Switch is randomly duplicating files

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gadgetjunkie
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Posts: 2
Joined: Wed Jun 03, 2020 4:10 pm

Switch is randomly duplicating files

Post by gadgetjunkie »

Hi All,

First post and it's a long one I'm afraid. Sorry about that. Hope it makes sense!

I have been battling a problem for many weeks now and have run out of ideas (as have Enfocus support).
Hoping someone here has seen a similar problem and has a solution.

Environment:
Switch 18 update 3 on macOS 10.13.6

Problem:
We have a customer that sends us, via shared Dropbox folders, batches of multipage PDF files 4 times per day. Often there will be many hundreds of files per batch. The files are processed over several flows (dependant on the product we are printing).

The problem we are having is that some files, seemingly randomly, are being duplicated by Switch and are getting through to print. We usually see 1 - 20 duplicated files per day but can sometimes go a couple of days without any.
The issue seems to be where we have a folder (auto-managed or not) at or near the flow input with two outgoing connections. One output always goes to a backup folder (we need to preserve a copy of all incoming files) and the other goes to the file processing initially via an Assemble job element (we need to group files)

Originally the backup folder properties were to overwrite duplicates and we were only made aware there was an issue when the customer flagged up that they were receiving duplicate prints.
(We now have a version number added to duplicates that go to the backup folder so we can monitor.)
I have duplicates set to discard in the Assemble job element (have also tried Overwrite) but that seems to have no affect i.e the number of PDF pages in the backup folder, including the numbered duplicates, is always the same as the number of pages printed.

Things I have tried:
Increasing "Process file only after (seconds)" in preferences to 25
Increasing "Scan every (seconds)" of input folders up to 30 seconds
Adding intermediate folder elements (local or auto-managed) and turning off Safe move (when using local folders)
Adding a Hold elements before a folder with two outputs
Adding a Hold element with two outputs (ended up losing files)
Moving all the Dropbox input folders to a separate flow thus moving the PDF files to local folders before being picked up by the existing flows.

The commonality seems to be lots of files coming in, in a short space of time, and going through a folder with two outputs, one of which is an Assemble job element.

Below is a simplified example of one of the flows where we are having this problem.
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Justin
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