Bulk Task Smasher: User Guide

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Use the Bulk Task Smasher app to automate repetitive manual actions with just a spreadsheet and a few clicks of your mouse.

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Before you begin

• To use Bulk Task Smasher, your Uberflip account must have API access. This feature is included with certain pack types, or may be added on to your Uberflip subscription. For more information, please speak with your Uberflip account representative.
• To follow the instructions in this article, you must be a member of the Account Administrators user group in the Uberflip account where you are using Bulk Task Smasher.
  • After installing the Bulk Task Smasher Marketplace app, you can also configure app permissions to give any user or user group access to the Bulk Task Smasher app, as well as to control access to particular bulk action categories within the app. For details, see this article.

 

About Bulk Task Smasher

What is Bulk Task Smasher?

Bulk Task Smasher is an app that helps you to efficiently complete high-volume tasks in Uberflip. It works by automating repetitive and time-consuming manual actions for tasks like creating users, managing Streams, adding tags, and more.

Rather than having to repeat the same manual actions over and over, Bulk Task Smasher lets you simply set up a spreadsheet with the details of the tasks you need to complete, then takes that spreadsheet and performs the actual tasks for you automatically.

What can Bulk Task Smasher do?

Bulk Task Smasher can automate a variety of bulk tasks for your Uberflip Streams, Items, users and tags:

• For each of these resources, Bulk Task Smasher can perform general bulk actions like create, update, export, and delete. These allow you to efficiently do things like create a large number of Streams, update many users, export all of your Items, or delete many tags at once.
• Certain resources also have special bulk actions available that are fully automated, such as "delete all unused tags", or "hide all Items older than a certain date".
• Bulk Task Smasher also has limited support for Flipbooks/PDFs, allowing you to easily upload document files in bulk.

Here is an overview of all of the bulk actions that Bulk Task Smasher can perform (expand sections to view):

How does Bulk Task Smasher work?

To set up most bulk actions in Bulk Task Smasher, you fill out a job template. A job template is simply a specially formatted spreadsheet where you enter instructions for the actions you want the tool to perform.

Job templates are specific to bulk actions, and you can download the necessary job template for each bulk action directly within the app.  Like all spreadsheets, job templates consist of columns and rows:

• Running across the top of the job template are the preset column headers. These specify the type of information that you enter into that column to configure each step of the bulk action. Every job template has at least one required header, and most also have a number of optional headers that you can configure to your needs when you download the job template.
• After the first row (which contains the column headers), every other row in the job template represents a distinct step in the bulk action: for example, if you're creating Streams, each row represents a different Stream to be created.

For example, say you want to add a group of new users to your Uberflip account: to do this, you set up a job template where each row represents a user you want to create. On every row, you fill out the columns with the necessary details to create each user, such as their first name, last name, email, etc.:

Once your job template is ready, you simply upload it to Bulk Task Smasher. The tool then runs through every row in the job template, and automatically performs each required action as specified.

 

Install Bulk Task Smasher

To use Bulk Task Smasher, you must first install the Bulk Task Smasher Marketplace app.

1. Log in to your Uberflip account at app.uberflip.com.
2. Head to the Bulk Task Smasher in Marketplace.
3. Click on Install.
4. If the app has been successfully installed, you'll see Bulk Task Smasher listed under Marketplace > Installed Apps in Uberflip:
   
5. In addition, you'll also see a new Bulk Task Smasher menu option in the sidebar menu in Uberflip:
   

 

Open Bulk Task Smasher

To use Bulk Task Smasher to set up and run bulk actions, begin by opening the app from within Uberflip.

1. Log in to your Uberflip account at app.uberflip.com.
2. Click on Bulk Task Smasher in the sidebar menu:
   
3. You will be logged in to Bulk Task Smasher automatically, and the Bulk Task Smasher app interface will appear on the right:
   

From here, you can set up and run bulk actions.

 

Set up and run bulk actions with Bulk Task Smasher

In Bulk Task Smasher, you begin setting up all available bulk actions the same way:

1. First, select the type of Uberflip resource (Streams, Items, tags, users, or Flipbooks/PDFs) that you want to apply a bulk action to:
   

   

2. Then, choose from a list of available bulk actions for that resource:
   

From this point, the specific steps for setting up and running the bulk action vary depending on the type of bulk action you selected:

For instructions on setting up the Create, Update, and Delete bulk actions for any resource, see this article:

Bulk Task Smasher: Set up and run Create, Update, and Delete bulk actions

For instructions on setting up the Export bulk actions for any resource, as well as the special bulk actions that are available for certain resources, see this article:

Bulk Task Smasher: Set up and run Export and special bulk actions

 

Check on the status of submitted jobs

After you set up and submit a bulk action (or "job") in Bulk Task Smasher, the app will process the job and automatically perform the necessary tasks to complete the bulk action you set up.

All Bulk Task Smasher jobs submitted in your account are recorded in the jobs table, where you can check on the status of any job (whether it has been completed, and if so, if it completed successfully or with errors), as well as view details of all past jobs.

The jobs table displays the current status of all current and past jobs at a glance. The possible statuses are:

Processing

The job is still being processed by Bulk Task Smasher, and is not yet complete.

Completed

Bulk Task Smasher has completed the job, and was able to perform all steps in the job without errors.

Warning

Bulk Task Smasher has completed the job, but some steps could not be performed (typically due to errors in the job template).

Failed

Bulk Task Smasher encountered a critical error and was not able to complete the job.

1. To view the jobs table at any time, click on View Jobs:
   

   

2. This will display the jobs table, which lists all jobs submitted in your account:
   
3. Click on the table entry of any completed job to view more information about that job. In this expanded view, you can review a detailed log of all the actions Bulk Task Smasher performed. Use the filter controls to view either all log entries for the job, only errors, or only fatal errors:
4. In this view, you can also download the original job template file that was used to submit the job, as well as export a full log of actions performed as part of the job:
   
5. Lastly, you can also use the search box to search for any job by its job ID (which is provided in the confirmation message whenever you submit a job), and export the complete jobs table:
   

 

Notes

• The error messages shown in the job logs are provided by the Uberflip API, and are not modified by Bulk Task Smasher in any way. As these error messages were intended for API users (i.e. developers), they can often be difficult to interpret for a non-technical user. Here are some common error messages you might encounter, and what they typically mean:

  • Resource not found: Bulk Task Smasher couldn't perform the specified action on the specified resource (e.g. a specific Stream, Item, user, tag, or Flipbook/PDF), because it could not find that resource in the Uberflip account. This usually happens because the resource's identifier code (i.e. a Stream ID, Item ID, etc.) was entered incorrectly in the job template, or because the resource simply does not exist (or no longer exists) in the account. To resolve, check the provided ID(s) for the affected resource(s) and correct them as needed.

  • Delete blocked by dependencies: Bulk Task Smasher couldn't delete the specified resource, because other resources in the Uberflip account require this resource to exist and blocked the deletion. To resolve, check the error message for details of the resource that blocked the deletion, and delete it first if applicable.