Working with Switch in a group of people?

[Soul Forge]

So, I'm working in a new company now. Before I was a solo developer in my free time at the old company, so I could access Switch anytime I wanted or needed.
Now we are multiple people sharing a virtual machine, so we have to constantly ask if there isn't anyone working with Switch, only then we can do our work.

I think it would be useful if we could use multiple Switch Designers simultaniously, but my tests showed it isn't possible.
I'm here now to ask you guys that have more experience with working with Prepress software automation in a group. Are there other ways to do that?

Thanks in advance!

[patej]

As you've noticed, currently, only one person can use the Designer at the same time. Here are a few things that have made sharing Switch with a team easier:

• having several Switches helps but our person-to-Switch-ratio is still over 1…

• as much as possible, use web portal to inspect private datas (job boards) and view messages (unfortunately flow viewer isn't good enough to reduce the need for Designer)

• all PitStop Server action lists etc resources our flows use are on shared network locations so they can be edited without an rdp connection

• mutually agreed best practices are very useful, e.g. regarding how flows are designed (naming conventions, direction of flows, meaning of folder colors, usage of markers etc), how to archive backup/old versions of flows, how to document changes…

• in scripting, we use VSCode remote ssh feature to develop scripts directly on a Switch server with minimal need to use the rdp connection; also debugging works through that. Unfortunately, github credentials aren't transferred from Mac to Windows properly so git pull/push (and starting debugging, "refreshing" .sscript etc) have to be done via rdp. We modify script expressions on our local repos and copy paste to Switch Designer when ready (while patiently waiting for a possibility to retrieve them from a file or at least to import external modules to them)

• we have a powershell script that logs to a database which team member currently has the rdp connection active (triggered by Windows Task Scheduler) and a web page that shows "traffic lights" for each Switch and the current user if it's red --> this way you can contact the person who is using the Switch and not bombard everyone with your Can I use Switch for a few minutes? requests…

I hope these help!

[jan_suhr]

There is also the Developer license att about the half price.
With that one you can create and test flows without interrupting the production.

But it is the same thing there, only one user at the time with the Designer.

[billy.olvestad]

I agree that multiple Switch Designers simultaneously would be nice, but also a way of restricting which flows a certain user is able to edit would also be good I think.
Mostly to not confuse users who only should work with one flow when the big list of flows load, but also for security reasons. Some users should not be able to edit some critical flows.
I think we should add this as a feature request to Enfocus.

[Soul Forge]

We actually have a developer license, but for some reason that server isn't up to date. As soon as I joined the company I asked them to upgrade it. I can see why having a dev license can be usefull, but what about two Switch Liceses?

How could we change our way of working by having two licenses? Would we add some flows on license 1 and then other flows on license 2?

I agree that multiple Switch Designers simultaneously would be nice, but also a way of restricting which flows a certain user is able to edit would also be good I think.
Mostly to not confuse users who only should work with one flow when the big list of flows load, but also for security reasons. Some users should not be able to edit some critical flows.
I think we should add this as a feature request to Enfocus.

That is true, as well as being able two connect simultaneously, being able to restrict what people can do is always one of the best features we can have.
There are other features that would be awesome to our support personnel:

• Being able to retry problem jobs through Switch Web Panel
• Less hidden way to find where they can see if flows are running through Switch Web Panel (A dashboard perhaps, with a card for each flow, listing if it's running, how many jobs are in the flow, how many jobs are in problem jobs, and some other info)
• Improvements to the Submit Point Form/Checkpoint Form (Like identation on nested fields, checkboxes, being able to duplicate fields while setting up, and so on)

[patej]

We actually have a developer license, but for some reason that server isn't up to date. As soon as I joined the company I asked them to upgrade it. I can see why having a dev license can be usefull, but what about two Switch Liceses?

How could we change our way of working by having two licenses? Would we add some flows on license 1 and then other flows on license 2?

That's the simplest solution and of course you can send jobs from one to the other with e.g. SwitchToSwitch. Unfortunately, Switch doesn't offer out-of-the-box solutions for ensuring High Availability and load balancing between two installations.

You can of course develop your own solution. We have a flow that every 15 minutes writes to a database what flows are active on each switch and if their status is enabled or not (a separate value we use to help in testing/troubleshooting…). We also have another flow that logs the servers' load averages over past 1, 5 and 15 minutes and generates a single "load value" for each server. Then we have a custom "portal script" that we use to send files between flows and servers: when a job arrives to the script, it checks which server has the required flow active ––> if it's active (and enabled) on several servers, then it sends it to the one with smallest load. This works quite well, although we're still sometimes struggling with that the pure server resource-based calculation of load doesn't alway reflect the actual condition of Switch because it has its own concurrency limitation etc so even if server load is low, Switch might still struggle… But it's better than nothing. We also have a custom dashboard web page that show the server loads and what flows are active and we can also "disable" a single flow or a whole server so that the following jobs will be forced to not choose that flow/server and go to another one. The portal script also logs each transfer so in the dashboard we can easily search by job name and see which Switch has processed it etc.

[nash022]

Using two Switch licenses can improve your workflow efficiency. You can divide the flows by function or priority, such as one license for high-volume tasks and one for lower-volume tasks. Dedicating one license to your development and test environments is also a good idea. Continue to extend your custom monitoring solution to ensure high availability, and integrate real-time metrics into your dashboard to track performance. This will help you optimize your workflow.

[MancyHenry]

It sounds like transitioning from working solo to collaborating in a team environment has introduced some challenges. Unfortunately, Switch Designer is designed to be used by one user at a time per license, which can limit simultaneous access.