Patent ID: 7499867

Claim:
A workflow management method for creating and delivering output material, comprising: generating a customer record to include fields specifying at least one product, customer preferences, and a selected delivery option indicating a method to deliver generated output material on the product specified in the customer record; adding a job record including a status field to a job status table for the customer record; setting the added job record status to a first status; processing a selected job in the job status table; invoking a first worker if the selected job has the first status; generating, with the first worker, output material from processing the product and customer preference fields in the customer record for the selected job, by: accessing one or more value fields in a customer record to include in a query from a template against a database table; applying the query against the database table to determine a record associated with a content file and including fields matching the query; accessing the content file associated with the determined record; and generating content from the content file into the template, which forms the output material; setting the status for the selected job in the job status table to a second status after generating the output material with the first worker; invoking a second worker if the selected job has the second status; determining, with the second worker, a selected one of a plurality of delivery options from the customer record for the selected job; and transmitting, with the second worker, the output material via the determined delivery option to the customer specified in the customer record.