Creating Job Scripts

Choose PowerShell IDE

To get started with creating a custom job, open the PowerShell IDE or editor of choice. The powerJobs Processor ISE shortcut in the start menu can also be used which already opens one of our Sample Jobs.

Prepare PowerShell environment

During development it can be useful to be able to start the whole script or parts of it without having to run it on the job processor.
To achieve this it a few important components of the Job Environment need to be re-created.

Import the powerJobs Module by calling Import-Module powerJobs.
This will also import powerVault as well as any modules placed in the powerJobs modules directory.
Next a connection to Vault needs to be established using the Open-VaultConnection cmdlet to have the $vault, $vaultConnection and $vaultExplorerUtil variables available.

After connecting to the Vault successfully, a test file or any other Vault entity can be retrieved and assigned to a variable for imitating the behavior of Setup_job.ps1.

For example set the $file variable to the first .idw file that is found in Vault:

$file = Get-VaultFile -Properties @{'File Extension'='idw'} #Search for a Drawing file

The variable $workingDirectory holds the path to a temporary directory (located in C:\Temp\powerJobs Processor...) where e.g. Vault files can be downloaded or file exports will be generated.
All the files which are created in this directory during the development phase, will be automatically cleaned up at the next job execution.
Alternatively, they can be removed at any time using the Clean-Up cmdlet.

Clean-Up -folder $workingDirectory

Choose from Sample Jobs

Our standard delivery comes with a couple of Sample Jobs that can be used as templates for new jobs.
Choose one of those job scripts and place a copy of the script in the %ALLUSERSPROFILE%\coolOrange\powerJobs\Jobs directory.
Give your new Job a meaningful name in the format YourCompanyName.SomeJobName.ps1.

If you prefer to do customizations, for example some sample jobs don’t allow all supported formats, the new script can be extend by adding the desired extensions like iam, ipt or ipn:

if( @("idw","dwg","iam","ipt","ipn") -notcontains $file._Extension ) {
	Write-Host "Files with extension: '$($file._Extension)' are not supported"
	return
}

An other example would be to changed the name of the exported target file.

In this example the according filename variable is extended with the revision number of the Vault source file:

$pdfFileName = "$($file._Name)_$($file._Revision).pdf"

Start from Scratch

Create a new script file with a meaningful name in the IDE and place it in %ALLUSERSPROFILE%\coolOrange\powerJobs\Jobs with the file extension .ps1.
In this example we are going to download the file, open it in the Inventor application and export it as PDF.

Download the file from Vault

We will use the Save-VaultFile cmdlet to download the file to our working directory.

$downloadedFiles = Save-VaultFile -File $file.'Full Path' -DownloadDirectory $workingDirectory

Open the file in Inventor

After downloading the file we will use the open-document cmdlet to open the file in Inventor.

$file = $downloadedFiles | select -First 1
Open-Document -LocalFile $file.LocalPath -Application 'Inventor'

Exporting the file

Now we can export the document as PDF, using the export-document cmdlet.

$pdfFileName = "$($file._Name).pdf"
Export-Document -Format 'PDF' -To "$workingDirectory/$pdfFileName"

Closing the opened file

Finally we close the file using the Close-Document cmdlet.

Close-Document

To run the job on the job processor see the Registered Jobs section and Queueing custom jobs.
If values in the job regularly change, it is also possible to declare settings in the job that can be easily modified in the powerJobs Settings Dialog user interface.