The Submit hierarchy flow element





The Submit hierarchy element allows you to process files that are stored in a folder structure with different levels, and to remember the original location of each of these files. Different from the Ungroup element (which ungroups all files in a folder structure), you can configure this element to only pick up particular files in particular subfolders.

How does it work?

Switch picks up the required files, based on the properties configured for the Submit hierarchy element. The main properties are:
  • The Path to the hierarchy root: Indicates the highest level where Switch must start searching for files or folders to be processed.
  • The Subfolder levels: Indicates how many levels deep Switch must search for new files or jobs.

    Note that, if the specified level contains another subfolder, this subfolder will be considered as one job, i.e. it will be processed as one entity, and not as a separate job.

    Tip: If you are not sure about the number of levels, or if you want all files to be processed separately (regardless of their nesting level in the hierarchy), set the Subfolder levels property to a very high value (for example: 999).
  • The Process these folders property: If not all folders on the selected level should be processed, you can set this property to No and use the following fields to include or exclude particular folders.
  • Attach hierarchy info: By default, once the files have been processed, they are all placed in the same output folder, at the highest level, unless you set Attach hierarchy info to Yes. This ensures that the original location of the job in the hierarchy is stored with the file (in a so called “internal job ticket”), so that it can be used to recreate the hierarchy. Note that this property is available for other flow elements as well.

    Thanks to this mechanism, you can "on the fly" (so while the job is passing different flow elements) construct the path in which the processed job will be placed.

Hierarchy location path

The hierarchy information is stored as a hierarchy location path, consisting of one or more segments, each segment representing the name of a (sub)folder in a nested folder structure. The first segment represents the top-level folder. For example, the folder structure below is stored as a hierarchy location path consisting of the segments CustomerA, Input and PDF (in that order).





Tip: Use a sample job to see how the saved hierarchy location path looks like. The hierarchy is shown in the Hierarchy column of the Jobs pane.





The Hierarchy column is not by default available. To display this column, proceed as follows:
  1. In the Jobs pane header, right-click one of the column headers and select Show columns > Column1 .The new column (Column1) is now visible in the Jobs pane.
  2. Right-click the Column1 header and select Set column header.
  3. Type Hierarchy and click OK.
  4. Right-click the Hierarchy column header and select Set column value > Define text with variables .
  5. Select Job (from the first column) and Hierarchy (from the second column) and click the Insert variable button.
  6. Click OK.
Parent topic: Working with job folders and subfolders

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