Question:

What are Drop Folder Services and how are they configured?

Answer:

Drop Folder Services further automate MassTransit's file delivery workflow by allowing the user to specify an alternate "drop" location for files to be delivered.

For delivery workflows of MassTransit 7 servers, please refer to the Workflows page of the MassTransit 7 documentation.

By default, files delivered by MassTransit are placed inside of a user's "Received" folder. When a service is specified prior to the sending of files, MassTransit will automatically usher files to the alternative location, which can be a separate folder, mounted volume, or server.

The Drop Folder service is created on the MassTransit Satellite, Professional, Enterprise, Standard or Premier installation that is responsible for receiving the file(s) and push to another specified location.

Creating Drop Folder Services:

To add or configure Drop Folder services, navigate to the following location:

Configuration > Services tab > Add (or Configure to change existing settings)

Next, select "Drop Folder" from the pulldown menu, which will cause the "Configure Drop Folder" window to appear.

Drop folder service consists of two elements:

Drop Folder Location - This is the folder or area where files are to be placed by MassTransit. These can be folders on local or remote servers, provided they can be visible from your Network Neighborhood.

Custom Name - This is the 'friendly' name that you would give to the service. Your address book entries will refer to this name when they designate a file or a batch of files to be processed by the service. As a general rule, keep this name short and concise, so users can easily specify the services they intend to use.

After these items have been specified, MassTransit is ready to scan incoming uploads, looking for specially named folders.

Using Drop Folder Services:

Now, if remote clients or address book entries want to send a file which is destined for processing by a particular service, they will need to create a specially named folder on their end, which tells MassTransit that the file or files sent are to be processed by that service.

In MassTransit, this is done with "Output to servicename" or "Print to servicename" folders. Here, servicename must exactly match the Custom name that had been configured in the previous step.

The remote client or Address Book entry will have a "To Send", "Sent", and "Received" folder on their end that would correspond exclusively to your MassTransit Server. The remote client will want to place the "Output to servicename" or "Print to servicename" within their "To Send" folder.

When these files are sent to the MassTransit Server, they are then scanned and matched up with the appropriate service (based on the custom name).

In order to automate this process, confirm that the "Automatically Process Received Files" setting has been enabled.

This setting can be found by highlighting each address book entry on the MassTransit server, and clicking the "Edit..." button. This will reveal the "Contact Information" window. Next, select the "Security" tab. Under the "Security" tab, locate the "Automatically Process Received Files" setting.

If you are using web clients with MassTransit, you can configure drop folder services to appear within the web browser as an option when your clients go to send files to your server. This can be done in the Security tab of the MassTransit address book entry for the web client.