Creating a Job

The Create Job page lets you define and submit any type of job from a single place in the Job Center: print, proof, proof set, flat content object data, and email. You can also use it to create a port.

Everything the job needs is defined on the page itself: the account and campaign it belongs to, the plan, the document or email message, the data source, and the output. You can define these in any order - work from the top of the page down, or start with the plan or the document and let uProduce fill in the campaign and account they belong to.

You can also attach metadata to the job, change the value of a single content object or recipient field for this job, choose which content objects are resolved, and choose how assets are resolved.

Note: The Create Job page is an additional way to create jobs. The Process page and the other production pages remain available and work as before.

To open the Create Job page:

Click the Job Center button on the navigation bar.
At the top of the job list, click New.

The (Resubmit job) icon in the job list also opens the Create Job page, with the settings of the job you selected already filled in. For more information, see Job Management.

Job types

The Type setting, at the top of the Job section, determines what kind of job you are creating:

Job type	Description
Print	Produces a print output file from an InDesign or uCreate document.
Proof	Produces a proof of a document, for review before running the full job.
ProofSet	Produces a proof set: a single file containing a sample of recipients, used to review how the plan logic resolves for different recipients.
CSVXData	Produces a flat content object data file (CSV) instead of composed output. The file contains the resolved content object values for each recipient.
Email	Sends an email campaign to the recipients you select.
TestEmail	Sends a single test email, to check the message before you send it to the full recipient list.
EmailPreflight	Runs a preflight pass over the recipient list without sending anything, to find problems in the message or the data.
Port	Creates a port in the selected campaign instead of submitting a job. The page settings become the port’s definition. For more information on ports, see Ports.

The job type controls which sections and settings appear on the rest of the page. Changing the type does not discard what you have already entered: settings that do not apply to the new type are hidden rather than deleted, and they reappear if you switch back. Only the settings that apply to the current type are submitted.

Page layout

The navigation pane on the left lists the sections of the job, in the order in which the job is produced. Each section is divided into groups of related settings, which the navigation pane lists beneath it:

Job: what the job is, where it belongs and how it runs.
Data: the recipients and the data behind them.
Logic: the plan that resolves the data into content objects.
Template: the document or email message that is composed for each recipient.
Output: the format of the result and how it is written.
Post-composition: operations that run on the output after composition.
Legacy Options: deprecated settings, kept for jobs that still rely on them.

Not every section appears for every job: Template, Output, Post-composition and Legacy Options are hidden when the job type has no use for them.

Click an entry in the navigation pane to scroll the settings pane to that group of settings.

A number next to an entry in the navigation pane shows how many settings in that group still need your attention.

Select campaign components

Many fields on this page open a searchable list rather than a plain dropdown, for example, account, campaign, plan and document. They all work the same way. Click the field to open the list, and use the search box at the top of it to find an item by any part of its name. The list loads 50 items at a time and loads more as you scroll.

If two items in a list have the same name, the list adds the name of what they belong to, in parentheses - the campaign for a plan or a document, the account for a campaign.

A field that reads -- Auto (name) -- was filled in by uProduce, either because only one item was available or because another choice implies it: selecting a plan, for example, fills in the campaign and account it belongs to.

An automatic value behaves differently from one you selected yourself: it does not narrow the other lists. So after you select a plan, the Document list still offers documents from every campaign. Select that campaign explicitly and the Document list narrows to it.

When you change a selection, any other selection that no longer fits it is cleared. If only one item then remains available, it is selected automatically.

At the top of the list, -- Select -- clears the field, and uProduce may then fill it in again. -- Explicitly Deselected -- clears it and keeps it empty, whatever you select elsewhere.

Create a job

In the Job Center, click New.
In the Job section, select the Type of job you want to create.
Select the campaign components the job needs: the account and campaign, the plan, the document or email message, and the data source.

You can work from the top down, or start with the plan or the document and let uProduce fill in the rest. See Select campaign components.
Define the rest of the job by setting the parameters in each section. Which sections and settings are available depends on the job type, the output format and the document type. For a description of all settings, see Create Job Settings.

Settings that must be completed before the job can be submitted are counted in the navigation pane, next to the group they belong to.
Click Submit.

The Job Center opens, with the new job selected.

Note: If you click Submit while settings are missing, nothing is submitted, and each setting that needs your attention is marked in the settings pane.

The toolbar

Button	Description
Submit	Submits the job. When the job type is Port, this button reads Save and creates a port instead of submitting a job. When the job is submitted successfully, the Job Center opens with the new job selected.
Generate Ticket	Downloads the job ticket that the current settings produce, as a JSON file named job-ticket.json. Nothing is submitted. Settings that still need your attention block this button, just as they block Submit. This is useful if you work with the uProduce REST API: you can define the job in the page, download the resulting ticket, and use it as the basis for an API call.
Load Ticket	Loads a job ticket from a JSON file on your computer and fills the page with its settings. You can load a ticket produced by Generate Ticket, or one downloaded from the Job Center.

Button

Description

Submit

Submits the job. When the job type is Port, this button reads Save and creates a port instead of submitting a job.

When the job is submitted successfully, the Job Center opens with the new job selected.

Generate Ticket

Downloads the job ticket that the current settings produce, as a JSON file named job-ticket.json. Nothing is submitted.

Settings that still need your attention block this button, just as they block Submit.

This is useful if you work with the uProduce REST API: you can define the job in the page, download the resulting ticket, and use it as the basis for an API call.

Load Ticket

Loads a job ticket from a JSON file on your computer and fills the page with its settings. You can load a ticket produced by Generate Ticket, or one downloaded from the Job Center.

Reuse existing settings

Rather than defining a job from scratch, you can start from settings that already exist:

Fill from template (print jobs only), in the Job section, applies a production settings template. See Defining Production Settings Templates.
Email template (email jobs only), in the Job section, applies the settings of an existing email activity. The settings that the email activity supplies become read-only, so that the message is sent as it was defined. See Creating an Email Activity.
Load Ticket, in the toolbar, loads a job ticket from a JSON file.
The (Resubmit job) icon in the Job Center loads the settings of a job that already ran.

In each case you can change anything that is not read-only before you submit.

Settings defined outside uProduce

A job ticket can define a plan, a document, an email body, a data source, an asset source, a delivery provider, a post-composition operation, or a copy, FTP or print output destination by its path, instead of pointing to an item that exists in uProduce. Tickets built through the uProduce REST API often do.

When you load such a ticket, or resubmit a job that ran from one, the field shows an entry such as -- External Plan -- or -- External Delivery Provider --. The job uses the definition the ticket carries, but you cannot open it or change it here. You can select an item of your own instead; the external entry stays in the list, so you can go back to it until you load another ticket.

If a ticket refers to an item that has since been deleted, or that you do not have permission to see, the rest of the ticket still loads and that field is left at -- Explicitly Deselected --, counted as a setting that needs your attention.

A ticket built through the REST API can also carry settings that this page has no control for, such as the InDesign scripting files or the recipient IDs filter. The page submits what it shows, so those settings are dropped when you submit from here. If a job depends on them, submit it through the REST API instead.