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).