8.7

Input Tasks
Input tasks are the starting point to any process and determine what file this process will being
with. Each process must begin with an input tasks, and although a given process may have
multiple input tasks, no task can have more than one initial input task.
Initial Input Tasks
Initial input tasks are always at the beginning of a process and are always triggered when the
process starts. The process itself may start on a schedule or poll at regular intervals, which
means the initial input task only runs whenever the process is set to run. For more information
about what happens outside of the process scheduled times and to learn how to set the
schedule, See " Process Properties" on page659.
Technical
If an error occurs during an initial input task, the On Error tab is never triggered. See
"Using the On Error tab" on page56.
Input tasks may either poll a specific location, or await for jobs to be sent to a specific
PlanetPress Workflow Service. It is not recommended to have two initial input tasks capturing
the same input location, for the following reasons:
l It is a "hit and miss"to know which of the two tasks will pick up the file. This is an issue if
the two processes are different.
l One of the processes may process a file quicker than another and finish first, which may
be an issue if the processing relies on FIFO(First In, First Out).
l One process may error out as it's trying to capture an input that's currently being read by
another one. This causes issues if the process is on a schedule and only runs once per
period.
It is important to note that initial input tasks processes files one at a time, and will return to the
input task once the current file has finished processing. Each time it returns to the input task, it
again only captures one single file. It does this until there are no more files in the folder and will
also capture any new file that were added during the time it processed other files. Once no
more files are found, it stops processing until it is scheduled to run again.
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