Just wondering how people are managing Connect Resources within workflow.
How do you clean up connect Resources that are no longer in production/use?
Is this something that can be automated/scripted or are you manually cleaning out Data Mapping config./Templates etc? And what methods do you use.
In our situation we will have ongoing jobs that don’t change often but also needing to deal with jobs that regularly get updated /changed eg(Lottery runs / Billing runs ) that have template changes monthly.
As we are just in the process of getting into Connect I want to get a method of dealing with this in place before it gets too messy.
Hi Michael,
Can you elaborate on what you mean by “clean up” the resources? Connect does run a clean-up service at certain intervals to remove any temporary files or database entries that were created during runs. This interval can be configured in the Server Configuration application.
The actual templates (after being committed to the Workflow) sit in subdirectories of PlanetPress Workflow 8 even if they aren’t used, however they don’t generally take up much physical space unless your datamapping template contain large data file samples. They have to be manually deleted in the Workflow if you want to remove them.
As a side note, the next version of Connect (which is due for release shortly) will contain improved version control functionality. In conjunction with 3rd party versioning software like Git / Subversion / etc you will be able to track changes made to templates and related files, as well as revert to older versions of them.
I’m mainly asking about data mapping configurations, templates, job presets, output presets. Anything sent from designer to workflow.
In our instance we will be running regularly repeated jobs as well as one off jobs in workflow. These one off jobs we might run several of these per week. So I’m anticipating the we could end up with hundreds of these resources in workflow pretty quickly. Which I’m thinking will make workflow development difficult, especially when adding in OL Connect tasks as there will be an increasing list of templates to search though.
I’m trying to get a process in place to make keeping on top of this easy before we push too much into workflow.
Hi Michael,
Unfortunately, these files will have to be manually removed under the Configuration Components - Connect Resources branch when no longer required, as the Workflow doesn’t have a means of determining when to retire templates, datamappers, etc after a certain amount of time. You could write a batch file to delete the physical files under the C:\ProgramData\Objectif Lune\PlanetPress Workflow 8\PlanetPress Watch\OLConnect subdirectories, but it would still leave the menu items, which is the bigger issue.You’ve pretty much hit the nail on the head as to what would likely happen over time, in that some of the dropboxes in certain plugins would become a bit unwieldly with so many templates displayed.
We did notice that there is a Watch.InstallResource method in the watch object. If there was a Watch.RemoveResource option that might be of use?
Also as a future feature request maybe a search option in the OL Connect Tasks might be of benefit for those that have a lot of resources to filter though?
No there isn’t, but there is a Watch.ExpandResourcePath() method that allows you to get the full path where a specific resource is stored. You could use it to delete the file (and, for templates and DM configs, the accompanying sub-folder). But I urge you to be VERY careful if doing that: you have to be absolutely certain that no process is expecting to use a deleted resource.
Take a look at the Workflow Search application, available from the OL Resource Center.