On-line Salutation Enabled Copier

Ms. Chang works in the mailroom of the Company. She has the responsibility of receiving incoming mail and distributing it to workers in the building. She also has to gather out-going mail from the workers and distribute it to the addressees. Ms. Chang has a Salutation Enabled Copier in the mail room to assist her in her work. She is glad, because she is afraid of computers, and if she were required to use one at work, she doesn't know how she would handle it.

When she arrives at work each morning, she turns on the Salutation Enabled Copier. Through the touch panel on he copier, she reviews the incoming mail list. She notes that there are two items marked urgent, several items for the Division Directors and a normal amount of information for the rest of the staff. She selects the urgent and Director's items, requesting that they be printed on her Salutation Enabled Copier. Once she has assembled this paper output, she requests that the rest of the items be printed. While these are printing, she makes her rounds, delivering the Urgent and Director mail, and gathering the mail to be sent out.

When she returns to the mail room, she finds that her last print request has been completed. She assembles these items for delivery later. Then she begins to mail out the items that she gathered on her rounds. She sends out each item individually. First she accesses her electronic address book through the touch panel of the Salutation Enabled Copier. She selects the name, names or distribution list which are associated with the mail item she is working on. The address book contains the 'preferred' method of delivery. For example, it may indicate to deliver the mail electronically, via FAX, or overland. She places the document in the input hopper of the Salutation Enabled Copier and presses "GO". For electronic distribution means, the document is scanned and routed accordingly. For overland, the document is copied (for Ms. Chang's files) and an envelop is printed on the Salutation Enabled Copier.

Salutation behind the scenes



The panel on the copier is being used as a client interface to the Mail Service. Salutation Protocol has been invoked to determine the capabilities of the panel so that the 'right' client application can be invoked at the Salutation Enabled Copier. In this case, a small client is down-loaded to the copier to support the user interactions with the mail in-basket.

The Mail Service determines the capabilities of the printing device on the Salutation Enabled Copier. It is determined that it is a color device and that it supports both HPCL and PostScript print description languages. The Mail Service formats the requested documents, as needed, to meet this capability and forwards them to the device.

Again, a small client application is down-loaded to the copier to support the selection of address book entries.

The address book application controls the Salutation Enabled Copier, depending on the address book preference entries. It can, through the Salutation Protocol, cause items to be scanned or copied, or it can cause the envelop to be printed.