Printing Bundles

This chapter includes the following topics:

Printing Missions

Control-D prints reports in bundles. A bundle consists of reports intended for one or more recipients. The reports are sorted so that those for each recipient are grouped together.

Bundles are printed with separator pages called banners and include information such as the recipient name and address, an index of reports, and so on.

Bundles are created by activating a Control-D printing mission. A printing mission is usually named according to the type of form on which it prints. The printing mission you are about to activate in this exercise is named STD because the form on which it prints is your data center's standard form.

The reports to be printed by a printing mission are those reports that were decollated with a DO PRINT=printing_mission parameter (in the decollating mission definition). You filled in this parameter in Chapter 3 of the Walkthrough.

The printing mission you activate has been predefined and ordered during the installation process. It is automatically ordered each day. The only action remaining for you to perform is to add a "trigger."

A trigger in Control-D is called a prerequisite condition. If a mission is dependent upon the existence of a prerequisite condition, it is not activated until the prerequisite condition exists (meaning, is added). This concept provides the ability to start the printing process at your request.

Adding a prerequisite condition is performed in the IOA Manual Conditions screen (Option 7 on the IOA Primary Option menu).

Defining a Mission to Print Bundles

Begin

  1. From the IOA Primary Option menu, press PF07/PF19 or type 7 and press Enter.

    The IOA Manual Conditions screen is displayed.

    Figure 38 IOA Manual Conditions Screen

    Copy 
    --------------------------- IOA MANUAL CONDITIONS --------------------------(7)
    COMMAND ===>                                                   SCROLL ===> CRSR
    PREFIX  ===>                 PENDING Y  ADDED Y  STAT Y        DATE 0505 - 0505
    OPT TYPE      CONDITION                                 DATE ADDED
        COND      OP-START-RESTORE-ADH                      0505
        COND      OP-START-BACKUP-365D                      0505
        COND      OP-START-BACKUP-180D                      0505
        COND      OP-START-BACKUP-031D                      0505
        COND      OP-START-BACKUP-007D                      0505
        COND      OP-START-PRINT-STD                        0505
    ======== >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> B O T T O M   O F   L I S T <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< ========












    OPTIONS: A ADD TO COND/RES LIST (SCREEN 4) E ERASE       COMMANDS: NEW 18.33.47

  2. Add the condition that triggers the printing mission as follows:

    The conditions that are displayed on the screen provide sufficient information to identify the mission to be triggered. For example, the suffix of the condition is STD, which stands for the form on which you are about to print. The condition to add is OP-START-PRINT-STD.

    1. Position the cursor in the OPT field, to the left of the selected condition.

    2. Type A and press Enter.

    The following message appears on the first line of the screen.

    CTM567I COND OP-START-PRINT-STD ODATE date ADDED

    Now that the condition has been added, you can track the printing mission in the Active Missions Environment screen.

  3. From the COMMAND field, type =A and press Enter. The Control-D/V Active Missions Environment screen is displayed.

  4. Use the FIND command to find the printing mission in the list of missions, shown in the Active Missions Environment screen as follows:

    1. Type F STD in the COMMAND field and press Enter. The cursor moves to the line including this mission, and the STD mission name is highlighted.

    2. Position the cursor in the OPT field, to the left of the STD printing mission.

    3. Type P and press Enter. The Print Control screen is displayed.

    You can see the list of reports (bundles) that are in the print queue, and the exact report that is currently being printed (if the printing mission started to print). You can also control the printing process. For additional information about the Printing Control screen, refer to Chapter 2 of the Control-D and Control-V User Guide.

  5. Press PF03/PF15 to exit the Print Control screen.

  6. The status of the printing mission changes during processing, reflecting the stage it has reached.

    Periodically press Enter to display the updated current status of the mission. When the status indicates that the mission is PRINTING ON a specific printer, you can view the output bundle on spool. When the bundle finishes printing, the status of the printing mission changes to ENDED OK. 

  7. You can now examine the printed bundle and notice the banners, index, and so on. Banners and indexes can be modified to suit your specific requirements. If there are banners that you do not want to produce (for example, banners between reports), they can be eliminated. More information about banner tailoring and printing is in Preparing for Production.