The Workflow as an application offers many functions that take care of storing data, organizing print data, preparing data and preparing it for color-managed output. However, the Workflow must also address external services, communicate with them and also exchange data within these systems.

To enable an administrator to manage and administer all external systems at a glance, the Interfaces section under the Administration menu was implemented with version 1.10.0. Users who produce print jobs with the Workflow usually don't need access to this menu item, because corresponding messages are provided in the respective functions in the Workflow and therefore the Interfaces area should really only be used for monitoring and administration external services by an administrator. Therefore, it is important to only give access to this area to the right people. You can set the corresponding authorization for a selected role under Administration > User > Manage Roles.

Figure 1: The Role Permissions panel available under the Administration > Users > Manage Roles menu item.

The following Interfaces are currently available under Administration > Interfaces:

• ZuniComm – The Workflow's central service ZuniComm is available as a separate instance, providing Render Satellites that can be used to distribute render performance across multiple machines. More information about Render Satellites is available in the following articles.
  • Render Satellites - ZuniComm
  • Installing Render Satellites
• Third-party Printers – There are a very large number of printer drivers available in the Workflow that can be used to drive printing systems from the Workflow. The printing industry, particularly in digital printing, offers such a wide variety of printing systems that the most diverse manufacturers are represented on the market and therefore many users of the Workflow utilize different printers in their production work. To ensure that printing systems, including those from lesser-known manufacturers, can also be controlled directly from the Workflow, we started working with the company PrintFactory, which was able to offer us a solution for converting print data from the Workflow into the corresponding output format for third-party suppliers. This external service from PrintFactory can be accessed, managed and set up via the Interfaces option. More information about third party printers is available in the following articles.
  • Third-party Printers
  • Creating Third-party Printers

Figure 2: The Interfaces area with individual tabs, displaying external services.

In addition to the expansion of the external services currently supported, the Interfaces area will be expanded with additional services in the future. The following external services will be available here in the future:

• Update server – This external service will provide information on updates and bug fixes and enable administrators to load and install updates (plan Q4 2021).
• License server – This external service can be used to provide the necessary license after an update. In addition, licenses can be activated for a limited period of time to ensure the necessary functionality and performance needed for larger projects (plan Q1 2022).
• Color server – This external service can be used to synchronize color definitions, i.e., project or customer libraries, across sites and workflows (plan Q3 2022).
• Release portal – Release reports can be distributed, approved or rejected via this service. Through the Release Portal approval processes for customers and data can be automatically transferred to production (plan Q4 2021).