Patent ID: 7525678

Claim:
A method of managing workflow in a commercial printing environment including a designer location and a print service provider location, said method comprising: creating at the designer location a print job to be printed at the print service provider location; establishing a closed-loop communication link between the designer location and the print service provider location; the designer location obtaining updated device configuration information from the print service provider location via said closed-loop communication link; creating a job ticket at the designer location that specifies production devices of the print service provider to be used to process said print job and processing instructions for the print service provider location; automatically pre-flighting a digital file associated with the print job at the designer location, including automatically checking for common errors associated during a prepress stage, automatically revising incorrect printing instructions and automatically adding missing printing instructions to the received document file: automatically providing at the designer location a remote proofing function for a customer of the document file to be printed and automatically tracking the printing of the document file by continuously monitoring and updating a status of the document file to be printed: creating a press ready file at the designer location that encompasses the automatically pre-flighted and automatically proofed document file and both said print job and said job ticket; submitting said press ready file to the print service provider location via said closed-loop communication link; processing said print job at the print service provider location; and transmitting over said closed-loop communication link continuously updated status information to the designer location so as to keep the designer location apprised of a production status of said print job at the print service provider location, said status information including an indication of tasks that have already been performed in relation to the print job and a current task being performed in relation to the print job.