice files.
Note: If you are completing this activity on your own or coaching others in your shop, copy the Prinergy Activity Practice Files folder (available on the Kodak Partner Place internet portal at https://partnerplace.kodak.com/) directly to your workstation. For further information about these procedures, see Activity 1.

Note: This activity is optional.
The aim of this activity is to introduce a more advanced automated workflow. This activity is considered advanced, and should be completed by an experienced prepress operator or system administrator who has a solid knowledge of their specific prepress needs.
Consult the online help for Prinergy Connect to familiarize yourself with the process of building and using smart hot folders, and the various naming patterns associated with them. Encourage the customer to consult this reference material as well, as it will provide additional support to them after the training session is over and they are working on their own.

If you skipped Activity 1, consult the Activity 1 Instructor's Notes for information about best practices for managing activity practice files during a training session. Activity 1 also contains important information related to the Prinergy client and server relationship, which could be helpful to the customer.

What you need to know

A smart hot folder is an active global hot folder that constantly monitors itself for incoming files. Compared to a basic hot folder, a smart hot folder is able to complete additional operations such as; creating a new job, renaming a job file, and moving the job file to any location on a mounted server or volume. Smart hot folders are job independent, so you can use them for any job.
Smart hot folders can:

• Create a new job based on a template job and name the new job according to the name of the source file
• Move the source file to:
  • An existing job's hot folder for processing
  • A job-relative location (such as UserDefinedFolders)
  • Any location on a mounted server or volume
• Rename the source file—while moving it—for any of the following reasons:
  • To change a customer's file names to conform to your file naming conventions
  • To conform to another smart hot folder's file naming patterns
  • To move a file to more than one job hot folder
  • Move a source file to one or more locations on any mounted volume
• You can also combine any—or all—of these actions within one smart hot folder. For example, you can create smart hot folders that will do the following combined actions:
  • Create a job based on the source file name and process the file immediately within the new job's hot folders
  • Create a job based on the source file name, process the file, and move it to another location
  • Create a job based on the source file name, process the file, and rename the file while moving it to another location

For more information, see the Workshop User Guide.

How smart hot folders work
A smart hot folder matches the source file name with the naming patterns configured in the smart hot folder.

Supported file formats
Smart hot folders can accept and process any of the following source files:

• Input files (.ps, .pdf, .eps, .tif)
• Non-incremental Prinergy exported job files (.zip)
• Imposition plans (.pjtf and .jdf from Preps) and marks files (.ps and .pdf)
• Preps .job files (requires integrated Preps engine license)
• JDF-MIS stripping parameters (requires integrated Preps engine license)

Process templates used:

• Refine process template: Refine > Refine > 1st Ref-Normz
• Loose page proof process template: Loose Page Output > VirtualProof > VirtualProof.LoosePage