WatchDirectory 4.5.8

New Release: WD 4.5.8

A few days ago we released WatchDirectory v4.5.8. This is a free upgrade for all version 4 customers. Just install this version "on top" of your current install so it will keep your tasks and settings.

What's New   Download

File Age Monitoring Method

WatchDirectory Professional can detect files and directories based on their age (how old they are). This allows you, for example, to delete files older than 7 days using the Delete Files plugin. Or to send an email for those old files to help you remember to "process them".

An innocent option

When you configure WD to use the "File Age Monitoring Method", one of the options you can select is Remember triggered files. If your task sends an email for "old files", you will want to select this option as it will prevent multiple email messages for the same file.

However, if you configure a task that will delete, move or rename the old file (the original "old" file does not exist anymore), make sure you do not select this option. The "remember triggered files" option stores info (filename, timestamp) into the history database for this task and this is totally unnecessary if the detected file is gone. While the history database will "auto cleanup", this file age info can use a lot of diskspace (for large directories) and cause your task to run slower than needed.

Customer testimonial - CAMP Systems

Christopher Utter (CAMP Systems) made my day:

WatchDirectory Pro is by far the best money I have ever spent on a utility.

Your support is awesome, you patch bugs and offer new features free of charge all the time. Your product just out-performs many other products I have tested with a much higher pricetag. So Thank you for your efforts. I have been able to automate dozens of tasks using the pro version of watch directory and it has saved me many man hours in scripting other solutions.

Please keep producing software solutions as you are quickly becoming my favorite software vendor.

Thanks for the nice words Chris.

Backup your settings

Backup your WatchDirectory Tasks

So you have setup your tasks in WatchDirectory and they work exactly the way you want. Perhaps now is a good time to backup your tasks because somewhere in the future, Your Computer Will Fail!

The easiest way to create a backup is to stop all tasks (including the System.Mail task if it is running) and select the menu-option
"File -> Backup..."
This creates a ZIP archive with all files found in your "Task Directory". The "Task Directory" is where most of your settings are stored, you can explore your Task Directory using the menu option "Tools -> Explore Task Directory".
Alternatively, you can use your favorite backup program to backup your task directory.

Above, I say "most of your settings". The things that are not stored there (and thus, are not included in the backup) are:

• Your batch files and other (vb) scripts that you may be using with WatchDirectory's Run a Batch File tasks
• Your How to Run settings
  Especially your Windows Service settings. If you manually changed them, for example to run as a different user, you should write these settings down somewhere. See Further Reading below for more information.

Further Reading

Here are a few earlier related blogposts that touch this same subject:
Move WatchDirectory to another computer
Move your Task Directory

WatchFTP customer - Idonix

Idonix, a custom software development company specialising in show control systems, was engaged by a major UK broadcaster to provide data integration and graphics automation systems for their 2008 US Presidential Election coverage.

One of the requirements was to download and process substantial quantities of election result data from an Associated Press ftp server. Rather than write our own ftp synchronisation software, we found an existing product that fitted our needs exactly - WatchFTP. It was extremely straightforward to configure WatchFTP to download files as they were updated by the Associated Press systems, and not only that - we were able to use the Run a batch script action to bulk load each updated file into our SQL Server database.

However when we arrived at the customer's site we had an unforeseen problem... (read more...)

WatchDirectory 4.5.7

Hello all, Wishing you a happy new year!

Yesterday we released WatchDirectory v4.5.7, another free upgrade for all version 4 customers.
This new release has an important issue fixed for the wdPostman (System.Mail) program, the component responsible for sending emails. Previous versions sometimes had long (up to 30 seconds) delays between each message.

To Install

• Download the latest version from our website
• Stop all WatchDirectory tasks, including the "System.Mail" component
• Install the new release "on top" of your old release so it will see your tasks and settings.

WatchFTP 2.0 released

WatchFTP 2.0

A new version for WatchFTP is available.

This version has 2 major improvements:

• A new "Task History" window that shows you all downloaded files and messages
• An improved "download method". Version 2 will automatically download files in 2 fases:
  • Fase 1: detect files. WatchFTP scans the FTP server for new and changed files. All detected files are recorded in the task history database.
  • Fase 2: download files. All files recorded in Fase 1 are checked to see if they have changed. If they did not change during the last 30 seconds, the file is downloaded.

Free Upgrade

This new 2.0 version is a free upgrade for all current (1.x) customers. Your license key will continue to work for version 2.0, just install it "on top" of your current WatchFTP version.

Download

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