Use predefined steps
When you're creating a workflow, you can choose to add one of the following predefined steps discussed in this topic. You can also choose to add your own custom file-processing steps. For more information, see Use custom file-processing steps.
Copy file
A copy file step creates a copy of the uploaded file in a new Amazon S3 location. Currently, you can use a copy file step only with Amazon S3.
The following copy file step copies files into the test
folder in the file-test
destination bucket.
If the copy file step is not the first step of your workflow, you can specify the File location. By specifying the file location, you can copy either the file that was used in the previous step or the original file that was uploaded. You can use this feature to make multiple copies of the original file while keeping the source file intact for file archival and records retention. For an example, see Example tag and delete workflow.

Provide the bucket and key details
You must provide the bucket name and a key for the destination of the copy
file step. The key can be either a path name or a file name. Whether the key is
treated as a path name or a file name is determined by whether you end the key
with the forward slash (/
) character.
If the final character is /
, your file is copied to the folder,
and its name does not change. If the final character is alphanumeric, your
uploaded file is renamed to the key value. In this case, if a file with that
name already exists, the existing file is overwritten with the new one.
For example, if your key value is test/
, your uploaded files are
copied to the test
folder. If your key value is
test/today
, every file you upload is copied to a file named
today
in the test
folder, and each
succeeding file overwrites the previous one.
Amazon S3 supports buckets and objects, and there is no hierarchy. However, you can use prefixes and delimiters in object key names to imply a hierarchy and organize your data in a way similar to folders.
Use a named variable in a copy file step
In a copy file step, you can use a variable to dynamically copy your files
into user-specific folders. Currently, you can use
${transfer:UserName}
as a variable to copy files to a
destination location for the given user who's uploading files.
In the following example, if the user richard-roe
uploads a file,
it gets copied into the file-test2/richard-roe/processed/
folder. If the user mary-major
uploads a file, it gets copied into
the file-test2/mary-major/processed/
folder.

Tag file
To tag incoming files for further downstream processing, use a tag step. Enter the value of the tag that you would like to assign to the incoming files. Currently, the tag operation is supported only if you are using Amazon S3 for your Transfer Family server storage.
The following example tag step assigns scan_outcome
and
clean
as the tag key and value, respectively.

Delete file
To delete a processed file from a previous workflow step or to delete the originally uploaded file, use a delete file step.

Example tag and delete workflow
The following example illustrates a workflow that tags incoming files that need to be processed by a downstream application, such as a data analytics platform. After tagging the incoming file, the workflow then deletes the originally uploaded file to save on storage costs.