Bulk Operations and Batch Progress

Whenever you act on many records at once — editing, archiving, deleting, exporting, adding them to a workflow — Qik runs the work as a batch job in the background. This article explains which actions run as batches, how to follow their progress, what happens to records you don't have access to, and what to expect when something fails. For the step-by-step of the bulk edit screen itself, see Batch / Bulk Editing.

Which actions run as a batch

Select two or more records on any list page (see The List Page), open the action sidebar, and these actions are processed as a background batch:

When you act on a single record, the change is made immediately instead. Other tools in Qik — merging duplicate profiles, merging scopes, remapping profile fields and importing — use the same background system and show progress the same way.

Following progress

Once a batch starts, a progress strip appears along the bottom of the dashboard. Each running job shows:

• The kind of job (for example Batch update or Batch delete) and, for exports, its title.
• A progress bar and a count such as "120 of 450".
• A cancel button.

Progress refreshes every couple of seconds. You can keep working and move around the dashboard while a batch runs. When every job in the strip has finished you'll see "Batch processes complete", and lists showing that content type refresh automatically.

When an export finishes you'll be asked whether to see it straight away — choose Show me the results to open the export, or I'll check it later. See Exporting Data.

The work happens on Qik's servers, not in your browser. If you close the tab or reload the page, the job keeps running, but the progress strip only follows jobs started from the current tab — reload the list later to see the results.

Cancelling a batch

Click the cancel button beside a job to cancel it. Only the person who started a batch, or an admin, can cancel it. Records that were already processed keep their changes — cancelling never rolls anything back, so if you started a bulk edit by mistake, run a second bulk edit to put the values back.

Permissions: what gets skipped

A batch always runs with your permissions, record by record — never with more access than you'd have editing each record by hand.

• Before the job starts, Qik checks every selected record against the access the action needs (see the table above). Records you can't see, or can see but not change, are left out of the batch and the job runs on the rest.
• If you don't have the needed access to any of the selected records, the batch doesn't start and you'll see a message such as "You don't have permission to delete these items".
• Access you hold through a workflow assignment counts too, the same as when editing a single record.
• The Bulk edit action is hidden entirely if your role can't edit that content type, and fields marked read-only are never offered for bulk editing.

Because skipped records are dropped before the job starts, the total on the progress bar can be lower than the number you selected. That's a sign some records were outside your access.

When individual records fail

Each record is processed separately, so one record failing (for example because a required field is missing or the record was deleted in the meantime) doesn't stop the others. Temporary problems, such as a brief server hiccup, are retried automatically. The progress count includes failed records, so a job still reaches 100% even if some records couldn't be changed — open a few records afterwards to confirm the result.

A record that already held the value you set counts as processed even though nothing about it changed.

Bulk editing multi-value fields

For fields that can hold several values — tags, scopes, checkboxes, multi-select dropdowns, multiple references — the bulk edit screen adds a Merge behavior option beside the field:

• Add to existing values (the default) — your values are added; values already on the record are kept, and nothing is added twice.
• Replace existing values — the record ends up with exactly the values you chose.
• Remove from existing values — your values are taken off the record; anything else stays.

Because Add is the default, double-check the setting whenever you mean to replace. After a Replace or Remove, open two or three of the records to confirm they hold exactly the values you expect. With Remove, records where the field is already empty have nothing to change and may show up as failed — that's expected.

Single-value fields (a text box, a date, a single dropdown) are simply overwritten with the value you enter.

Bulk actions and automations

A batch update saves each record exactly as an individual edit would, so anything set to run when a record is updated, created or deleted — listeners, definition automations, workflow step automations — runs for every record in the batch. Before bulk-editing hundreds of records, check whether an automation would send emails or create follow-up work for each one. See Listeners and Time Triggers.

Tips

• Try the action on two or three records first, check the result, then run it on the full selection.
• Use a smart list or the filter builder to select exactly the records you mean before running a bulk action — it's far easier than unpicking a bulk edit afterwards.
• Deleting in bulk moves records to the trash, where they can be restored in bulk. Erase is permanent; use it only when you're sure.
• Very large batches are processed steadily in the background — there's no need to split them up, but expect them to take a few minutes.

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