Sometimes packages contain a preview PDF, sometimes they don’t. What causes a preview to be generated and included in a package? What data file does it use? How many records? Does it use job and output settings?
Also, where is the preview PDF supposed to ultimately “go”? In my three environments, running Windows 10, and Server 2012 R2, with both Workflow 8.7 and 8.8, the PDFs end up just sitting in the “Documents\IN” folder forever.
Preview is included for Print Templates only at this stage. The preview uses the first record in the currently loaded Data Mapping config. If not Data Mapping config is present, I believe no Preview can be generated.
The PDFs are copied to the Template’s own subfolder in the Documents folder. The fact that they remain in the IN folder is probably an issue your system ran into at some point, in my case the PDF files (and all others) are properly removed after Workflow has copied them to the appropriate spot. For now, you can safely delete those files from the IN folder.
(I’ve had a support ticket about the Documents/IN problem. Still seems unresolved. Files (not just the preview PDF) will sit there. Sometimes the package will unzip and the individual files sit there, sometimes some of them are consumed, sometimes none of them, but the PDF is the one that seems to never get imported.)
I’m trying to write some triage/testing processes that will take a package submitted to us via FTP, do some integrity checks (mainly checking our shop standard naming conventions), and deploy on the server and run a simple test: grab the enclosed sample data file and run to generate a PDF, and compare that PDF to the preview PDF, before allowing the “package” into production.