WatchFTP version 4 released - Reminder

In case you missed our newsletter or previous blogs about the new release of our FTP monitor program WatchFTP, this quick reminder.

• See what's new here
• Owners of older (version 3) license(s), check if your upgrade is free.
• Only 10 days left (until July 1st, 2017) until the upgrade price will be $49 per license, get it now for just $29 per license.

WatchDirectory v4.9.5 released

We just released a new version of our File System Monitor WatchDirectory. This is a free upgrade for all customers. Just install the new evaluation version "on top" of your version and it will automatically see your tasks and licenses.

New/Fixed in this release

• Fixed: WatchDirectory crashed on (some) Asian language systems.
• Improved: The new System.Mail now allows you to connect to SMTP servers without username/password.
• Improved: The Print PDF task has several new settings.
• Fixed: The email reports of the Audit task weren't properly sent at 6am.
• Fixed: Large file uploads by the FTP task didn't properly report their progress.
• Improved: The Unzip task now supports password protected zips.

WatchFTP v4.0.2 released

Just to let you know we released an important update for WatchFTP.

Fixed

In some cases (mostly when connecting to an SFTP server), WatchFTP failed to connect to the server. This has been fixed.

Download

Download this new release here. Install it "on top" of your current version so it will keep your settings and tasks.

Buy

When you are ready to buy, visit our webshop to get a license. If you already own a previous version, your upgrade may be free, see Upgrade to WatchFTP v4

WatchFTP version 4 released

New in this major WatchFTP version 4 release

Private Key Support		Use a Private Key (PuTTY or OpenSSH format) to login on SFTP sites.
Dynamic Naming		You now have full control which name/location is used for downloaded files. For example, download to C:\Down\{dt-yyyy}\{dt-mm}\{dt-dd}\{filename}
Multithreaded Downloads		WatchFTP can now download multiple files concurrently.
Task Groups		There is a new menu that allows you to show "All Tasks (Ctrl+0)", "Running Tasks (Ctrl+1)" or "Stopped Tasks (Ctrl+2)". Create your own task groups if you have a lot of tasks.
...and a lot more...		Support for the latest encryptions on secure connections. The Email Action can now email different people depending on the location of detected files. Lots of small other improvements...

Download

Download this new release here. Install it "on top" of your current version so it will keep your settings and tasks. You can try WatchFTP free for 30 days.

Buy

When you are ready to buy, visit our webshop to get a license. If you already own a previous version, your upgrade may be free, see Upgrade to WatchFTP v4.

WatchFTP v4 final beta

On our forum we have uploaded the last beta for the new major release of WatchFTP.

New in version 4

• Private key support for SFTP connections.
• Task Groups - This will come in handy if you run a lot of tasks.
• Dynamic Naming for downloaded files - for example download your files to C:\Downloads\{filetitle}_{dt:year}{dt:month}{dt:day}.{extension}
• Support for the latest encryption algorythms on secure connections.
• Multithreaded downloads - download several files at once.

Download

Visit the Beta Forum for the download and more information.

WatchFTP 3.8.0 released - Free Upgrade

We just released a new version of our FTP Monitor Program WatchFTP. If you already own a license, this is a free upgrade. Just install the new version "on top" of your current install.

What's New

If you use a secure connection to your FTP site and use Passive mode to connect (the default), you can now enable the new option "Force Host IP". Here the explanation from the WatchFTP help file:

When you use a secure connection all commands and responses between WatchFTP and the FTP server are encrypted. When the FTP server is behind a NAT router, the router can not translate the internal IP addresses (typically 192.168....) to externally accessible IP addresses so they remain unchanged in the FTP response lines to WatchFTP.
When this option is set, WatchFTP will ignore the (unaccessible) IP addresses in the server's responses and always uses the IP address of the FTP server itself.

WxRemote version 1.9.2 released (free update)

We just released a new version of our program WxRemote, our program to remotely control your WatchDirectory and WatchFTP tasks. We highly recommend you install this free update.

Fixed in this release

There was a memory leak in the WxConnectionManager and WxListener components. This leak would only show if you had logging disabled. Furthermore, "Check for Updates" did not work properly.

Download the new release here.

30% Discount

For a limited time, until the end of September, you can buy WxRemote with a 30% discount. Use the discount-code WXPROMO in our webshop.

WatchDirectory v4.9.4 released

We just released another free update for our program WatchDirectory. To update, download the evaluation version from our website, stop all your tasks and install this new release "on top" of your current install. That way, all your settings, license info and tasks are kept.

New in this release

• Improved: Updated the supported encryption methods for the FTP Upload plugin.
• Improved: When you let the Email task combine multiple emails, there is a new setting to prevent the same file being attached multiple times.
• Improved: The Print PDF task has a new option to set the print orientation (Portrait or Landscape).

The installer now uses a new so called SHA256 code signing certificate. Our older installers used a so-called SHA1 certificate. Older Windows versions (for example Windows XP) do not recognize the new certificate and may give you a warning that the certificate is corrupt. You can safely ignore that message.

Email alert for empty folders

A customer asked how he can setup our program WatchDirectory to notify him when a folder is created and no files are present after a few hours.
WatchDirectory is typically used to detect new files or folders so this requires a little scripting to get right.

Setup the Email task

Create a new task based upon the Email Plugin. Use something like "Folder %WD_FILE_N% is empty after 2 hours" as the subject and "%WD_FILE% is empty" somewhere inside the email body.
%WD_FILE% is replaced with the full path (C:\Some\Folder) of the new directory, WD_FILE_N by the directory name without its path (just "Folder"). See Variables for all variables you can use.

For the Monitoring Method select File Age, let it trigger for files (it also does directories) older than 120 minutes. Make sure to check the option "Remember triggered files" unless you want to receive multiple alerts as the folder gets older and older.

On Events only select "DIRNEW" - to detect folders, we are not interested in files.

The Script that actually checks for empty folders

WatchDirectory can not do everything for everyone just by installing but it has amazing ways how you can customize its functionality with little scripts. In this case the customer wants to receive a notification when a folder is empty after X hours, something not directly supported ("build in") by WatchDirectory.

On Filter Events you can add several standard filters to prevent triggering the WatchDirectory task (for example, the file or directory must match "Customer_*.txt"), for this case we need a filter script (a .bat file).
Here is the script to use in this case:

rem filter script that checks if a detected "new" directory is empty
rem "new" in quotes because WatchDirectory triggers using the File Age
rem monitoring method for directories that are 2 hours old.
rem When the directory is empty, the task should trigger an email.
rem If the directory contains one or more files, no email should be sent.

rem %WD_...% variables are explained here: 
rem     http://www.watchdirectory.net/wdhelp/plugins/wdopAutoRunBatEnv.html
rem File Age Monitoring:
rem     http://www.watchdirectory.net/wdhelp/help/wdnewconfigpage3.html
rem Filter Scripts:
rem     http://www.watchdirectory.net/wdhelp/help/filter_events.html

IF "%WD_REASON%" NEQ "DIRNEW" GoTo :NoTrigger

SET NUMFILE=0
FOR %%c IN ("%WD_FILE%\*.*") DO Call :FoundFile
IF %NUMFILE% EQU 0 GOTO :Trigger
GOTO :NoTrigger

:FoundFile
SET /A NUMFILE=NUMFILE + 1
GOTO :EOF

:Trigger
ECHO Y > "%WD_FILTERRESULT%"
GOTO :EOF

:NoTrigger
ECHO N > "%WD_FILTERRESULT%"
GOTO :EOF

WatchFTP v3.7.9 released - Free Upgrade

We have just released a new version of WatchFTP, our FTP monitor. This is a free upgrade for all customers who own a WatchFTP license. Just install this release "on top" of your current version so it will keep all settings and tasks.

What's new?

This releases fixes an obscure problem when you connect using a "strange" password. With "strange" meaning characters not found in the typical ANSI (a-z,A-Z,0-9) character set. If your FTP server supports the UTF-8 character set, WatchFTP would first connect using ANSI but switch to UTF-8 after this initial connect. When WatchFTP needed to re-connect again, it tried to do so using UTF-8, an encoding your FTP server doesn't expect for new connections.
On the "Advanced Settings" window you can now enter the character set to use while connecting, it will default to ANSI.

WatchDirectory v4.9.4 beta 1 - TLS 1.2 support

On our forum we have a first beta for WatchDirectory v4.9.4 available.

The FTP Upload task now supports the TLS 1.2 protocol for secure connections. Download the beta from the forum link above.

WatchDirectory v4.9.3.E released

A week ago we released version 4.9.3 of WatchDirectory. The last few days we released a few "micro updates" with small fixes and enhancements. Those micro updates do not show when WatchDirectory performs a "check for updates" so if you installed version 4.9.3 when it was released, you may want to install the current update (released today).

New since version 4.9.2

• The new Print Pdf plugin has a new option to control how documents are resized (or not).
• Dynamic Naming did not work properly for the new Print Pdf plugin.
• The Print Pdf plugin does not add "GdP Software PrintPDF" to document names anymore.
• The Auto ZIP plugin will retry after 10 seconds if one of the files to be zipped is locked.
• Some (harmless) debugging code removed from Print PDF.
• On some systems the "Auto Repair" of the history database did not work, the new release fixes this.

Download / Install

Download the current release here. Stop all your tasks and install this new release "on top" of your current installed version so it will keep all your settings and tasks.