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2.5.1 Label Server Operation
The main functionality of Endicia’s Label Server is to produce shipping labels based on
users’ requests. The user’s request contains information necessary for the Label Server to
generate a shipping label, such as the address of the destination. Upon receiving a request for a
shipping label from a customer, the Label Server will communicate with a variety of other
servers to authorize the user, determine the price for the shipping label, verify addresses, and
other necessary functions. The following Figure 1 demonstrates the main operation of the Label
Server.
When a request for a shipping label is sent to the Label Server, the request contains
additional user data. The user data contains necessary information to create a shipping label such
as package type information, ship to address, ship from address, etc. The Label Server utilizes
the information to create the shipping label that satisfies the user’s request.
After the Label Server receives a request for a shipping label, it will send a request to the
authorization engine to authorize the user. The Label Server will not continue if the authorization
engine does not send back a message to confirm the user. After user authorization, the Label
Server will send the request’s information about package type, addresses of destination and
origin to the pricing engine to determine pricing for the package. After the price has been
determined, the Label Server will continue to communicate with other engines similar to the
pricing engine to collect information necessary to create the shipping label. Examples of other
necessary information include address verification and tracking information.
After the Label Server has finished collecting information about the shipping label, the
rendering engine within the Label Server generates the shipping label. The rendering engine will
load the specified label layouts, bind user’s data, and then the rendering engine will generate a
shipping label in a format specified in the user’s request.
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