When saving a document via Send to Folder to a UNC path and the remote server is unreachable, are the files saved anywhere? With other output methods the files are dumped into an error folder.
I’m not aware of the files being saved anywhere unless an on error action has been defined.
You can use a File/Folder Condition to check for the existence/availability of the UNC share. This allows you to redirect the file wherever you want when the destination folder is unavailable.
Note that the use of UNC paths is strongly discouraged as it introduces delays caused by Windows authentication, which occurs each time you access the UNC, as well as potential errors if the folder is not available. Mapped drives are the preferred way of accessing remote shared folders, especially since you can map them automatically through the Startup process.
While mapped drives don’t resolve issues related to the unavailability of the destination, they do resolve latency issues since authentication is only performed once, when the drive is being mapped.
To confirm if the process was not build to specifically included error handling on the Send to Folder object or does not perform a folder exists prior to the attempt, then the files would not retained in event of a failure, correct?. That the working spool folders for the process would be purged with the next file or when the service is restarted, correct?
In effect, any previous files are lost and will need to be reprocessed and we should start planning what modifications are necessary to mitigate the risk of losing files going forward, correct?
Yep. Files remain in the process’ working folder but are erased at the end of the process. So any error handling must be implemented as part of the process, when you still have access to those files.
This was my assumption, but needed to verify as we are looking for a bunch of lost files that they didn’t notice the errors being reported and didn’t have any error handling built.
For future use, if an On Error is generically set at the top level of each process to say store in a dated file along with a text file with all the error info. Does %w carry over to the Error Input Bin process so one Error Input BIn process can generically support every process?
Alternatively, you could have your main process output the files in a local directory that serves as a temporary holding area. Then have a second process perform the network file move with a simple Folder Capture and Send to Folder plugin pair.
This will ensure that always have the originals at hand and allow you to configure proper error handling specific for the network move.