Automator e-mail duplication (70+ times)
Altair EmployeeThe process below created over 70 messages to tell me (and the IT managers...) that the job started. How do I keep that from repeating?
I brought in a standard process into the visual process section. I set up a monitoring trigger and I wanted to notify our IT group that their job had started. I tested the process, moving the timing of that opening message, until it provided just the one message. However, upon live implementation, it created over 70 messages as it seemed to loop somehow before completing the process. Thankfully, the rest of the process is working fine where it creates the reports, distributes them, moves the input file and provides the final message that the job has successfully completed. I know it's a stupid question, but I'm still learning how to use the Automator (13.5) and visually, to me, it should provide just one sent message to notify the group a job has started.
Just as a side note... when migrating from Standard to Visual (to ensure the process happened in the necessary order), I did notice some differences in the file paths required. When saving files based on keys, in Standard the destination folder would have a "/" at the end while the visual version made me remove it. I was surprised that it was not a seamless transition from Standard to Visual and also that you can't migrate a visual process back to standard. However, the changes necessary were minimal and as long as it works, I'm happy whether it's in visual or standard!
I appreciate this Community site... great shares.
Answers
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Hi Brian,
Its really hard to say why the process sent 70+ email messages without inspecting your process, however, my guess is the Standard Process (SP) input tab was configured for each input file to run in its own job under the grouping of multiple files. The input file path was configured for multiple files (with a wild card, or multiple input files).
When the SP was migrated to Visual Process (VP), a Hub was added and it was set to Individually, therefore, for every input file, an email distribution was generated.
We have made significant improvements to the Monarch Server Automator since version 13.5. The current version is 15.0.3. One of the reasons that the SP to the VP did not fully migrated was possibly you are on v13.5. I suggest you consider upgrading to the latest.
Regards
Mo
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Altair Forum User said:
Hi Brian,
Its really hard to say why the process sent 70+ email messages without inspecting your process, however, my guess is the Standard Process (SP) input tab was configured for each input file to run in its own job under the grouping of multiple files. The input file path was configured for multiple files (with a wild card, or multiple input files).
When the SP was migrated to Visual Process (VP), a Hub was added and it was set to Individually, therefore, for every input file, an email distribution was generated.
We have made significant improvements to the Monarch Server Automator since version 13.5. The current version is 15.0.3. One of the reasons that the SP to the VP did not fully migrated was possibly you are on v13.5. I suggest you consider upgrading to the latest.
Regards
Mo
Thank you, Mo! In looking at the timing of the e-mails and the finished report, it's my thought that our system starts a job, which creates an initial file (albeit without data). The monitoring portion of the Automator recognizes the file having appeared and tries to start the job, but since there isn't any data yet, it gets stuck in a loop, continually checking the file. Once the system completes it's generation of the report, then the Automator is free to continue it's process. This would explain why "job started" emails were received before the time stamp within the system report. When I tested the Automator processes, I merely copied over a file, which was instantaneous and didn't result in numerous e-mails. That is how I make sense of it. As I'd rather avoid spamming with IT managers with e-mails , I've decided it best just to drop the opening message and just allow the results to speak for themselves.
You recommended upgrading and that it on the top of my list to do. However, I need to wait two weeks for our month-end close to complete to ensure we don't have any issues at a critical time. I planned to upgrade both Monarch and the Automator to 14.3, but I might as well go straight to 15.... didn't realize that was the latest version. We have not used the Dataprep portion yet and I was excited to go to 14 as I should then be able to bring my current projects into Dataprep, which I can't seem to do currently under 13.5. Once I can bring a project into Dataprep, I see it opening the possibility for future breakthroughs such as the comparison of actual to budget on a vendor level. I recently set up a lookup field within our models to summarize AP/JE entries for monthly review.
Our use of the Automator has really grown over the past year and I really love it. It's a great extension to the wonderful Monarch Classic; great reporting tool.
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Altair Forum User said:
Hi Brian,
Its really hard to say why the process sent 70+ email messages without inspecting your process, however, my guess is the Standard Process (SP) input tab was configured for each input file to run in its own job under the grouping of multiple files. The input file path was configured for multiple files (with a wild card, or multiple input files).
When the SP was migrated to Visual Process (VP), a Hub was added and it was set to Individually, therefore, for every input file, an email distribution was generated.
We have made significant improvements to the Monarch Server Automator since version 13.5. The current version is 15.0.3. One of the reasons that the SP to the VP did not fully migrated was possibly you are on v13.5. I suggest you consider upgrading to the latest.
Regards
Mo
Looking at the HUB's for that report, they defaulted as Group as I didn't make any changes to it upon migration.
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Altair Forum User said:
Looking at the HUB's for that report, they defaulted as Group as I didn't make any changes to it upon migration.
Brian,
As I said before it's hard to speculate why your process is sending 70+ emails unless I inspect it. It seems like you figured how to resolve it.
I would definitely upgrade the Monarch Server Automator to v15.0.3, or the latest version, and Monarch Desktop v15.1.
You can access the Datawatch documentations from the following link:
You can also download Monarch Desktop v15.1 from the following link and use 30 day free trial, but keep in mind you can only export 10 rows using the free trail.
Regards
mo
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Altair Forum User said:
Thank you, Mo! In looking at the timing of the e-mails and the finished report, it's my thought that our system starts a job, which creates an initial file (albeit without data). The monitoring portion of the Automator recognizes the file having appeared and tries to start the job, but since there isn't any data yet, it gets stuck in a loop, continually checking the file. Once the system completes it's generation of the report, then the Automator is free to continue it's process. This would explain why "job started" emails were received before the time stamp within the system report. When I tested the Automator processes, I merely copied over a file, which was instantaneous and didn't result in numerous e-mails. That is how I make sense of it. As I'd rather avoid spamming with IT managers with e-mails , I've decided it best just to drop the opening message and just allow the results to speak for themselves.
You recommended upgrading and that it on the top of my list to do. However, I need to wait two weeks for our month-end close to complete to ensure we don't have any issues at a critical time. I planned to upgrade both Monarch and the Automator to 14.3, but I might as well go straight to 15.... didn't realize that was the latest version. We have not used the Dataprep portion yet and I was excited to go to 14 as I should then be able to bring my current projects into Dataprep, which I can't seem to do currently under 13.5. Once I can bring a project into Dataprep, I see it opening the possibility for future breakthroughs such as the comparison of actual to budget on a vendor level. I recently set up a lookup field within our models to summarize AP/JE entries for monthly review.
Our use of the Automator has really grown over the past year and I really love it. It's a great extension to the wonderful Monarch Classic; great reporting tool.
Hi Brian,
A 14.3 upgrade for Monarch complete would be an excellent progression but 15.1, if that is open to you, moves things further still and is, in my opinion, an excellent choice.
Being old school I still enjoy working with Monarch Classic but with pretty much all of the functionality of Classic now available in Data Prep - certainly the core stuff that represents most to the regular usage - the option to use either user interface is a huge benefit.
Grant
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