Once a Queue Manager has determined that a transaction should be queued and an instance of the Arbortext Queue has accepted the transaction, the queue instance places the transaction on its internal list of transactions in order of priority. Priority is determined by the value of the queue-priority query parameter, which specifies the priority of the request when placing the transaction on a queue. 1 is the highest priority and 5 is the lowest. If the parameter is not present or its value is not numeric, the priority defaults to 3. If the priority is less than 1, it is adjusted to 1; if the priority is greater than 5, it is adjusted to 5.

The Arbortext Queue maintains its list of transactions in priority order. When a new transaction is inserted, it is placed as the last transaction of its priority. For example, a queue list contains transactions A with priority 1, B with priority 2, C with priority 3, and D with priority 4. A new transaction E with priority 3 would be inserted after C. The new order would be A, B, C, E, D. A would execute first, B second, C third, E fourth, and D last.

The Arbortext Queue allows an administrator to move a transaction up or down in the list from the Queued Transactions List (available from the Queue List page retrieved from the Queue List link on the Arbortext Publishing Engine HTML index page). The move actions are available under Actions. When a transaction is moved, its priority may be adjusted to keep the list in priority order. Refer to Configuration Guide for Arbortext Publishing Engine for information on queue management.