Collaboration system, method and software program for image forming apparatuses

Abstract

The collaboration among the image forming devices is practiced on the computer network for efficiently utilizing the printing resources. When a large print job is requested, the parent image forming device seeks an appropriate child image forming device to share the same print job during a predetermined collaboration process. To minimize the waste and maximize the productivity during the collaboration process, the parent device ascertains that the child device is able to complete a part of the collaboration print job before the corresponding image data is transferred from the parent device to the child device. One of the resources that the parent device ascertains is the available memory amount at the child device for the image data to be transferred. If a sufficient amount of memory is not available at the child device, the image data is transferred to prevent an incomplete collaboration task at the child device. In addition, other resources such as paper and toner are also monitored in conjunction with the memory. Furthermore, the parent and child device monitor each other for completing a collaboration print job so that the collaboration print job is completed in the most efficient manner.