@joevac

Since Spot Check is considered a standard Templater Bot action on par with Replication or Rendering, there’s not really a way to keep it from changing the render-status to “done” when it runs. However, there may be some techniques that we could use to get around the issue that you’re describing.

The easiest would probably be to add another value to each Job that indicates whether a Job is a Spot Check or a standard output. Once that was in place, you could modify the Zap to match both the render-status and the new value before running. That should have the effect of filtering out any Jobs that are run solely as a Spot Check.

Hopefully that helps get things moving in the right direction. We might be able to make some additional suggestions on how to resolve the problem if this isn’t a feasible solution, but to do so, we’d need to get some more information about how everything is set up.

Let us know how it goes, and we’ll see where we need to go from there.

Thanks,

Jeff

@joevac

Dataclay QUE should absolutely update the render-status to “done” even if you’re rendering with Templater Pro. As far as the other question is concerned, there are quite a few benefits to using QUE to interface with Templater, even if you’re not using Templater Bot.

The first benefit is that QUE is highly flexible and efficient when it comes to the storage of data since it’s not limited to a spreadsheet’s rigid format. This allows a lot more flexibility in changing between projects on the fly while still using the same Campaign and Project data.

QUE also provides much more information on each Job’s status than we’re able to provide using the Google Sheets API. If you take a look in the QUE interface at the “View Job Logs” option all the way on the right, you should be able to see that data.

Finally, QUE has a number of easy-to-use API hooks that can give users the flexibility to set up intricate systems to deposit data from a number of different sources directly into their QUE campaigns. Check out this link for more information on that feature.

Hopefully, that all makes sense, but if you have any other questions, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Thanks,

Jeff

@eric_dean shoot us an email at support@dataclay, and we’ll send you a build that should work with the new flags. Also, let us know which platform (MacOS or Windows).

@Jeff Thanks!

@Jeff

Thanks for the info. I’m familiar with the Filter action in Zapier and will try that out. I was expecting that we’d need to use a Que action.

Thanks.

Pete

@Jeff Thank you. I understand that there needs to be a limitation for the free version, but I almost shot myself in the foot by batch importing 40+ jobs. I’m working on my 2nd Campaign, and I will use that for some more testing. Right now I’m just trying to learn how it works and testing to make sure I can get the data imported from my source. I’ll reach out if I need to delete anything, but I think I understand enough to be able to avoid that for now.

Thanks

@rkvalvaa

Before we get too far into the weeds, it should be noted that we may have a temporary fix available for the issue with Google Sheets and Templater Bot. If you open a support ticket with us or contact us at support@dataclay.com we can discuss those options further.

As far as the questions about QUE go, I’d like to address the second one first since it’s a more straightforward “fix”. To use an Autograf on multiple Satellites, you should only need to add a “bot” key to the Job to specify which system should process the data. Usually, each Job will be assigned to the default Satellite specified in the Campaign settings. However, this can be overridden with a value assigned via the “bot” reserved key. Additionally, it shouldn’t be necessary to register the same Autograf multiple times. As long as the Autograf data is present in the QUE account that the system is connecting to, it should be possible to use the same registration data on multiple systems.

As for the first question, this has to do with a fundamental difference in how data is handled in QUE as opposed to Google Sheets. In a Google Sheet, each cell either has data or doesn’t, but the cell is always present for Templater to read, even if it’s empty. In a JSON format, like the one QUE uses, a value may disappear entirely. When this happens, Templater keeps the previously loaded data since it’s not getting any information to use to determine how to handle the associated layer.

I can think of a couple of ways to get around this, but the easiest would be to pass through a “blank” or “empty” value rather than omit the property entirely. This will likely depend on how the Zap is set up that’s passing data over from Google Sheets to QUE, but that would definitely be the most basic and straightforward fix.

The other solution would be to create multiple Autografs to swap between using an aep value from the Data Source. Using this method, you should be able to create versions of the project that simply excise the layers that won’t be getting values. This would likely take more work, depending on how many assets might need to be customized, but it would result in a cleaner final product since Templater wouldn’t have to process the missing layers.

Hopefully, that gets us on the right track, but please feel free to contact us at support@dataclay.com for more assistance.

Thanks,

Jeff

@mikeg Hi! Sorry this got missed earlier. The Bot version of Templater has this functionality built-in. See this link for more info about render-status values.

Yeah, got it to work, had to select one of the jobs first, and then all columns showed 🙂 This is great, I’m really starting to love QUE as much as I do Templater 🙂

@pbretz

The jobs being left in a state of “processing” in Google Sheets is actually a bug left over from the way the Google API updates when footage is missing. Technically speaking, the render-status should be changed to “done” in the Google Sheets since it completes the Job with the option set in the Templater Preferences dialog.

This was a scenario we likely should have envisioned in the past, but our assumption was that customers would use Spot Checks rather than the render-status to check for outputs with missing footage.

Either way, we’ll see about implementing some sort of flag to indicate Jobs that complete with missing assets.

Thanks,

Jeff

@pbretz Hi Pete, I checked in and it looks like we’ve got it fairly high on our list, and we’re eyeing early next year for release. I don’t have an exact timeframe, but hopefully in the first few months.

@rkvalvaa

Glad to hear it. If you have any other questions or run into any other issues, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Thanks!

@seth thanks. That is what the behavior is. It seems to apply to all filters. I get the same limit with filtering output.

Thanks @seth! Just to be clear on (2), the issue happens when I’m trying to set a filter - ie select a satellite in it’s filter drop down, or try to set an action like reassign selected jobs to another satellite. When I interact with the dropdown, my selection(s) in the dropdown will be cleared if the render-status changes for any job in the campaign before I apply / submit the selection(s).

@surabhiv

At the moment, Templater Bot can only be set up to automate either video production or Spot Checking, so if you’d like to have both actions automated, you’ll need to look into running two separate versions of Templater. There is a Reserved Column that Templater recognizes named bot that will allow you to designate which Bot should process each line of data in your data source. Using this feature, you should be able to route preview actions to one Bot to perform Spot Checks and render actions to another that can do render/replication actions.

@jeff Thanks

@jeff okay thanks