Run

Your automations can be started right from the Ultradox editor, but can also be triggered from external services such as Google Forms, Sheets, zapier or via API.

Ultradox Editor

Run

Any automation can be started by clicking on the Run button in the toolbar or by clicking on Edit and Run in the menu.

No matter if you start your automation from the Ultradox editor or from an external app, you will get live feedback in the editor whenever a building blocks is getting executed and you will find detailed info in the console.

Run an app

If your automation contains one or more interactive steps like submitting a form or selecting a contact it turns into an app.

You can make your app publically available or limit the access to selected users.

You can start an app right from the Ultradox editor by clicking on Run app in the main toolbar. Or you can simply open the URL of the app in a fresh browser window.

Running a batch job

Batch jobs are also be performed directly from the Ultradox editor. Batch jobs are simple processes that need to be repeated for multiple applications, such as sending a newsletter to your contacts, selecting documents for further processing such as printing, selecting a row of different Google spreadsheets, etc.

Automations

Ultradox automations can run in the background to run the once configured applications. Other Ultradox automation systems interact with a user and require these inputs for execution.

Automations that run without further interaction with a user are called background processes.

Background processes can be used to create daily or weekly reports, for example, by configuring a timer in a repeat loop.

The process flow does not require any user interaction, but runs in the background and generates reports for saving, printing or sending by e-mail.

Background processes can also be triggered and triggered via external services such as Google forms or table documents, via paper or via API.

Apps

With Ultradox you have the possibility to create automation systems that interact with users and need the transfer of this data for the execution of the automation and cannot run in the background.

Ultradox automation that prompts for interactive steps require user interaction to run.

The Ultradox building blocks suitable for this are listed on the sidebar under User Interactions, such as the Form or Notification building block. For more interaction building blocks, see Google Tables, Contacts, Drive and Cloud Print.

To create and test interactive workflows, simply enable user interaction for multiple modules and click the Execute icon. Ultradox will interrupt your data flow and prompt the user to interact and restart the process as soon as the user enters the data.

If you want to allow other users to run your automation from the Ultradox Editor, share your automation in edit mode with your users.

Edited users can open and run the file directly from Google Drive or by opening the URL of your Ultradox file.

Example for a batch job

Batch processing for a greeting card

Let's create a batch order in which the personalized greeting card "Happy New Year" for selected contacts is created and printed as a PDF document.

Load contacts and create a template

First we need a Load contact(s) building block from Google Contacts. Click on the given contact and select a contact via the following dialog. The building block should then look like this:

Load contact with basic fields when running a batch

The Batch Processing button in the toolbar is now active.

Afterwards we add a To PDF building block from Google Docs and link it to a Google Text document, which we create via the dialog.

Generate PDF from Greeting Card

A Google Text document opens in a new browser tab. Let's rename it in Greeting Card and in this simple example Hello contact, we wish you a happy new year! and insert an image if necessary.

Variables

To personalize this template for all selected contacts, we add a variable instead of a name. To do this, we open the Ultradox Template Editor in the sidebar via the Add-ons menu. This lists all variables that are available via the Load contact(s) building block.

Select the variable givenName by clicking on it. Now in our template it says  Hello , we wish you a happy new year!

Select printer

Finally, we add a Print document building block from Google Cloud Print to the end of Ultradox Automation and select a printer.

Print document on printer Canon Series

Test

Now we can start a test run.

For a test run, we deactivate the Print document building block by setting the on/if/off button to off.

Now click on Batch in the toolbar or start the batch via the menu item. Select the individual contacts you want to receive our greeting card from the dialog and click Run batch.

Now the output is started in the console and lists live the actions to be performed and a percentage status display of the progress. In our case, the loaded contacts and the creation of personalized templates should be displayed.

Run batch

Set the on/if/off button in the Print document building block to on and start batch processing! The personalized documents are printed.

Questions and Feedback

If you have any comments on this page, feel free to add suggestions right to the Google document that we are using to create this site.

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Last Updated: 10/10/18