About sample jobs

Sample jobs are trial jobs.

If you have used variables to configure conditions (for example to sort or rename jobs) or to define text (for example to customize e-mail notifications), sample jobs allow you to check the actual values of these variables for a particular job.

Note: Switch can only display variable values if the flow contains at least one valid sample job.

Sample jobs are also useful to check what's going on at each step of the flow.

How does it work?

Once you have designed a flow, you must set one of the connections, before the end of the flow, on hold. When you activate the flow and input a job to the flow, the job will remain in the folder just before the “on hold” connection, and you will see it appear in the Jobs pane.

Note: As soon as a job is submitted to Switch, it receives a unique name prefix. Switch uses this prefix to identify jobs. Note that only jobs receive a prefixed name; files inside a job folder (e.g. an InDesign folder) do not receive a prefix.

Prefixes can be stripped at the moment the job reaches the flow output folder (i.e. folder without any outgoing connections). When the prefix is stripped, the job is considered processed and Switch has no control over this job anymore.

Example

In the above example, the Check single pages folder element contains 1 file (test.pdf with prefix 0001A).

When you now open an editor that supports variables (e.g. if you are selecting the Connection property Include these jobs), you will see that the sample jobs are available in the dialog, and can be used to define conditions for sorting the incoming files.