Patent ID: 8635623

Claim:
A multi-layer print workflow architecture system, comprising: service providers that are associated with devices; a service bus; and a print workflow front end; the service providers operable to repeatedly monitor the capabilities of their associated devices to determine real-time device capabilities of the devices, and to repeatedly report the real-time device capabilities of their associated devices to the service bus; the service bus operable to receive the real-time device capabilities from the service providers, and to provide the real-time device capabilities for the devices to the print workflow front end; the print workflow front end including a processor, the processor operable to receive the real-time device capabilities from the service bus, and to provide the real-time device capabilities to a user to allow the user to define a job ticket based on the real-time device capabilities of the devices, wherein the job ticket defines one or more processes to be performed by the devices; the print workflow front end is further operable to receive input from the user selecting the processes as a subset of the real-time device capabilities, to generate the job ticket based on the input from the user, and to transmit the job ticket to the service bus; and the service bus is further operable to process the job ticket to identify the processes defined in the job ticket, to identify the service providers operable to perform the processes, to generate process messages indicating the processes to be performed, and to route the process messages to the identified service providers.