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.
- /q = Prevents certain dialog boxes from appearing that require a manual click.
- /s = Prevents other dialog boxes from appearing that require a manual click.
- /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” - /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” - /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.
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.
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:
- Open the SimpleIndex Job Configuration that you would like to set to auto close when the batch is is complete.
- Open the Job Settings Wizard from the File menu.
- Go to the Advanced Settings step and expand Pre-Process & Post-Process options.
- In the Post-Process field put the following:
taskkill -f -im simpleindex.exe - Save the Job Configuration.
Alternate Intructions:
- Open the Job Options from the File menu
- In the Batch tab put the following in the “Post-Proc” field:
taskkill -f -im simpleindex.exe - Click OK and then Save from the File menu
Fixes for Service not Correctly Running
If the Service stops and isn’t running properly there can be a variety of different causes for this. You can follow the procedures below to fix this in most cases.
Check Event Log, which is here:
Administrative Tools>Event Viewer>Windows Logs>Application
Then select “Filter Current Log…” on the right
and in the “Event sources:” field drop down pick these: SimpleIndex, SimpleIndex Service & SimpleIndexService (and anything else that says SimpleIndex)
Look at the errors, which will tell you why it’s not working.
Find the Temp folder for SimpleIndex and delete any batches that are there after stopping the Service in the SimpleIndex Service Control and Options Panel
Clear Registry of the Temp Files
HKEY_USERS\(User ID for the User Running the Service)\Software\SimpleIndex\
Then delete the folders for the names of the Configurations that are not starting in the Service Control Panel
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
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:
- Right click on the Job Configuration file (.sic file format) and select Open With..
- Select Notepad or some other text file opening software.
- Search for this in the text of the file: <POSTPROCEMPTY>false</POSTPROCEMPTY>
- Change the word “false” to the word “true” in that section.
- false = Stop immediately if there are no files to process.
- true = Run the Post Process Command Line even if there are no files to process
- Save the file and close it.
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