Creating File Polling Activity

The Polling Service activity is used to check the arrival or modification of file(s) on the Local LAN location.
This feature is available in:

Enterprise

Premier

Professional

Express

 


Steps to create a File Polling Activity

  1. On the Adeptia Suite homepage, click the Develop tab.
  2. Go to Services > Polling and then click File.

    The Manage File Polling Service screen is displayed.

     

  3. Click the Create New link. The Create File Polling Service screen is displayed.

     

  4. Type the name and description of the new File Polling Service in the Name and Description text boxes respectively.
  5. Select the trigger type from the dropdown list Trigger Type. The effect on the selection is listed in the table below.

    Table 1: Trigger Type Selection Values

    Trigger Type Selection

    Description

    On FileCreated

    To configure the File Polling service to check for the creation of a new file(s).

    In case a file is being created and after that it is being modified, then you need to enable the Check for File Modification option. This option is only used with On File Created option.

    On FileExists

    To configure the File Polling service to check for the existence of the file(s)

    On FileModified

    To configure the File Polling service to check for any modification in file(s)

  6. Enter the name of file that File Polling service needs to verify, in File Include Criteria field.
  7. Enter the name of file that File Polling service does not need to verify, in File Exclude Criteria field. For example *.txt is entered in File Include Criteria, but two files Gdata.txt and Gdata1.txt are not required to be verified by File Polling service. Then Gdata.txt and Gdata1.txt file name need to be entered separated by comma in File Exclude Criteria field. You can use regular expressions listed in the table below.

    Table 2: Expressions used in File Include Criteria and File Exclude Criteria

    Expression

    Description

    .

    For all files with some extension

    *

    For all files in a directory

    a*.txt

    For files starting with a and having extension txt (e.g. arch.txt)

    a??????.txt

    For files starting with a and have 6 more character followed by txt extension (e.g. archive.txt)

    a[1-9]

    For a1, a2 ,a3 …………..a9

    b[aiu]t

    For bat, bit or but

    a.txt, a.doc

    For two files named as a.txt and a.doc

  8. Enter the path of file in File Base Location. Example c:/Gmdata.

    You can also use regular expression for folders, in File Include Criteria and File Exclude Criteria fields. For example, if you enter h*/*.txt in File Include Criteria field and C:/Gmdata in File Base Location field, it will search for all .txt file inside all directories which starts from h under C:\Gmdata.

  9. When Adeptia Server is installed on Windows Operating System, File Polling uses windows service to connect to remote machine to access any file. It just connects once and uses the same connection with the same User ID and Password (which is stored in the cache) every time. If you want to enforce the validation of User ID and Password every time while accessing the file on a remote machine, select the Use VFS checkbox.
  10. Enter username and password in the textboxes User ID and Password respectively. Then, re-enter the password in the textbox Confirm Password.
  11. Enter the time interval, the file polling service will check for the arrival of any file or modification of existing file in the textbox Polling Frequency. Enter the digit in the Frequency field and select the unit of time i.e. seconds, minutes or hours etc. from the Duration dropdown list.

    We recommended minimum Polling Frequency to be more than 60 seconds.

  12. Enter the file stable time in the textbox File Stable Time. This is applicable only when user selects On FileModified in trigger type. Polling will wait for the above specified time to become a file stable.
  13. Enter the expiry time in the textbox Expiry Time. After expiry time process flow does not poll for the file.

    For information on Advanced Properties, refer to Changing Advanced Properties.

    When a file polling service is used in a process flow, it creates a Polling Status activity variable. For more information, refer to Polling Status.

  14. Click Save.