1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a printing system, a data processing method, and a program for the data processing method, which utilize a User Interface (UI) display in a multifunction printer, thereby executing easy printing while accessing a documentation management server from a multifunction printer. More specifically, the present invention relates to technology in which the document associated with print settings is displayed with a button (list) when print settings are automatically generated in the documentation management server. This is done by storing scanning data in the documentation management server from the multifunction printer, and the documentation management server is accessed from the multifunction printer.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, the improvement of Web infrastructure in office Personal Computer (PC) environment has been established. In connection with this situation, the improvement of Web infrastructure of User Interface (UI) is progressing and is becoming one of the technologies that differentiate it from the other companies in the world of Multifunction Printers (MFP). In particular, attention is being given to an efficient utilization method harnessing the characteristics of linking PC and MFP on the Web among the technologies. For example, since MFP is shared among a plurality of users although every single person uses PC, the time MFP is being used should be reduced to a minimum. On the other hand, the present multifunction printer has the function of a web browser, and document printing can be instructed on the web browser by referring to the folder/document on the server. In this case, since it is a time-consuming operation to search folder hierarchies in order that print documents are specified, and the more time MFP is needed since communication with a server is needed, it has been also proposed that the technology allow printing instructions to be executed from the PC.
As another conventional technology, image data obtained with a scan in one MFP is stored as an image data file after the image process, and print management information is generated based on the information which the user specified at the time of the scan. It has been proposed that the technology will allow an image from a printer according to the print management information generated in this manner (for example, refer to Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. H11-98305 (1999)).
On the other hand, in such a technical field, various functions, for example, a 2in1 scan, a 2in1 print function, etc., have been proposed in recent years. In this specification, the 2in1 scan is a scanning process for generating image data placing the image of manuscript for 2 pages on a region of image data for 1 page, at the time of the scan. 2in1 printing can be executed even from a printer without a 2in1 print function by storing this image data at the server. The 2in1 printing is a printing process for printing image data (or document data) for 2 pages on one sheet of paper. Accordingly, the number of print sheets used is reduced.
However, there are inconveniences in the conventional printing system as follows.
It is assumed that a certain user A stores a document executing the 2in1 scan in a documentation management server for the amount of reduction of the resource used of servers, etc. Then, when another user B specifies the print settings to execute 2in1 printing of a document without knowing that user A had scanned by settings of 2in1, there is a problem that the document will be printed with a different printing form of 4in1 from 2in1 which is the actual prospective printing form.
In order to prevent this problem, the user needs to open and verify any document to print, the user needs to verify print image with application, etc., after the user specifies print settings, or the user needs to verify with quick view images, such as a thumbnail provided by a documentation management system, etc. In this case, the user opening print documents or verifying a print image requires time and effort. Moreover, performance inefficiency is a new problem when providing a thumbnail by this system.
Furthermore, in the conventional printing system, when print settings were performed for a certain document on a documentation management system, it needed time and effort since a user had to set up manually from the browser of the PC or MFP.