Importing existing files for processing.

Disable StopFile

If you have many different users running SimpleIndex on different computers saving to the same Output folder, the STOPFILE from one can cause another user to not be able to export to the folder while the original user is outputting to the folder. In this case the STOPFILE can be disabled, so this no longer happens.

This will not work if you have anyone that needs to add files to an existing file in the output folder, so make sure that won’t happen.

Instructions:

  1. Close 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 “StopFile”
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Create Unique Batch Name

SimpleIndex creates a Batch ID each time you run a SimpleIndex Job Configuration, which creates a new batch.

The Batch ID is the Date and Time that the batch was started.
EX. 2020-01-23@145419

In this example 2020 is the Year, 01 is the Month, 23 is the Day, 14 is the Hour, 54 is the Second and 19 is the Millisecond that the batch was started.

When running SimpleIndex as a Windows Service using the Server Add-on or using the Windows Task Scheduler you can set-up multiple Job Configurations to run on different time frames and have them all running at once. This can lead to a very small possibility that two different Job Configurations will start at the same Millisecond, especially when the Job Configurations are set to run on the same time frames. This can lead to errors or missing files during the process.

With the following option you can make every batch name unique in case there are multiple batches that are created at the exact same Millisecond, which can occur with multi-thread processing on the same Input folder.

Instructions for Unique Batch Name:

  1. Open the Windows Registry Editor by searching for “regedit”
  2. Find this location in the Registry Editor:
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\SimpleIndex\Misc
  3. Right click in the right and select New>String Value
  4. Name the key the following: GUIDBatchNames
  5. Open the key and set the value to the following: 1
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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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How do I limit the number of files pulled from the input folder?

The Max File/Batch setting on the Batch Options tab lets you limit the number of files to process in each batch.

In the wizard it can be found under the Advanced File Input Settings section.

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How do you select what types of files to process?

You can tell SimpleIndex what types of files it should process and which file types to ignore.

This is done by clicking “Job Options” On the “Batch” tab you will find a field labeled “Input file types or mask”. These are the file types that SimpleIndex will input files from. The default types are:

TIF,PDF,JPG,GIF,BMP,DOC,XLS,PPT,DOCX,XLSX,PPTX,VSD,DWG,AVI,MP3

To process all files, enter *

SimpleIndex will ignore any file whose extension does not appear on the list.

In SimpleIndex 6 or above you can enter file masks to filter input files. Some examples are:

abc*.pdf (PDF files starting with “abc”)
ab??ef.* (All files starting with “ab”, 2 characters and “ef”)

It is possible to have some file types open automatically in their default application. This can be done by inserting a pipe “|” into the list. Any file types after the pipe will be opened in their default application. For example:

TIF,PDF,JPG|WAV,MP3,WMV,AVI

will cause SimpleIndex to display image files and open sound and video files in the default media player.

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Can the original image filename be used as part of the output filename?

The input filename can be specified automatically by configuring a field of type “Filename”. The input file path may also be parsed by the SimpleIndex dictionary and template matching algorithms to extract data fields from the folder and file names.

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SimpleIndex Walkthrough

The SimpleIndex® Design Philosophy

SimpleIndex differs from other high-speed scanning applications in that it is designed around a single batch processing model. More expensive programs are designed to process batches in multiple stages that run on separate computers like an assembly line. These stages are:

  • Import (scan or read existing files)
  • Process (cleanup, OCR, barcode recognition)
  • Index (assign keyword values for filenames or search fields)
  • Quality Control (review, revise & rescan)
  • Export (create file structure, export index values to log or database)

What if your assembly line only has one worker? Other packages require the user to enter a separate set of commands to launch each stage. SimpleIndex is designed to quickly scan and index a single batch by performing each stage automatically in sequence. This design makes SimpleIndex much faster and easier to use than other scanning software, and lowers the cost as well.

SimpleIndex replaces the series of individual commands required by some applications with a single “Run Job” button. This one click executes all the user-configured settings and batch steps.

SimpleIndex Jobs

SimpleIndex Document Processing Workflow

Each type of scanned document has different parameters for each processing stage that are used to capture and file the images. In SimpleIndex, a particular set of these parameters is called a Job.  When configuring a job, you must specify how you want SimpleIndex to perform each of the processing stages from Import to Export. When a job is executed, SimpleIndex automatically launches all the processing stages in sequence according to the settings you specify.

The settings for a job are saved to a SimpleIndex Configuration File (*.sic). Any configuration file can be launched from Windows Explorer by double-clicking its icon just like any saved document.  Doing this will start SimpleIndex and execute the job automatically.

Jobs can even be configured to perform all indexing automatically and hide the SimpleIndex user interface altogether. The user just loads the feeder, double-clicks an icon on the desktop, and all processing is done in the background.

The ability to execute scanning and indexing configurations from a saved file is a unique feature of SimpleIndex that opens many new possibilities for automating user tasks.

Processing the Sample Jobs

The best way to get started with SimpleIndex is to check out the sample configuration files that come with it. These sample configurations demonstrate some of the key features of SimpleIndex and provide a starting point for configuring various types of jobs.

Several online videos are available to walk you through this process:

The Getting Started Guide that appears when you first run SimpleIndex will give you step-by-step instructions for running the sample jobs as well. This can also be accessed from the Help menu.

The sample jobs use images that are bundled with SimpleIndex, so don’t worry if you don’t have a scanner!

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