Patent ID: 8134724

Claim:
A computer implemented system for controlling output mechanisms in an enterprise printing network, comprising: means for a user to specify parameters identifying an output job to be executed by said output mechanisms, said job parameters being stated in a job description stored on the network; a network of output mechanisms for executing said output job, each said output mechanism having a state description and an output policy constraining use of the output mechanism, and each said output mechanism being owned by an organization and located at a site; means for a user to describe preferences for execution of said output job and tradeoffs among said preferences, said preferences and tradeoffs being stated in a selected one of one or more user policies, said tradeoffs being expressed as priorities, rules, or utility functions comprehensible to an optimizing scheduler; means for describing constraints applied by said organization to output mechanisms owned by said organization; an output job manager for assigning said output job to one or more of said output mechanisms in accordance with said selected user policy, said assignment taking account of other output jobs in process, each of said state descriptions, each of said output policies, and each said constraint applied to an output mechanism by an organization; an optimizing scheduler usable by said output job manager to optimize said assignment by making one or more of said tradeoffs among said user preferences by applying said respective priorities, rules and utility functions; and means for returning notification of completion of an executed output job to said user, wherein a location of an output mechanism enables computation of a delivery time for the user at a user location to obtain the job output from the output mechanism, said preferences include at least one time interval between user submission of the output job and receipt by the user of the job output from the assigned output mechanism, and said tradeoffs include a tradeoff between said at least one time interval preference and another user preference.