The press connector and hot folders

What it does

A browser cannot reach a press. The press connector can. It is one small program, set up once for each site, on a computer beside the press. We set it up with you. It does three things:

• It reports. Every minute it tells your shop's account which printers, cutters and RIP servers it can see, and whether each is busy or ready.
• It fetches. It brings down the jobs you put on its presses, never the same job twice.
• It writes. It writes each job's print file into the hot folder you named for that press. The file is written under a name your RIP ignores and then renamed into place, so the RIP never picks up half a job. A name already there is never replaced.

A person at the press then starts the job in the RIP. For a ganged roll it writes the roll's one file the same way. See Ganged rolls and Print at N% full.

The hot folder is the folder your RIP watches. You name one for each press under Integrations, and it is the only thing Studio ever writes anywhere near a press. Two presses cannot share one hot folder, because a hot folder feeds one queue.

The hot folder picker. Under each press's box in Integrations you can Choose a folder the connector sees, Make a new folder… inside any folder in the list, or Look in another folder… to add a root for that connector. Choosing only fills the box. Saving then checks it as before. See Name a hot folder for each press.

Why it matters for your shop

• Nothing needs opening in your firewall. The connector only reaches out: nothing listens but a status page on the computer itself, and it talks to Studio's own address and nothing else.
• It reads nothing of a job or a customer. What it reports is the printer's name and state, never a job's design, artwork or a customer. It does not read a press's ink, its roll or its job.
• It cannot touch your RIP's work. It lists, reads and deletes nothing in a hot folder, and has no way to start, stop or reorder a job.
• It keeps itself current. It checks for a signed update every six hours and takes only files signed by two of three release keys, each checked as it arrives. An update that will not start is skipped for the one before it.
• It starts with the computer. It starts by itself with Windows from then on, and a five-minute task of the same user starts it again if it is stopped. Neither needs an administrator.

How to use it

1. A supervisor opens Presses and finds Presses, printers and cutters on your network. If the site has no connector, Set up this site once says what to do. See Set up the press connector.
2. Pair it with the code Studio shows. Studio changes to Connected by itself.
3. Tick the printers that are your presses, and name each press's hot folder in Integrations.
4. Put a job on a press. Follow it in Jobs and on All sites.

If it goes quiet, see When the press connector is quiet.

So far we have tried the connector against a stand-in press, not yet beside a shop's own. We set it up with you and watch the first job through.

Learn more

The press board and your press connector is the how-to guide.