SimpleIndex Command Line Processing:

Allows you to perform complex scanning and indexing jobs from an icon with just one click using SimpleIndex. Run all your OCR processing in a background just with one double click from your desktop.
Integration with custom applications, scheduled tasks and other automation using the command line interface.

Command Line Arguments

Please refer to the Wiki Documentation for the complete Command Line Interface reference.

In addition to running a particular SimpleIndex Job Configuration with a command line script, other features might be required. This could be stopping dialogs from turning on, suppressing dialog boxes or passing the input or output folder to the Job. Below you will find some of the commands that can be added to the standard command line that SimpleIndex uses.

Start with the traditional full command line to run SimpleIndex, which you can find here:

“C:\Program Files (x86)\SimpleIndex\SimpleIndex.exe” /c:”<Path to Job>”

In this example /c: is the command to direct what Job Configuration is used, but I have listed more below. Each new argument should be separated by a space.

  1. /q = Prevents certain dialog boxes from appearing that require a manual click.
  2. /s = Prevents other dialog boxes from appearing that require a manual click.
  3. /i: = Set the specific Input Folder you would like to import files from.
    EX. “C:\Program Files (x86)\SimpleIndex\SimpleIndex.exe” /c:”<C:\Images\Scan Files.sic>” /i:”C:\Images\Input”
  4. /o: = Set the specific Output Folder you would like to import files from.
    EX. “C:\Program Files (x86)\SimpleIndex\SimpleIndex.exe” /c:”<C:\Images\Scan Files.sic>” /i:”C:\Images\Output”
  5. /d:15 = Set Processing Log to highest level and turn on log output. This will turn on the Processing Log, without having to do it manually.
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Turn Off Prompts and Pop Ups on Job Configurations

SimpleIndex has a variety of prompts and pop ups that must be clicked that come up by default. These are normally needed by most users to set certain options or perform certain tasks based on the Job Configuration settings that have been set-up. These can be forced to be turned off though with a command line script. This can be configured in the settings for a shortcut that points to the Job Configuration that you would like to suppress the prompts and pop ups on.

Instructions to set Job Configuration shortcut to suppress all prompts and pop-ups:

  1. Right click on the Job Configuration file and select “Create shortcut” or “Sent to>Desktop”
  2. Find the shortcut, Right click on the shortcut and select “Properties”
  3. In the “Target:” field change the text in the field.
  4. Here is an example of the original text in the “Target:” field of a Job Configuration shortcut: “C:\SimpleIndex\Scan and OCR.sic”
  5. Here is what this section would be changed to for suppressing the prompts:
    “C:\Program Files (x86)\SimpleIndex\SimpleIndex.exe” /c:”C:\SimpleIndex\Scan and OCR.sic” /s
  6. The “/s” in this example is the command to suppress prompts and pop ups in SimpleIndex.
  7. The path to the Job Configuration file that you want to use will need to be set to the proper destination and filename, including file type extension.
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Process Monitor/ProcMon Instructions

In some cases there will be errors with SimpleIndex or issues without errors that are too general to get the information needed to fix the issue easily. When this happens a very detailed log is needed to determine what exact processes are occurring when the issue happens and which processes are failing. This is done by using the Microsoft Process Monitor to log everything while running SimpleIndex.

The instructions for how to install and run the Process Monitor are below.

  1. Download the process monitor from Microsoft by clicking HERE and then clicking Download Process Monitor.
  2. Unzip the “ProcessMonitor.zip” file and save it to any location on the computer running SimpleIndex.
  3. Run the “Procmon.exe”
  4. Once the program opens go to the File Menu and uncheck “Capture Events”
  5. Go to the Edit menu and select “Clear Display”
  6. Go to the File Menu and check “Capture Events”
  7. Immediately run SimpleIndex with the process that is having the issue exactly as you normally would and let it run until the issue occurs.
  8. Once the issue occurs go back to the Process Monitor window and then to the File Menu and uncheck “Capture Events”
  9. Go to the File Menu and select save.
  10. Use all the defaults to save to a folder that you can easily access and name the file with today’s date.
  11. Send us this file for review.
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FastImport to Disable Automatic Processing During Import

SimpleIndex has a variety of processing functions that automatically happen behind the scenes when importing documents to improve the quality and functionality of the images and processing capabilities of the software.

On some occasions these extra processing functions cause delays and conflicts or aren’t needed at all. If these processing functions are causing SimpleIndex to crash or slow down the import processing too much for a particular Job Configuration that can be turned off with a registry setting.

Follow these instructions to add this registry setting:

  1. Close out of SimpleIndex entirely
  2. Open the Windows Registry by going to the Windows Search and searching for “RegEdit”
  3. Go to this location in the Registry Folder Tree: Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\SimpleIndex\Misc
  4. In the right section of the Registry window Right Click in the white space and select New>String Value
  5. Name the new key “FastImport”
  6. Open the “FastImport” Registry Key, set the value to “1” and then click OK
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Large documents (>500 pg) Slow to Process – Workaround

When working with PDF image files containing a high number of pages (typically in excess of 500, but can vary by file and PC running the job) SimpleIndex may run into performance issues as it attempts to hold all of those pages in memory and perform the requested operations (full-text OCR in particular can tax a system in these circumstances).

A workaround in this scenario is to convert the large PDF to a folder of smaller PDFs files that can be managed more easily. In order to minimize the impact on production and tax the user(s) with extra steps, you can use a third-party splitting tool that can be called from the Command Line. One such option that has worked well is PDFSplitter from CoolUtils

One way to automate this process is to use PDFSplitter’s command line ability in conjunction with SimpleIndex’s Pre-processing function. For simplicity let’s consider a 600 page PDF with a filename generated at the time of scanning using indexes provided on a coversheet or keyed by an operator. The goal now is to take that large file and perform a full-text conversion on it.

Our SimpleIndex job, Full Page OCR.sic let’s say, launches and before getting to work calls PDFSplitter from the Pre-processing step with a command such as

PDFSplitter.exe C:\Images\Smith – John – Medical History.pdf C:\Images\Pages\ -cp 100

PDFSplitter will run and break that document every 100 pages creating 6 PDFs in the folder C:\Images\Pages. It maintains the original filename, simply adding “001-100” and so on to the name. After PDFSplitter is complete the Full Page OCR job begins its process and, given that the original filename is still part of the split files’ naming schema, it can produce one full-text PDF in the final output folder.

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Command Line Sample

When using the Simple Software products it can be beneficial to run the software from a command line script. With this you can run other Simple Software Job configurations or Windows Batch Files (.bat) or Task Manager or other command line methods automatically.

You can find sample formats of the command lines for Simple Software products below.

​SimpleIndex:
“C:\Program Files (x86)\SimpleIndex\SimpleIndex.exe” /c:”Path to job file”

SimpleSend:
“C:\Program Files (x86)\SimpleIndex\SimpleSend.exe” “Path to job file” /hide /run

SimpleQB:
“C:\Program Files (x86)\SimpleIndex\qb\SimpleQB.exe” “Path to job file” /hide /run

/hide and /run in the SimpleSend and SimpleQB examples above hide any windows from being displayed and automatically runs the process respectively.

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Command Line to Auto-close SimpleIndex

This is used to closed SimpleIndex after the job has been completed automatically. This can be useful if you only run one batch in SimpleIndex at a time and don’t need it after that batch is complete.

Instructions to Auto-close SimpleIndex when Batch is complete:

  1. Open the SimpleIndex Job Configuration that you would like to set to auto close when the batch is is complete.
  2. Open the Job Settings Wizard from the File menu.
  3. Go to the Advanced Settings step and expand Pre-Process & Post-Process options.
  4. In the Post-Process field put the following:
    taskkill -f -im simpleindex.exe
  5. Save the Job Configuration.

Alternate Intructions:

  1. Open the Job Options from the File menu
  2. In the Batch tab put the following in the “Post-Proc” field:
    taskkill -f -im simpleindex.exe
  3. Click OK and then Save from the File menu
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Stop Autorun When Double Clicking Configuration

SimpleIndex jobs can be launched from an icon, just like opening a Word document saved on your desktop. However when you do this the default behavior is to automatically run the job file once it opens in SimpleIndex. If you just want to open the job without running it, follow these instructions:

1.  Create a shortcut to the configuration by right clicking on the configuration file and selecting “Create shortcut”
2.  Right click on the Shortcut that was just created and saved and select “Properties”
3.  In the “Target” field put the following:
“C:\Program Files (x86)\SimpleIndex\SimpleIndex.exe” /c:”<Full Path to Configuration file>” /m

Example:

“C:\Program Files (x86)\SimpleIndex\SimpleIndex.exe” /c:”C:\Images\test.sic” /m

Run job manually from command line
Shortcut properties for manually running a job.

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Workstation Activation in the Concurrent Serial Number Field

If you are getting really weird activations errors where it says the license has already been activated the client has probably put the Workstation serial code in the Concurrent spot that is in the Wizard.


To fix this go to the registry (regedit) here:

HLM\Software\Wow6432Node\SimpleIndex\Registration

Then delete the key called Serial

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Continue with Post Process Command Line if Input Folder is Empty

When running multiple jobs in a row or chain with the Post Process Command Line it is possible that an earlier Job in the process won’t have any files. This will stop the Job before reaching the Post Process step and cause later jobs not to run.

This can be corrected by adding an option directly to the XML text of the Job Configuration. This will tell it to keep going to the Post Process step even if there are no files to process in the Job.

Instructions:

  1. Right click on the Job Configuration file (.sic file format) and select Open With..
  2. Select Notepad or some other text file opening software.
  3. Search for this in the text of the file: <POSTPROCEMPTY>false</POSTPROCEMPTY>
  4. Change the word “false” to the word “true” in that section.
  5. false = Stop immediately if there are no files to process.
  6. true = Run the Post Process Command Line even if there are no files to process
  7. Save the file and close it.
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Overlap of SimpleView Viewer in SimpleIndex Display

Occasionally on certain Windows displays the SimpleView viewer sub-window in SimpleIndex will extend over the Index fields causing the user to not be able to interact with them or click Save All/Save Index or use the Mouse Actions. This seems to happen more with ultra-high resolution monitors like a 4K monitors or the Surface Pro. You will see something like this:

The fix for this is relatively simple by using the High DPI Scaling in Windows. You can find the instructions for this below.

Windows 10 Instructions:

  1. Open Windows File Explorer and go to this folder: C:\Program Files (x86)\SimpleIndex
  2. Find the SimpleIndex.exe
  3. Right click on the SimpleIndex.exe and then select Properties
  4. Go to the Compatibility tab
  5. Click the button called “Change high DPI settings”
  6. Check the boxes labelled “Use this setting to fix scaling problems for this program instead of the one in Settings” and “Override high DPI scaling behavior.  Scaling performed by:”

Windows 7 Instructions:

  1. Open Windows File Explorer and go to this folder: C:\Program Files (x86)\SimpleIndex
  2. Find the SimpleIndex.exe
  3. Right click on the SimpleIndex.exe and then select Properties
  4. Go to the Compatibility tab
  5. Check “Disable display scaling on high DPI settings” 

Once you make this change reopen SimpleIndex and you display will be correct.

Notes: After enabling this setting there might some oddities with the toolbars and navigation buttons, but they are all readable and working, and the menus work. The old job settings has several issues with this, but it has been replaced with the wizard which does not.

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Can I split a PDF based on bookmark values?

SimpleIndex can create PDF files with bookmarks based on the index data captured in your batch.

Going the other way–splitting an existing PDF file based on the bookmark value–is not a built-in feature of SimpleIndex. However there are inexpensive command line utilities that you can integrate with SimpleIndex in order to accomplish this.

For example, the CoolUtils PDFSplitter and A-PDF Split both offer this function starting around $35.

The command line to split the PDF can be integrated into the Pre-Process setting in SimpleIndex, found under the Advanced Settings section of the Configuration Wizard. An example pre-process using PDFSplitter to split based on the second level bookmark values would be:

PDFSplitter.exe “c:\Images\BookmarkFile.pdf” “%CONFIGFILEFOLDER%\Input” -em bookmarks -b 2

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SimpleIndex v7.4

SimpleIndex v7.4

Simple Software is pleased to announce the latest iteration of our
easy-to-use scanning and indexing flagship product. This latest revision
adds a host of new features both user-facing and behind-the-scenes.

Introducing SimpleIndex 7.4

Current users will notice background enhancments such as improved handling with variations in TIFF, PDF, and JPEG files. Likewise the ability to process on-the-fly during scanning has been ramped up and if you work in virtual environments, there’s enhanced support for VMWare.

The improvements don’t stop under the hood. Users will notice a new Global Settings Wizard that ensures everything is in place before you get to work. You can perform OCR operations on the clipboard or from screen shots, not just scanned pages and if you need to touch up an OCR capture, there is now a long text editor that lets you type or copy/paste at length. Like using barcodes? Barcode accuracy has been improved and you can even extract specific characters from within a barcode value.

And those of you that integrate SimpleIndex with backend server or
database systems, we haven’t forgotten you. The new server configuration
tool is more intuitive and lets you monitor batch processing in real time.
Similarly, the redesigned server module is faster, more reliable and uses
fewer system resources. There’s even a web service interface so all of this
can be controlled remotely. We’ve even integrated our SimpleExport functionality right into SimpleIndex and added the ability to export images
and index data right to a SharePoint 2010 library.

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Instant Integration With Any Application

SimpleIndex® provides a great alternative to “reinventing the wheel” using a document imaging SDK to implement scanning in your custom application. SimpleIndex uses a command line interface to enable developers to execute customized scanning workflows from another application. This lets you take advantage of SimpleIndex‘s TWAIN/ISIS scanning, zone OCR, barcode recognition and database export features without having to re-code them all yourself.

Whether you are an IT consultant creating an application for internal company use or a software developer looking to add scanning features to your application, SimpleIndex provides the easiest solution available.

To use SimpleIndex as a scanning front-end for your application, simply:

  • Create a SimpleIndex job file configured to scan, index and save files the way you want
  • (Optional) configure the database export to create/update document records in your DB
  • Use a “Shell” command to execute the job file from your program

When you execute the job file from your program, SimpleIndex will scan, read barcodes, OCR zones, etc. and organize the documents into the folders and filenames your program requires. The database export can be configured to add or update records in your database with information captured from the documents as well as the image file path or binary data. Index values can be passed from your program to SimpleIndex via the command line. The whole process can be configured to run minimized so the user never even sees the SimpleIndex screen.

KB Articles for Integration

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Automated Processing & 1-Click Interface


SimpleIndex® 1-click scanning and indexing is enabled with its command line interface. SimpleIndex job files can be saved and opened just like a Word document. When you open a job file, SimpleIndex begins processing a new batch automatically. Scanning, processing (OCR, barcodes, database autofill, etc) and export happen in sequence with no further input from the user.

For unattended processing, the command line interface lets you use Windows services and scheduled tasks to automate OCR, barcode recognition and database export tasks.

The Command Line Interface also allows SimpleIndex to be integrated with custom software applications with minimal to no programming required.

  • Field values, processing folders and other settings can be passed as command line parameters
  • Any SimpleIndex option can be set using XML job files
  • Database export links processed files to your app automatically
  • Control application behavior (display window, exit after processing, etc.)
  • Pre-Process and Post-Process features can execute other command line applications at start and end of batch

Unattended Server-Based Processing

SimpleIndex lets you run any SimpleIndex job as a Windows service for fully unattended processing. This is particularly useful for high-volume, high-demand applications where scanned images are coming from many remote workstations, as well as small and large implementations utilizing network scanners or digital copiers. In server mode, images are saved to a “hot folder” on the server where they are processed automatically. SimpleIndex performs barcode recognition, OCR and other indexing tasks and exports formatted files to storage and database servers.

Server processing licenses may be added to any version of SimpleIndex. Unattended processing is possible without a server license, but a user must be logged on to the workstation for it to execute. Windows services run automatically when the computer is booted up, even if nobody is logged on. You must have a Server license to run SimpleIndex on Windows Server operating systems.

SimpleIndex Servers can run multiple jobs on different schedules on the same server, or run multiple instances of the same job simultaneously to take advantage of multiple CPUs.

Integrate SimpleIndex in your Custom Application

Are you a developer looking for an easy scanning interface to use with your custom database application? Then SimpleIndex is the perfect solution for you!

With SimpleIndex, you can easily package pre-configured scanning and indexing settings for distribution with your application. SimpleIndex‘s command-line interface allows you to pre-set some or all of the index values for each batch, or even to hide the SimpleIndex GUI altogether. SimpleIndex can also interface directly with your database, inserting or updating index values and associating them with the images you scan. With SimpleIndex, you won’t have to write a separate import routine to get the new information into your database.

SimpleIndex is a far better option to developing your own scanning interface from scratch. If your application needs to use advanced features like barcode recognition or dynamic OCR, SimpleIndex saves you hundreds of hours of development time. If you need to let users preview each image, rotate, clean-up, rescan or index as necessary, why reinvent the wheel?

SimpleIndex means it is no longer too costly or complicated to bundle a full scanning application with your custom software. Being a SimpleIndex reseller means big discounts on every copy you sell. Sign up now!

KB Articles for Automation, Command-Line and Server Processing

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Streamlined Interface

The Fastest, Most Accurate Scanning Solution

As with any repetitive task, a few seconds saved scanning and filing a single document quickly adds up to dozens or hundreds of hours over the course of a long project or daily routine. The most import part of planning your imaging project is to find the most efficient way to capture documents and file them correctly. Creating an efficient scanning and indexing process will save you countless hours of labor over the life of your project.

SimpleIndex is faster and easier because it is designed to perform all of the steps necessary to scan, process, verify and export images in one continuous workflow rather than requiring the user to click extra buttons each time to initiate the next step. When taken to the extreme, SimpleIndex is capable of performing all of these tasks automatically just by clicking an icon on your desktop or a link in a browser.

SimpleIndex does this by saving all of the settings for a scanning workflow to a file that can be opened just like an Office document. This file is configured by the administrator so the user doesn’t have to see any of the technical details. Very rarely does the scanning operator need to be able to change, for instance, the export file format and file naming scheme. So why do some applications show you a complicated export settings screen every time you try to save a batch? It is this attention to detail that allows SimpleIndex to process the same batch 35-75% faster than its competitors.

SimpleIndex also has the ability to pre-set index values and run jobs using the Command Line Interface. More on this design feature can be found on our Getting Started page.

Index Automation Features

The two main methods for automating indexing are Barcode Recognition and Optical Character Recognition (OCR). Barcode recognition is faster and more accurate, but your documents must contain a barcode on the document or a cover page for this to work. OCR is able to read printed data directly from the page, which means most documents can be processed as-is.

If your index data already exists in another database, SimpleIndex has features that can make use of this data to automate processing. The Index Autofill feature matches data read from barcodes or OCR to data in your database, verifying the correct value is read and populating additional search fields automatically.

Using Pre-Indexed Batches

The Pre-Index Batch feature of SimpleIndex is what enables 1-click scanning and indexing, as well as command line processing. Pre-indexing lets you set fixed values for index fields and apply them to a whole batch. These can be combined with automatic values from barcode recognition, OCR and Autofill to create fully automated batch processes that can be launched from your custom application, a desktop shortcut, scheduled server task or even linked to the scan button on your scanner.

KB Articles for Streamlined Interface

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