In the Workflow, all defined Hosts and Shares are checked for availability using user specific timed intervals (for more information, see this link). When and if interruptions occur depend on various factors the majority of which are covered here.

Figure 1: List of Hosts [1] and Shares [2]

You can recognise these errors under the Administration > Shares menu. Hosts and Shares are displayed separately in two distinct panels. When Host and/or Shares are available to the Workflow, a green check symbol [3] will appear on the right side of the Share or Host entry.

If a Share or a Host is not available, the Host or Share will display a red x symbol [4]. An additional error message is generally display along with the red x symbol. Error message details can be displayed by clicking on the error icon.

If releases are not available from the system for any reason, you will often only be notified when rendering a production order. Since the job cannot then be transferred to the target host, the render process is aborted. Then it is necessary to get to the bottom of the transmission error (link). If a share is not reachable, you have to check in the menuAdministration > Share check whether all shares are currently available. The error messages and symbols in the respective areas enable you to recognize immediately which of the shares are not available.

If a Share or Host is not available to the Workflow, the user may not see an error appear until a Job is being rendered to the Printer. When the Job is being transfered to the target Host through the Server, an error will force the Job to stop rendering as the Host and/or Share are not immediately available. The user can then take a look at the error message displayed under the File Managent > Host/Shares menu to identify which Host or Share is having connectivity issues.

Figure 2: An unavailable Host [4]

If you hover your mouse over the green or red symbol on the right side of each entry [4], you can see when this Host or Share was last checked for availability by the system. If the Share is currently unavailable and an error message is displayed, you can click on the error icon [5] to display detailed error information.

Possible reasons why a Share or Host may not be available:

1. The Workflow and target Host are not connected to the same network
2. SMB versions of the Workflow & target Host do not match
3. No SMB user has been set up on the target Host.
4. Samba was not correctly configured on the target Host (only affects Linux machines)
5. Host name or IP address do not exist in this network
6. The target Host has been shut down or disconnected from the network.
7. The Share has been deleted from the target Host.
8. Username and/or password was entered incorrectly

For cases 1-4, please contact your company's IT department or customer service. In cases 5-8, please check all information entered and/or check the Host or Share on the Host destination side.

All defined Hosts/Shares are routinely checked by the Workflow, therefore we offer the ability to change the interval of this polling event by the user. To change this interval please follow the instructions here. You can also manually check the Host/Share under Administration > File Management and click on the relevant entry under either Hosts or Shares.

Check all defined Hosts/Shares

Under the Administration > Share/Hosts menu, use the Process drop-down menu to click on Check Connections. When you click this button, all existing Hosts and Shares will be checked by the Workflow, after refreshing the browser, an updated list will be displayed.

Figure 3: The Check Connections action [6]

Checking individual Shares

When you select a Host, all the Shares created for that Host are displayed under the Share Panel. Each of these entries can be checked and updated separately by clicking the symbol next to the connection status. The connection is then checked. You will also see the current data transfer rate for the respective Share. If the Share is no longer available, an error message is displayed below. If an error appears, the user can click on the error message for more details.

Figure 4: Under the Shares panel we can see the status of all connections [7]