Getting started with Smart Preflight

Variables and Variable Sets

Before you can start working with Smart Preflight, you need to define the variables you want to use and save them within a Variable Set (a file format which can be exported and imported).

When defining your Preflight Profile, you can then select the variables you need from this Variable Set. Note that you can create different Variable Sets (e.g. if you would like to define different Variable Sets for different document types or different Enfocus products) and that a Variable Set can contain as many variables as required. However, you can apply only one Variable Set at a time (e.g. one per hot folder in PitStop Server, one active Variable Set in PitStop Pro) and it should match the Variable Set used in the Preflight Profile concerned.

Note: PitStop Pro and PitStop Server can share the same Smart Preflight Variable Sets, much like they can share Preflight Profiles or Action Lists. However, some variable types (see further) are useful in PitStop Pro only and others work only in PitStop Server. Unsupported variables will use a default value or will generate a failure.

How to decide which preflight settings could be configured as variables?

Good candidates are preflight settings that can change from job to job, for example:

Trim page size
Total ink coverage
Number of colors defined

Preflight settings that are often the same can better be configured as fixed values. Some examples:

Embedded fonts
Security settings
Document contains pre-separated pages

Getting started

The following topics explain step by step how to configure a Variable Set and how to use the variables in your Preflight Profiles.