A cloud calculation can finish far from the moment you launched it. By then, you may have started other simulations, switched projects, or forgotten which files you need to bring back into SAMSON. The challenge is not only running a job—it is keeping its purpose, progress, results, and access organized.
SAMSON’s Job manager brings those steps together. It lets you create jobs through extensions that support the feature, execute and monitor jobs in the cloud, and retrieve results into SAMSON. A little organization at launch can make the later steps much easier.
Give each job a useful identity
When several calculations are underway, a job name should help answer a practical question: “What was I testing?” Instead of relying on a generic label, consider a short, consistent pattern such as project_target_method_date. For example, a name might identify the project, molecule or system, and calculation type. This is a personal organizational suggestion—not a required SAMSON format.
You can edit a job’s name and notes in the Job manager. These are automatically synced with your SAMSON Connect account, which can help keep your own record aligned with the job information available there. Use the notes to capture context that may be easy to forget later, such as the question the calculation was meant to investigate.
Check progress before searching for files
Open the Job manager from Interface > Job manager. Select a job to see its details on the right side of the manager. From there, you can manage supported cloud jobs—starting, pausing, or stopping them—and monitor their progress.
This creates a useful habit: check the job record first when you need to know what happened, rather than trying to infer progress from files already on your computer. If you are working through multiple runs, reviewing the details alongside the name and notes can help you distinguish jobs before deciding which results to retrieve.
Know whether a file is local or remote
A common source of confusion is whether a result is already on your computer or still stored in the cloud. The job’s context menu provides access to local files that have already been downloaded, remote files stored in the cloud, and the job’s view on SAMSON Connect. That distinction can save time when you return to an older calculation or need to check what is available before downloading.
When you want to retrieve all job files, double-click the job. After downloading, use the context menu to access the local files. Keeping this distinction in mind—remote means in the cloud, local means already downloaded—makes it easier to understand where your results are and what action you still need to take.
Share the job, not just a vague update
Cloud jobs launched from SAMSON, including workflows using AlphaFold, NVIDIA BioNeMo services, or GROMACS, are accessible from SAMSON Connect. You can control who has access to them. When collaborators need to review a calculation, use the job view and sharing controls there so access is managed with the job. The Job manager’s context menu also provides a shortcut to that view.
Before sharing, it is useful to check that the job name and notes explain what the calculation is for. A clear label gives collaborators—and your future self—more context than a bare job entry.
A quick routine to reuse
- At launch: give the job a recognizable name and add notes about its purpose.
- While it runs: open the Job manager to review details and monitor progress.
- When you need results: double-click the job to download all its files, then use the context menu to find local or remote files.
- When collaborating: open the job on SAMSON Connect and manage who can access it.
Cloud calculations in SAMSON require Computing Credits. The documentation also notes that referring friends and colleagues to SAMSON Cloud Services can earn free credits. For more detail on the Job manager and cloud jobs, see the Cloud computations documentation.
Note: SAMSON and all SAMSON Extensions are free for non-commercial use. Get SAMSON.