Run follow-up SAWSConnector job

There are many instances where it could be useful or even necessary to chain and link connector jobs.

For example: If you want to upload media, send the categories and then follow-up with the products. You do not want to run these jobs parallel since the categories and products need the existing media, and the products need the existing categories to link to them. Hence these jobs need to be chained. This is only one case where the Run Follow-Up Job functionality can be useful.

In this article you will learn how to run a follow-up job and how to navigate its menu.

 

How to create a Job-Related Task

1) Go to Jobs (the so-called Jobcenter) in the SAWSConnector Suite.

2) Select Job-related tasks in the sub-menu.

3) And click on ‘Add new task‘ (the plus symbol).

 

Another sub-menu opens where you can specify the basic conditions, for example when the task should start or what happens after the task is done. To learn more about this click on this link.

4) Click on the Task to do box and select ‘Run follow-up SAWSConnector job‘.

The Settings menu will open.

 

Settings

 

Conditions

Allows you to specify even more conditions and context for the follow-up job. You can create a condition by clicking on + (Add new condition).

To learn about this functionality in detail, please click on this LINK.

 

Job

Here you can select an already created job from your stations to be carried out as a follow-up task.

Be aware that all conditions and embedded follow-up tasks of these jobs will be started as well.

 

If you want to chain multiple jobs, the job-related task ‘Run follow-up SAWSConnector’ job must be selected in each consecutive job except the last.

Since the connector version 1.19.0, you are now able to see the chained job from the outer view of the job center.

 

Set the start mode of the follow up job

Here you can define the mode of the job started by the follow-up task.

You can choose one of the following four:

• Start job in the same mode as I started myself
• Start job in the same mode and with the same RootID as I started (will be put in the background)
• Start the job in normal mode
• Start the job in detail mode

 

Time in minutes for which a job is allowed to run before it is declared as crashed and thus stopped

This option ensures that even in the rare case that a job crashed and stopped for unknown reasons it will still be started again after the given time limit. After this time has run out the connector automation will treat the job no matter its state as completed so it can be started again. This avoids a deadlock.

It is recommended to limit the run time to your expected job run time. The default is 120 minutes.

 

Save your Job-related Task

5) Just click on the Save button next to the tabs tail below.

 

Hint: Do not use Active Jobs for chaining!

As seen below, these jobs would start these three jobs simultaneously instead of after one another.

If you want to automate your chain, only select the first job of it in the Active Job.

 

Run Example

To fully understand how you can run follow-up jobs via the job-related task it is best demonstrated with a step-by-step case example.

My goal for this example is to chain a Media job to a Categories job to a Products job.

 

1) I want to chain my jobs ‘Media‘, ‘Categories‘, and ‘Products‘.

 

2) Then I open the ‘Media‘ job, go to the Job-related tasks and create one by clicking on + (Add new task).

 

3) For a Task to do I select ‘Run follow-up SAWSConnector job‘.

 

The Settings menu opens.

4) Since I don’t have any more Conditions to set, I just leave them be.

5) For a Job I just search and select ‘Categories‘ from my list.

6) As Start mode I use the default setting  of the same mode as I started myself.

7) The same goes for the Run time: ‘120‘ minutes are enough. My jobs usually take about an hour per job so a timeout of 120 should more then suffice.

8) I save my progress.

 

9) I head into the ‘Categories‘ job and repeat the process.

10) As Job I select ‘Products‘.

11) And I hit save again.

 

12) This is how my jobs and job-related tasks look like by now:

 

13) For the final step I launch ‘Media‘ (the first job in the chain) …

 

14) … and enjoy the result:

 

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