WatchDirectory, WatchFTP and File Viking news

Working on WatchFTP v3.0

2012-01-18T23:01:00.000-08:00

Work has started on WatchFTP v3.0.

New Features

The initial v3 release will add support for monitoring SFTP sites, one of the most requested enhancements.

Planned features

Later v3.x releases will add

64bit support
"Just Reporting" - no file will be downloaded, WatchFTP will just report on new files on your FTP server

Free Upgrade

Existing customers can upgrade free of charge to this major new release.

Help with the Beta

We expect a first beta release by the end of the month (or early February). If you want to help us test, send an email to gert at gdpsoftware dot com.

Walk to end Alzheimer's

2011-10-27T15:19:00.000-07:00

I just saw this link on facebook, there are no walks in Holland...

There is one terrible thing on earth that should bind us all together. It is not white against black, Muslims against Christians, Arabs against Jews, "left wing politics" against "right wing politics"....

It is a terrible disease that can affect all of us or the people we love.

It should be All Of Us against Alzheimer's. Next year I will again give my February income to www.alz.org (or to the Dutch http://www.alzheimer.nl/ ). Yes I am cheap, the shortest month of the year.

Can you perhaps spare an hour, day or month of your income to fight Alzheimer's? Everything helps and who knows, you may be helping your parents, yourself or your children.

After printing the PDF, I want to...

2011-10-20T05:25:00.000-07:00

Some of the WatchDirectory plugins are actually small batch file scripts (.bat or .cmd). Those scripts are typically called by WatchDirectory when new files are detected.

For example, the "Print PDF using FoxIt Reader" plugin is a .bat script that calls Foxit to print the pdf.

Some customers want to have a bit of extra functionality after printing the PDF, for example Delete, Copy or Move the pdf. Here is how you do it, should be easy enough if you know a little bit of batch scripting.

Locate the batch Script to change

In this blogpost I will assume your WatchDirectory task is called PrintPDF, change the directory name below accordingly.

Make sure the task (PrintPDF) is not running while you make changes to its script
Inside the WatchDirectory Control Center select the menu "Tools -> Explore Task Directory"
(this opens Windows Explorer inside the directory where WatchDirectory stores all its settings)
Navigate one directory "deeper" into the subdirectory with the name of your task (PrintPDF)
Inside this directory you will find a file called wd.bat, this is the script started by WatchDirectory

Make the changes

Open the file wd.bat in a text editor (notepad) and scroll to the bottom where you will find the following 2 lines

"%FOXCMD%" %OPTIONS% "%WD_FILE%" "%PRINTER%"
%ANNOTATE% Info done

Any changes you want to make after the file has printed should be just before the "%ANNOTATE%" line.

Delete the PDF after printing

Insert the following line

DEL "%WD_FILE%"

Move the PDF after printing

Insert the following line

MOVE "%WD_FILE%" "C:\Some Other Directory"

Print the PDF twice

Just repeat the FOXCMD line, like this

"%FOXCMD%" %OPTIONS% "%WD_FILE%" "%PRINTER%"
"%FOXCMD%" %OPTIONS% "%WD_FILE%" "%PRINTER%"
%ANNOTATE% Info done

WatchDirectory v4.6.7 Beta 3

2011-10-10T23:34:00.000-07:00

On our forum we have a new beta for WatchDirectory v4.6.7. Changes in this beta:

Improved: Implemented "Clear Command Channel" for FTPS protocols
Fixed: The Upload Files task will now retry to connect when it receives a 40425 error
Fixed: The Environment variable WD_FILE_E was not properly set for files without extensions
Fixed: WatchDirectory crashed (or just didn't work) on Vista and Windows-7 when not running as an Administrator
Improved: The WatchDirectory Control Center is more efficient (cpu and resources)
New: Filter Events can now also filter with bat scripts for complex filter situations.
New: A new plugin to Remove the Oldest Files from a Directory: Use it to delete old log files while keeping the 10 newest.
New: The Zip File task can now be used as a Subtask.
Fixed: The task that Upload Files to an FTP Server would send false email warnings when renaming files.

Download the beta from our forum.

WatchDirectory v4.6.7 Beta 2

2011-09-21T01:53:00.000-07:00

On our forum we have a new WatchDirectory beta available. The highlights of this new beta are:

Fixed: WatchDirectory crashed (or just didn't work) on Vista and Windows-7 when not running as an Administrator
Improved: The WatchDirectory Control Center is more efficient (cpu and resources)
New: "Filter Events" can now also filter with bat scripts for complex filter situations.
New: A new plugin to Remove the Oldest Files from a Directory: Use it to delete old log files while keeping the 10 newest.
New: The Zip File task can now be used as a Subtask.
Fixed: The task that Upload Files to an FTP Server would send false email warnings when renaming files.

You can find the beta on our forum: http://www.watchdirectory.net/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1312278065/1#1

Gandlake - a WatchDirectory customer

2011-08-09T23:34:00.000-07:00

Gandlake is a market leader in the supply of web channels, e-Transaction solutions, document storage, print and mail management and site wide authentication models.

Having experienced significant growth and increased demand for their services, Gandlake required an automated file handling solution which would improve the reliability of their services.

"In order to service file transfers uniquely for many individual clients at any one time we needed a scalable system which could handle multiple file uploads from our customers". said Paul Shepherd, IT Systems Administrator, at Gandlake.

Through research we found the product WatchDirectory and quickly established that its rich set of features gave us the perfect solution to our problem.

We have been using the product for several years now and it has proved invaluable to the business. It does not end there, I have to give a special mention to the Support we receive on the odd occasion when we have raised a query, you know that a reply is going to come quickly which is more important than one of those annoying automated processes.

Many Thanks to you and your team Gert.

Paul Shepherd
System Administrator
Gandlake Limited
www.gandlake.com

WatchDirectory v4.6.7 Beta

2011-08-02T02:42:00.000-07:00

We have a first beta of WatchDirectory 4.6.7. New/Improved in this release:

A new task that will remove the oldest files from monitored (sub-) directories (just keep the 10 latest log files, for example)
The Zip task can now be used as a Sub-Task
The FTP/Upload task would send warnings when renaming files.

The download and more info is available on our forum.

Bubble Sort

2011-06-21T12:53:00.000-07:00

If you wonder how the classic Bubble Sort works, below is a nice illustration

(the fun starts at ~50 seconds.) Advanced students, make sure to view the Selection Sort.

For those....

For those interested in future releases of our programs...

WxRemote 1.6 will be released soon.
After that, probably an Android interface for WxRemote
After that, the most requested feature for WatchFTP will be implemented: SFTP support
And then... Probably WatchDirectory 5.0..., it may be 2012 by then.

Great Customers - Operating Engineers Funds Inc.

2011-05-21T07:41:00.000-07:00

Sometimes customers surprise me...

They see the "tag line" of my email (Support the Fight against Alzheimer's disease!, see also this post) and decide to help.

A few days ago, I received this:

Jon Lee (xxxxx@oefi.org) wrote:
> Just thought you might want to know that we made a donation .  it
> is because of your simple email to me about your mother, Alzheimer feels more personal.
> Thank you for making me more aware of this disorder.
>
> Jon Lee II
>
> Director of Information Technology
> Operating Engineers Funds Inc.
> 100 E. Corson St., Pasadena, CA 91103
>
>
> From: Linda Hughes
> Sent: Tuesday, May 10, 2011 4:21 PM
> To: Jon Lee II (xxxxx@oefi.org)
> Subject: Golf Donation
>
>
> Congratulations!  Mr. Graydon has selected Alzheimer's
> Association of So. California to receive a donation of $2,000 from
> the tournament proceeds.
>
> If you have a personal contact which you would like the donation to
> go to, please let me know asap as I will be sending out the check
> by Friday, May 13, 2011.
>
> Thank you for the charitable suggestion.
>
>
> Linda E. Hughes
> Tournament Coordinator
> IUOE Local 12 Charity Golf Tournament
> P. O. Box 7063, Pasadena, CA  91109

A big Thank You to the Operating Engineers Funds Inc. for their donation!

> Thank you for making me more aware of this disorder.

I wonder.... Is that what is lacking? Awareness? I used to ignore Alzheimer's, even make fun of it. If this was an illness affecting young people, I bet research would get all the funds it needs.

Just for a minute, try to imagine it is your mother who is the patient... After that search google for the Alzheimer support group in your country and make a small donation.

Cober electronics - a WatchFTP customer

2011-05-11T01:15:00.000-07:00

As a small business we look to reduce administrative tasks as much as possible. Document scanning is one of those necessary functions that tends to be labor intensive especially when it needs to be shared by multiple people. We wanted to centralize scanning to a single inexpensive all-in-one device and automate document delivery to the proper person to ensure privacy.

Our all-in-one can send documents to an FTP server but we had no automated way of downloading and sending the scan. Using WatchFTP we created tasks to download the documents from the FTP server and email them to the right person. The entire process is now automated with a couple off button presses on the scanner.

Matthew Krieger
Cober electronics, Inc.

Just Released - WatchFTP 2.4

2011-05-07T01:56:00.001-07:00

Free Upgrade

We just released a new version of WatchFTP, our tool to monitor FTP sites for new files. This is a free upgrade for all WatchFTP customers, just download and install the latest version from our website.

New in this Release

New: You can now also CC and BCC emails for detected files.
New: You can now also send HTML emails, rich formatting.
New: You can delay the delete of the FTP file (delete X hours after downloading).
Fix: The History window behaves better when refreshing.

WatchFTP is available in English, German, Spanish and French.

WatchFTP 2.4 last beta

2011-04-19T04:46:00.000-07:00

Delete FTP File, but NOT now

WatchFTP downloads new files from your FTP server and can also "cleanup" after downloading: remove the files from the FTP server after download.

Several customers requested a "delay" for this removal, delete the file after X hours instead of immediately. This is now implemented in this new beta. We expect to release this new version in one or two weeks.

The beta download is available on our forum here.

This will be a free upgrade for all customers, just install "on top" of your current release.

WatchDirectory v4.6.6 beta

2011-03-06T22:56:00.000-08:00

On our forum we have a new beta for WatchDirectory v4.6.6. See http://www.watchdirectory.net/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1299412357/0#0 for the download and "what's new".

A world without Alzheimer's disease

2011-02-06T09:54:00.000-08:00

I almost forgot to honor one of my heroes, Ronald Reagan. Here in Holland there is not much news about this Great President of the USA, our press in Holland seems to forget that the fall of the wall would never have happened without him (and Gorbachev).

A Terrible Disease

The last years of his life, Mr Reagan suffered from Altzheimer's disease, a terrible illness affecting one of the things separating us from animals: our brain.

In one of his last letters to the American nation, he said:

I have recently been told that I am one of the millions of Americans who will be afflicted with Alzheimer's Disease... At the moment I feel just fine. I intend to live the remainder of the years God gives me on this earth doing the things I have always done... I now begin the journey that will lead me into the sunset of my life. I know that for America there will always be a bright dawn ahead. Thank you, my friends. May God always bless you.

My Mother

... I am not sure what to say ...
She will be 80 soon and asked for donations to the Dutch Alzheimer support group instead of presents (she already has everything, grand-child nearby and a loving husband taking care of all her needs).

GdP Software will donate all February earnings to the Dutch Alzheimer Stichting. Mom, I love you!

Your Mother?

Please help fight this terrible disease! Support your local Alzheimer support group! For example The American Alzheimer's Association.

WatchFTP beta

2011-02-05T04:12:00.000-08:00

On our forum we have a new beta for WatchFTP 2.4. See this post for download links and all details.

New in this Beta

The Email action can now also send to CC and BCC email addresses
The Email action can send html formatted emails
The Email action supports a so-called Repeat block

Is a WatchDirectory task Running?

2011-02-03T22:38:00.000-08:00

Here is an example how you can check if a WatchDirectory task is running from inside a batch script. The example relies on Microsoft's Handle.exe to check if there is a wdrun.exe process that has the history database of the given task open.

The wdIsTaskRunning.bat Script

@echo off
rem this example script checks if a WatchDirectory task is running
rem usage:
rem  wdIsTaskRunning abc
rem     this checks if the task abc is running
rem  
rem This script uses Handle.exe ( http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896655 )
rem to see if the history.db file of the task is opened by a wdrun.exe process.
rem
SET HANDLE=C:\SysInternals\Handle.exe
SET TMPFILE=C:\Temp\handle_%RANDOM%.txt

"%HANDLE%" -p wdrun.exe \%1\history.db > "%TMPFILE%"
FINDSTR /L /C:"No matching handles found." "%TMPFILE%">NUL
if %errorlevel% equ 0 (
   echo The task %1 is NOT running
   SET TASKRUNNING=N
) else (
   echo The task %1 is running
   SET TASKRUNNING=Y
)
del "%TMPFILE%"

Alternative Implementation

The script above works for all WatchDirectory tasks but it needs Admin privileges to run handle.exe. If the task is configured to run as a Windows Service, you can also parse the output of the NET START command to see if the task is running.

@echo off
rem this example script checks if a WatchDirectory task is running
rem usage:
rem  wdIsTaskRunning abc
rem     this checks if the task abc is running
rem  
rem
SET TMPFILE=C:\Temp\netstart_%RANDOM%.txt

NET START > "%TMPFILE%"
FINDSTR /L /E /C:"watchDirectory:%1" "%TMPFILE%">NUL
if %errorlevel% equ 0 (
   echo The task %1 is running
   SET TASKRUNNING=Y
) else (
   echo The task %1 is NOT running
   SET TASKRUNNING=N
)
del "%TMPFILE%"

WxRemote v1.5 released - includes Web interface

2011-01-11T23:23:00.000-08:00

We just released version 1.5 of our WxRemote software. WxRemote shows you the status of your WatchDirectory and WatchFTP tasks on other computers, allowing you to start and stop tasks remotely.

New in this release

This release includes a small webserver, allowing you to use your smart phone or browser to manage your tasks.

For more info and download link, see the WxRemote Webpage.

WatchDirectory v4.6.5 released

2011-01-09T18:53:00.000-08:00

We just released a new version of WatchDirectory. New in this version:

New: WatchDirectory Services will now "Delay Load" on systems that support it.
New: Hide a task from WxRemote.
New: The Folder Size plugin allows you to set how often it should email.
Fixed: Tasks that create directories always created them without any permissions. Now those directories are created with default permissions.
Fixed: The Control Center and Tasks loaded very slow on some systems with Intel based RAID.
Fixed: Tasks will not write to the Windows Event log anymore.
Fixed: The Polling and File Age monitoring methods will not wake up the computer anymore.
Fixed: The Upload task has been improved so it handles closed connections better.

You can download the new version from our download page.

This release is a free update for all v4.x customers. Just install it "on top" of your current version so it will keep your settings and tasks.

Happy New Year!

2011-01-01T03:05:00.001-08:00

000010 IDENTIFICATION DIVISION.
000020 PROGRAM-ID. NEWYEAR2011.
000040 AUTHOR. GERT.
000050
000100 ENVIRONMENT DIVISION.
000200 CONFIGURATION SECTION.
000210 SOURCE-COMPUTER. GERT-LAPTOP.
000230
000300 DATA DIVISION.
000310 WORKING-STORAGE SECTION.
000320 01 TEKST1 PIC X(80)
000330     VALUE "WE WISH YOU A MERRY CHRISTMAS,".
000340 01 TEKST2 PIC X(80)
000350     VALUE "AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR!".
000410 01  IX  PIC S9(5) COMP-3.
000420
000500 PROCEDURE DIVISION.
000710    PERFORM VARYING IX FROM 1 TO 3
000720        DISPLAY TEKST1
000730    END-PERFORM.
000740    DISPLAY TEKST2.
000760    STOP RUN.

It has been some time ago I wrote COBOL for a living, please forgive me if it doesn't compile ;-)
(thanks to Jan Frut for the inspiration for the program above).

Old and New technology

This new year we plan to bring our program WatchDirectory to the current technology level. No, don't worry, WatchDirectory isn't written in COBOL ;-) It is written with Microsoft C++, but a rather old version of their compiler.

You can expect several new WatchDirectory releases this year where we will have spent a lot of time on improving our toolset (compiler and other tools). We will obviously also implement nice new features and plugins, but the new tools will at first be quite invisible for you.

One thing that will be possible with those new compiler/tools is to create a 64bit version of WatchDirectory. The current (32bit) version runs fine on Windows 64, but to keep up with all future Windows improvements we need a 64bit version.

And a Batch script

The COBOL program as a batch script ;-)

SET GREET1=We wish you a merry Christmas,
SET GREET2=And a Happy New Year!

Call :DoGreet1
ECHO %GREET2%
GOTO :EOF

:DoGreet1
SET COUNT=0
:DoGreet1_Again
SET /A COUNT=COUNT + 1
IF %COUNT% GTR 3 GOTO :EOF
ECHO %GREET1%
GOTO :DoGreet1_Again

WxRemote v1.5 beta

2010-12-27T23:56:00.000-08:00

We have a new beta for our WxRemote software. WxRemote shows you the status of your WatchDirectory and WatchFTP tasks on other computers, allowing you to start and stop tasks remotely.

New in this beta release

This beta includes a small webserver, allowing you to use your smart phone or browser to manage your tasks.

If you are currently running the released v1.1 version, you only need to install the new WxWeb component as the other components have not changed.

For more info and download link, see this forum post.

Thank You America

2010-12-05T00:12:00.000-08:00

Giving Back a Little

GdP Software is a Dutch (Holland) company, but most of our customers are from the USA. At least 50% of our profits is from sales to US customers.

Earlier we supported a little kid in Serbia and a Good Cause in Australia.

We understand we are not alone in this world.

The United States

I read what Google is doing for American troops abroad, free telephone calls to their family during the Christmas season. I was touched.

America has always been on the frontier for democracy. You have saved most of Europe in the second world war. You saved us again with the Marshall plan.

As a little Thank You to America, GdP Software donated $1000 to Blue Star Families (they also appreciate $10 donations, by the way).

Gert Rijs
Owner of GdP Software

New WatchFTP release - v2.3

2010-11-19T03:59:00.000-08:00

We just released a minor new version of our FTP Site Monitoring tool - WatchFTP. This is, again, a free upgrade for customers.

New / Fixed in this release

New: When files are blacklisted previous releases ignored those files for 1 hour. This release allows you to set this duration of this blacklist period.
New: WatchFTP can ignore files of zero size.
New: French translation / download / support available.
bugfix: The window where you enter directories to ignore only allowed a few (~5) entries.

So embarrassing....

If you think you are the only one to make stupid mistakes in your (professional) life... We released the new WatchFTP version yesterday with a corrupt executable. Just before releasing, I thought... I should increase the version number to 2.3.5 and rebuild, such a small change - no need to test again.

If you downloaded the 2.3.5 release yesterday and got an error message like
"14001 - this application has failed to start because the application configuration is incorrect"
Please download/install the new, fixed and tested release again.

My apologies for any inconvenience this may have caused. Thank you to Jus Selan for his help to figure this out.

Downloads

Download the latest version and install it "on top" of your current release - no need to uninstall.

WatchFTP (English)
WatchFTP (Français) New!
WatchFTP (German)
WatchFTP (Español)

Just a few more days

2010-11-12T07:41:00.000-08:00

Just a few more days you can get a nice discount (~25%) on our new programs File Viking and WxRemote. See our latest (actually first) newsletter for more details.

Move File Viking to another Computer

2010-11-05T23:17:00.000-07:00

File Viking stores all its settings (configured baskets) in 2 files (baskets.cc and repository.cc). If you want to "copy" your File Viking settings to another computer, follow the steps in this post.

On the Old Computer

Exit File Viking

Open the directory with File Viking Settings. The exact location depends on your operating system.

Vista & Win-7 (Win2008)
Enter %LOCALAPPDATA% in the Search box of your start menu, this will open C:\Users\YourLoginName\AppData\Local and you will find a FileViking sub-directory there.

Earlier Operating Systems (Windows XP, 2000 and 2003)
Enter "%USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Application Data" in the "Run..." box of your start menu, this will open the directory which has the FileViking sub-directory.

From this File Viking directory, copy the files baskets.cc and repository.cc. You can ignore the Backup files.

On the New Computer

Install File Viking and Run it once so the settings directory will be created. Exit File Viking.

Depending on the Operating System, see the steps above to open the proper File Viking settings directory.

Copy the 2 .cc files from the old computer here, overwriting the 2 files already there.

A Collection of Links

2010-10-19T00:55:00.000-07:00

Q&A

When I do support for customers I often include links to relevant blogposts here. Here is a list of posts I refer to most often.

Move your WatchDirectory Install to another Computer
How to transfer your tasks.
Send a Task Backup to Support
Sometimes we need to "see" your task to give proper support.
Run Tasks as a Windows Service
Describes some common problems and workarounds when a task isn't working properly when started as a Windows Service.
How Many Tasks does WatchDirectory support
When people have a lot of tasks (more than ~30), this post gives some ideas how you can reduce that number.

WxRemote version 1.1 Released

2010-10-05T02:51:00.001-07:00

We have just released a new version of our WxRemote program. WxRemote is a set of programs that shows you the status of WatchDirectory and WatchFTP tasks on other computers.

New in this Release

Spanish and French translations
A lower cost "Standard Edition" is implemented
Several other small improvements and fixes

Free Upgrade

Current customers (v1.0 release) can install the current release "on top" of their current version. Your v1.0 license key will be recognized as a "Professional" license.

WxRemote is available in 4 languages:

English, German, Spanish and French

Future version

Soon work will start on WxRemote version 1.5. The Professional version will have a Web Interface - Check your tasks with your mobile phone or web browser!
Version 1.5 will be a free upgrade for all WxRemote customers.

How I use File Viking

2010-10-02T11:34:00.000-07:00

I run a local medical transcription service company. I subcontract many medical transcriptionists throughout the United States. Doctors upload voice files to me, I distribute the voice files to my transcriptionists, and the transcriptionists upload finished, transcribed documents back to me.

We follow strict naming conventions so we know at a glance what is new, what needs QA, and what is finished. When I receive finished work, I open the folder of work, QA it for errors, then rename it appropriately and place it in a File Viking basket to be placed into the correct finished location on my system.

I process approximately 50 folders of work per day. Using File Viking keeps this entire process virtually seamless.

Maneuvering around in Explorer to get things into the right spot can make your head spin, especially if you do it as often as I do. This product has been wonderfully useful. And I keep thinking of new things I want to try with it to see if I can streamline even more of my day!

Lori Miller
USA Transcription Services Incorporated

File Viking v1.1 Released

2010-10-01T00:20:00.000-07:00

A few days ago we released a new version of our innovative file manager File Viking. This is a free upgrade for customers, just download the current version from the File Viking website.

What's New

We implemented 2 new actions to manipulate pictures:

Create Thumbnail - Use this action to resize images you drop on a basket.
Convert Image - Use this action to convert between image formats (for example from BMP to PNG)

Both actions can be used as a parent or child of other actions so, for example, you can use the "output" of the Create Thumbnail action as the input of the Upload and/or Email action.

Future releases will add more image manipulation actions, for example to "watermark" your pictures.

Also new: the French language version of File Viking. File Viking is now available in English, German, Spanish and French!

Aussies - Do you want to get our software Free and help a good cause?

2010-09-13T08:05:00.000-07:00

Are you from Down Under? Do you want to support YoungCare Australia?

If you make a donation of at least $50 AUD to my niece Mira Koopman (who lives in Australia), you can get a free license of our software. When you make your donation on Mira's Anything-a-Thon donation page, and mention "GDP" somewhere in your published comments, I will be happy to give you a free license of our software.

This offer is valid until October 1st, 2010.

About YoungCare

Currently over 6,500 young Australians are forced to live in aged care facilities, simply because there are few alternatives.

Youngcare's aim is to raise awareness of this national issue by driving change to create real choices in care options for young Australians with full-time care needs. To find out more, visit: www.youngcare.com.au

Gert Rijs,
Owner of GdP Software

Automatic Video Transcoding with HandbrakeCLI

2010-09-11T04:11:00.000-07:00

Q&A

A customer, Kai, asked a few questions on our forum how he could configure WatchDirectory's Start any Program task to run Handbrake on newly detected video files. He was able to figure out most of it himself (what do *I* know about video conversion?) after a few tips.

HandBrake is a highly popular open-source, GPL-licensed, multiplatform, multithreaded video transcoder, available for MacOS X, Linux and Windows. It includes a command line version, called HandbrakeCLI which allows for easy automation when used together with WatchDirectory or File Viking's Run Action.

Settings

Here you see Kai's setting for his WatchDirectory task. He uses a rather long line for "Parameters for this program", so here is the plain text version:

-i "%WD_FILE%" -f mp4 -w 720 -l 400 -e x264 -b 1000 -2
     -a 1 -E faac -6 dpl2 -R 48 -B 128 -D 0.0 -v 1
     -o "C:\Converted Videos\%WD_FILE_B%.mp4"

I added a few linebreaks, but obviously they should be on 1 line. You will notice he uses 2 variables:

%WD_FILE% - this will be replaced by the full path of the detected file by WatchDirectory.
%WD_FILE_B% - this will be replaced by just the name of the detected file.

The full list of supported variables

Important Setting

When you are transcoding videos with Handbrake and WatchDirectory like this, please be aware that video transcoding is a very slow, time consuming process. WatchDirectory has no way of knowing if a program started by it is "hanging" or just busy working. In this case Kai has set "Wait for program to exit" to 14400 seconds (4 hours), which should be more than enough if you run this on a reasonably modern computer. If you set this too low, WatchDirectory will "kill" the Handbrake process prematurely.

If you disable "Wait for program to exit" and multiple video's are detected by WatchDirectory, WD will start multiple Handbrake processes to transcode multiple video files. This is only advised for the most powerful computers.

If you use File Viking

File Viking's Run Action can also run HandbrakeCLI, but its environment variables have slightly different names:

%FV_FILE% - this will be replaced by the full path of file you dropped on the File Viking basket.
%FV_FILE_B% - this will be replaced by just the name of the dropped file.

File Viking currently always waits for the program to exit, there is no need to set a timeout.

Hey Sysadmin, Do you like Scripts? 101% Flexibility!

2010-08-10T12:47:00.000-07:00

A lot of our customers are Sysadmins, and they love to create little scripts to make their work a little easier.

All our programs have the option to run batch files, (power) shell scripts and real programs. Maybe that tells you something about our background in computing.

File Viking - The Drag & Drop File Processor

Our new program, File Viking, has a Run Action that can run programs or scripts. Every file you drop on a File Viking basket will be passed as an Environment Variable to your bat script or program.

A subdirectory, called SampleScripts, of File Viking's install directory has a few bat files to get you started. Convert pictures to PDF or PNG, Resize Pictures or UNRAR files.

Remember, you can get File Viking at a 25% discount in August! See this blogpost.

WatchDirectory - Monitor Directories for Changes

Our very first released program (2003). Currently, WatchDirectory can do a lot of things when it detects new files in your Windows directory. When we first released WD (version 1.0) it could only run batch files and obviously it still can.

There are lots of example scripts on this blog. Most scripts can be used, with minor changes, for our other programs as well.

WatchFTP - Monitor your FTP Server for new Files

When WatchFTP downloads a file it can run a script on that file. For example to import the file into your database or copy it somewhere else.

Your customers upload files, WatchFTP downloads them to your computer.

WxRemote - Remote Control of your WatchDirectory & WatchFTP tasks

Our WxRemote program is a different animal. If you have multiple WatchDirectory or WatchFTP installs it allows you to start and stop tasks from another computer. It also allows you to run Remote Scripts for selected WatchDirectory or WatchFTP tasks. A future version (free upgrade) will have an HTML interface as well! Control your tasks from your phone!

This is a program you really want if you manage multiple WatchDirectory and/or WatchFTP installs. In August use the discount code WXAUGUST to buy WxRemote with a 25% discount.

File Viking Released

2010-08-09T00:11:00.000-07:00

A few days ago we released our new program File Viking, The Drag & Drop File Processor.

With File Viking you can automate your repetitive file handling tasks. Create several "baskets" (icons floating above your desktop) and configure what File Viking should do with files you drop on those baskets. For example, ZIP the files and upload the ZIP to your FTP server.
Alternatively, instead of using Drag & Drop, use the right-click context menu in Windows Explorer to add the selected files to a basket.

Several other "Actions" are available and we expect to add a lot more in the near future. All version 1.x releases will be free updates.

File Viking is currently available in 3 languages: English , German and Spanish.
We expect to release a French version soon.

Introduction Offer

If you buy File Viking in August, use the discount code FVAUGUST in our webshop to get File Viking with a 25% discount.

Send a Task Backup to Support

2010-06-22T22:00:00.000-07:00

Q&A

When you contact us about an issue with a WatchDirectory task we may ask you to send us the settings and history for us to look at. We may also ask you to enable "Debug" for your task before you send us the backup.

This posts has all the tiny little details.

Enable Debug Info

On the "Other Settings" window enable the option "[X] Write Debug Info". Now run the task. After a while, when you know the problem has occurred again, stop the task and create the backup for us (see further down below).

The FTP (Upload) Task

If the task is an FTP (Upload) Task, there is an extra "debug" setting you need to enable, "[X] Write FTP Conversation to History". This will output all FTP commands and responses to the history database.

Just before you backup this FTP task, you may want to edit it again to temporarily change the username/password. The encrypted password is stored inside the backup.

Create the Backup

Stop the task
Right-click the task, a context menu opens.
Select the option "Backup selected task(s)

This will create a ZIP file of your task settings and its history for us to look at.

Task History

If you want to look into the history info yourself and you are not familiar with WD's History Viewer, please read the post How Task History Works first.

Control your Tasks from other Computers

2010-05-26T06:24:00.000-07:00

Remote Control of your WatchDirectory and WatchFTP tasks

We just released version 1.0 of Wx Remote, a set of tools to start, stop and view your tasks running on other computers.

Read all about it!

Early Bird Discount

Early adopters receive a 25% Discount (valid until July 1st) so why not give it a try.

Some major improvements are planned (Web interface) which will be free upgrades!

La nouvelle beta version de watchDirectory est disponible

2010-05-18T13:14:00.000-07:00

Nope, I didn't learn French this afternoon ;-) But read on if you are interested.

WatchDirectory 4.6.3 beta 1

Fixed: The Copy task ignored your "Remove Directory" setting when "Implement as Move" was selected.
Fixed: The Email task will now write a warning if it can not attach a detected file on the network.
Fixed: When emails were combined only the first email's @@@filename@@@ was processed.
Fixed: The Upload task did not create new directories when you used Dynamic Naming.

WatchDirectory 4.6.3 beta 2

This beta has one new fix for the Upload task: renaming files on Microsoft FTP servers failed when the new file already existed.

For the download link, please see this forum post.

And..... French language version

WatchDirectory has been partly translated into French! The user interface is still mostly English or German, depending on which language you select, but if you select French during install, all helpfiles and parts of the quick-help will now be in French.

Note that several links in the French helpfiles currently point to non-existent internet pages. Those missing pages will be created soon.

Jacob will provide French language support by email and on our new French forum.

An update - File Viking

2010-05-13T23:07:00.000-07:00

Oh boy, we are never going to release this great program. Every single time I think we are ready to release, a new "perfect" idea comes up. Surely, we can not release without *this killer feature*.

Just one more

Last beta - one or two weeks from now. Yes, there are hundreds of little (and big) ideas we can implement, they will have to wait until version 1.1 (which will be a free upgrade).

So, what's new?

Lots!

We have concentrated on usability for this last (really!) beta. Make File Viking easier to use. The little things.... (do you know how much work goes into "easy"?)

All input fields that support {tags} (for example to use the current date as a directory name) have a little "{tag}" button next to them so you can easily select the tag you want (see picture below)
Keyboard navigation improvements for the "Enter Values" window.
A new tag, {subfolder}, which prompts you to select a subfolder of a directory.
For some systems the installer did not create the proper registry entries. The "right-click context menu" in explorer did not show the "File Viking -> add to basket..." menu.
300 other small things

WatchDirectory Tasks as a Windows Service

2010-04-19T03:19:00.000-07:00

Q&A

Here are a few tips if you have trouble running a WatchDirectory task as a Windows Service.

Make sure it works at all

As a first step, please make sure the task works properly when you manually start it (Not as a Windows Service). Set How to Run to Manually. When you have the task working properly "Manually", read on.

Network Directories

If your task only works on "local directories" (typically C:\ or D:\), you can skip this. If your task accesses drives on other computers ("The Network"), read on.

The Windows Service created by WatchDirectory runs as the user "Local System". Notice the word "Local"? The task can not access any network resources. Only directories on the computer where this task runs are accessible. So if you have a task that reads (monitors) or writes to network directories, you need to change the user that runs this task to someone who has access to those directories, see Change the User (last paragraphs of this post).

P:\

Are you accessing Mapped Network Drives? Please note that drive mappings (typically something like P:\ or X:\) are set by Windows based on the logged in user. Also, depending on the Windows version, those mappings are not available to Services even if you Change the User of the Service. Always use UNC naming for network drives (\\Server\Sharename\Directory instead of P:\Directory).

Network Share Permissions

When you share a directory on the network, older Windows versions by default gave Full Control (read, write, delete...) to anyone who is allowed to access the share. Current Windows releases default to read-only access. If your task needs to write to a network share, please check if the User running the task has proper privileges.

Batch Files

All the network issues above also apply to bat/cmd files you write. Please access network drives using their UNC name (\\server\share\directory\file.txt).

PATH
Please note the Windows PATH, where Windows can find executables to run, depends on the logged in user (the user that "runs" the WD task). If your script depends on programs that should be on your PATH, you may need to change the PATH in your bat script:

SET PATH=C:\My Binaries;%PATH%

Use Full Paths for files
If you currently have commands like

DoIt.exe "%WD_FILE%"

in your script, assuming DoIt.exe is in the current directory or your PATH, please change it to

"C:\Program Files\Do It Incorporated\DoIt.exe" "%WD_FILE%"

Note: %WD_FILE% contains the full path to the detected file, see Environment Variables.

Do not depend on the Working Directory
You should consider the "Current" (or "Working") directory to be RANDOM when your script is started. So, if you need a specific working directory, your script should set it itself.

Printing

Just like mapped drives, printers are maintained by Windows separately for each user account. Please see the last paragraph of this blogpost: Printing from a Windows Service.

Change the User for the WatchDirectory Service

Currently you can not change the user that runs the Windows Service inside the WatchDirectory Control Center. You must change it on the Windows Control Panel Applet "Windows Services":

Inside the WatchDirectory Control Center, select the menu "Tools -> Windows Services"
Open the settings for the service called watchDirectory:TheNameOfYourWatchDirectoryTask
Change the user/password for the Service

A future WatchDirectory version will make changing this user/password easier, from inside the WD Control Center.

Perhaps it is a good idea to create a new (domain) user called WatchDirectory specifically for your WD tasks. One important aspect of this user is to let its password "never expire". If you set it up so the password does expire, you will need to change the password for all WatchDirectory tasks every month...

Blog auf Deutsch lesen

Reminder - 25% discount - help a little boy

2010-03-20T17:30:00.000-07:00

For more info, see this English or this German post.

Did YOU donate for little Andrej? A few Euro, dollars, pounds... It can really Help!

Some of my customers really surprise me, in a GOOD way.

I emailed one of my favorite customers, Lori:

"Hello Lori,

I know you are a good person.
Please see http://watchdirftp.blogspot.com/2010/02/do-you-want-to-help-little-boy-with.html
and http://www.datalandsoftware.com/blog/2010/02/28/please-help-little-andrew-and-get-a-free-license/"

I should have a couple of checks in by tomorrow or Saturday. I'll make sure and donate then. More than that though, I will add Andrej to my prayer list. My 9-year-old daughter and I have a prayer list every night. If you could hear her pray, it would warm your heart. Please know she and I will pray for Andrej.

A few days later she donated $100.

Another customer donated $40 and ordered 2 extra licenses without any discount, asking for the promised discount to go to Andrej.
(Thank you Charles).

Good people do exist in this world!

Yes, there are a lot of you who donated who I did not mention. THANKS!

For more info, see this English or this German post.

Did YOU donate for little Andrej?

About File Viking

2010-03-16T03:52:00.000-07:00

We are getting closer to the last beta-release of File Viking. This new beta will be released somewhere this or next week. ~1 month after that, version 1.0 is expected.

Among other things (lots and lots of small fixes, tons of little usability improvements), we added a few new Actions ("Uncompress" and "Upload to FTP").

If you want to join this last round of beta testing and receive a free license in exchange for your comments, let me know: support @ FileViking . com.

WatchDirectory 4.6.2 released

2010-03-14T07:35:00.000-07:00

New in version 4.6.2

New: Print PDF files Automatically with Foxit Reader.
Foxit can print to "Any" printer, is faster and more reliable than Acrobat.
New: WD_FILE_SIZE_MB and WD_FILE_SIZE_GB variables.
New: Email Task: When you use a file with email addresses (see Advanced Addressing) you can also set the subject and message body there.
Fixed: The new "Only One QUIET Event" option wasn't working properly.
Fixed: The FTP plugin did not shutdown properly.

This new release is a free upgrade for all "version 4.x customers", just install the current evaluation version "on top" of your current install. That way you will keep your settings and tasks.

Holland Combinatie - a WatchDirectory Customer

2010-03-12T00:53:00.000-08:00

WatchDirectory... it rocks!

In 2004 Holland Combinatie (Dutch) decided to take production to a new level by implementing a complete new production system. This production system was based on different modules with some integration, but not optimal.

Therefore it was necessary that connection where made through all kind of different scripts, bat-files etc. It was quite a mess to controlling this stuff.

A search on the Internet showed the solution for this all: WatchDirectory. All our scripts, bat-file, copy and renaming moves are now been taking care of through WD.

The system has never been so stable on all mentioned actions since the migration to WD. Support by the developers is great. You just have to send an email or post on the forum and any issue is taken care of almost immediately.

The only problem with WD (if you can speak of a problem anyway) is that WD is so flexible and multitasking that I have to keep a low profile on making up jobs which can be dealt by WD ;-)

I can put in into one slogan:
WatchDirectory... it rocks!

D. Hoogenboom
Informatiemanager Grafisch/Technische Systemen
Holland Combinatie BV
The Netherlands

Batch Job Scheduling

2010-03-07T02:21:00.000-08:00

Q&A

When we receive multiple requests from customers, in a short period of time, asking for a solution to the same issue, it is time to write a blogpost about it.

Automatically Run New Bat or CMD files

The question asked was

I want WatchDirectory to detect new Batch Scripts, *.cmd or *.bat, in a directory and automatically run them. I tried the Automatically Run Bat Files task, but it wants me to enter the name of the bat file to run. How can I do this?

The answer:

Yes, you need the "Run Bat Files" task, you just need to create a "static" batch file that will run the newly detected bat or cmd file. A simple RunTheNewScript.bat like this will do:

@echo off
rem the variable %WD_FILE% has the complete path to the newly detected script
Call "%WD_FILE%"
rem delete the script after it has run? Remove the "REM" on the next line
REM DEL "%WD_FILE%"

It is probably best to also Setup a Filter so this new task will only run when it detects a CMD or BAT file, see the picture below.

This is a low cost alternative to products such as Camellia Batch Job Server. Obviously, as a specialized program, Camellia BJS offers more/other functionality, but if all you need is to run dynamically created batch scripts automatically, you can do it with WatchDirectory.

Do you want to help a little boy with Cancer?

2010-02-28T13:07:00.000-08:00

(Auf Deutsch lesen)

My friend Vladimir is looking for help. The 5 year old son, little Andrej, of a close friend needs a very expensive operation to hopefully cure his brain cancer.

On his blog, Vladimir has the complete story about little Andrej and also a great offer: donate to Andrej's parents and get a free license of his software! Personally, I use Agenda At Once and Web Log Storming - Great Software!

But obviously, this is not about getting free software, it is about helping a little boy. If you have a few euros or dollars to spare, even the smallest amounts help!

Update and a Small Offer

Little Andrej's parents still need about €40,000.- (~$55,000 USD).

If you PayPal me on my personal account (gertrijs@planet.nl) any amount you wish, I will double the amount you send (up to the discount amount) and transfer it to Andrej's parents. In return you receive a 25% discount on our programs. Any amount is OK, but please be generous.

This offer is valid until the end of ~~March~~ April 2010.

Gert

He is in the hospital now, He and his parents still need help!
His parents sold their house to get Andrej to a hospital. When he returns, he needs medicines...

Some of my customers really surprise me, in a GOOD way.

I emailed one of my favorite customers, Lori:

"Hello Lori,

I know you are a good person.
Please see http://watchdirftp.blogspot.com/2010/02/do-you-want-to-help-little-boy-with.html
and http://www.datalandsoftware.com/blog/2010/02/28/please-help-little-andrew-and-get-a-free-license/"

A few days later she donated $100.

Another customer donated $40 and ordered 2 extra licenses without any discount, asking for the promised discount to go to Andrej.
(Thank you Charles).

Good people do exist in this world!

Yes, there are a lot of you who donated who I did not mention. THANKS!

Print PDF files Automatically - with Foxit Reader

2010-02-27T09:24:00.000-08:00

Please note: the new task mentioned in this blog is now part of the just released version 4.6.2 of WatchDirectory.

WatchDirectory already has a task called Automatically Print PDF files. That task uses Acrobat Reader in the background to print the PDF.

We found a way to use the fantastic free Foxit Reader to print PDF's. Foxit Reader proves to be much faster and, more important, more reliable than Acrobat Reader.

This new "Print PDF" plugin will be included in the next release of WatchDirectory.

When you use this new task, you must tell it where Foxit Reader is installed and on which printer it should print the PDF's. This is the printer name as it shows on the Windows Control Panel printers applet. No typo's allowed.

Printing from a Windows Service

Please note that Windows maintains the list of printers separately for each login account. When you configure a "Print PDF" task to run as a Windows Service (on the How to Run panel), the task will run as user "LocalSystem". LocalSystem most likely doesn't have your printers installed so you must tell Windows to run this Service as another user (as "You").

Inside the WatchDirectory Control Center select the menu
"Tools -> Windows Services"
Locate the WatchDirectory Service for your task. If you called the task "PrintMyPdf", the Windows Service is called "watchDirectory:PrintMyPdf"
Open its settings (right-click -> Properties) and change the account information so it uses another user and password.

WatchDirectory 4.6.1 released

2010-02-15T22:46:00.000-08:00

New in 4.6.1

Fixed: Startup speed improvements on Windows-7 systems using (buggy) AHCI drivers from Intel.
Fixed: When History wasn't set to "Maximal" in options, you could not view any history.

New in 4.6.0

New: Previously, the QUIET Event always fired multiple times, every "quiet interval" after the last real event.
Now you can tell WatchDirectory to fire QUIET only once. For example, the Email task will only send 1 notification when there is no activity in the monitored directory.
Updated: When the Auto FTP plugin is just checking if the connection to the server is still "alive" it will not send error messages anymore.

Download and Install

Download the current version from the download page and install it "on top" of your current install. No need to uninstall your older (version 4) release first.

Like all 4.x releases, this is a free upgrade for our customers. If you own a WatchDirectory version 4 license, you can upgrade to the current release at no cost.

WatchFTP 2.2.6 released

2010-02-14T07:21:00.000-08:00

New in this WatchFTP release:

Tasks have a new window where you can set all kind of timing related things.
Files bigger than 4GB would not download properly.
You can now let WatchFTP rename the FTP file after it has been downloaded. For example, let WatchFTP add a ".downloaded" suffix to the filename. At the same time you can tell WatchFTP never to download files with these suffixes.
4 new Proxy methods, including SOCKS4 and SOCKS5.
When WatchFTP has trouble downloading certain files (for example because they have an illegal filename), those files are automatically added to a "blacklist" and will not be downloaded again.
The WF_FILE_E variable (Email and Batch file action) contained garbage when the file has no extension.
A memory corruption is fixed, depending on your exact settings this may have caused your WF tasks to crash.

This release is a Free Upgrade for all our WatchFTP customers. Just install this new release "on top" of your current release to keep all settings and tasks.

Receive an Email when No Files are Created

2010-02-05T00:07:00.000-08:00

This post will describe how you can configure WatchDirectory's Email Task to receive an email when a directory has no activity for some time.

The Problem

WatchDirectory and its Email Task are most often used to send email when new files are created or changed. To make it send an email when "nothing happened" might seem easy, just select the QUIET option on the Events page and WatchDirectory will "trigger" when no changes are detected.

If you only select "QUIET" as the event, you will soon find you also receive emails even if there is activity (new files) in the monitored directory. Why is this?

The issue is that "QUIET" needs other events to "compare against". When another event happens, for example "FILENEW" - a new file is created, WatchDirectory sets a timer for the QUIET event. If there is another event before the timer times out, the timer is reset again.

So, if you want to receive an email when nothing happened for some time, you must enable both the QUIET and the FILENEW events. Obviously, now you will also receive emails when new files are created.

No Email for New Files

Here is how you can configure WatchDirectory to prevent those emails for new files.

First, you must make sure the email body has some unique text to distinguish between emails for the QUIET event (nothing happened) and the emails for FILENEW (new files are detected). Enter something like this at the bottom of the message body:

%WD_CONFIG%-%WD_REASON%

The above are 2 Environment Variables you can use with the Email task. %WD_CONFIG% is replaced by the name of your task (for example "NotifyNoActivity") and %WD_REASON% is replaced by "what happened" (QUIET or FILENEW).

Filter Email

Close the settings of the task and select WatchDirectory's menu
"View -> Email -> Email Settings".
At the bottom of the window that opens click "Filter Email" and the window to the left will open.

On this window you can enter (partial) subjects and message body strings that will prevent WatchDirectory sending those emails. Every email, for all tasks you create that has the text "NotifyNoActivity-FILENEW" in its body, will not be sent.

Create a CSV of all WatchDirectory Events

2010-01-07T22:59:00.001-08:00

Q&A

Thomas asked if it is possible to have an overview of all events (detected files) from all his tasks. The Task History Viewer only shows you information of one task, it is currently not possible to see detected file information for all tasks on one window.

WatchDirectory stores all event information (detected files) in an SQLite database. Each task has its own history database. This post shows how you can create a CSV (comma separated values) file from the history of all your tasks.

Download the Scripts

Download the example scripts and tools (~0.5MB) and extract them to C:\listEvents. Make sure the "tmp" subdirectory is also created. The scripts write temporary files to this directory.

Configure the Scripts

The download contains 2 scripts:

listEvents.bat
This script extracts the latest XXX events of all tasks
listEventsByDate.bat
This script extracts the events of the last XXX days of all tasks

Please inspect the first few lines of those scripts and change them to reflect where you unzipped the download and the location of WatchDirectory's task directory.

How the Scripts Work

Both scripts enumerate all config files in the task directory and write SQL statements to a temporary file to copy event information to a temporary SQLite database. Once all data is copied, it queries the new database and exports the information to a CSV file. Once complete they start Excel to open the CSV.

Use File Viking to resize your pictures

2010-01-05T04:11:00.000-08:00

The current File Viking beta doesn't include an Action to resize pictures yet. However, if you configure the Run action, it is easy to write a script to call, for example, ImageMagick to resize pictures you drop on a File Viking basket.

The script can use environment variables so it knows which files were dropped on the basket. The variable %FV_FILE% contains the full path to the file dropped on a basket, %FV_FILE_B% contains the "title" of the file without its extension. Below is the example script.

rem Where did you install ImageMagick (www.imagemagick.org)
SET IMA=C:\Program Files\ImageMagick-6.5.8-Q16

rem Where should resized pictures be stored
SET OUTDIR=F:\Testing\Target

rem call convert, make pictures half their original size. As % is a special character in
rem batch scripts, we need to "double" them.
"%IMA%\Convert.exe" "%FV_FILE%" -resize 50%% "%OUTDIR%\%FV_FILE_B%_50percent.png"

rem call convert again, making pictures fit into a 200x200 rectangle while keeping the
rem correct aspect ratio.
"%IMA%\Convert.exe" "%FV_FILE%" -resize 200x200 "%OUTDIR%\%FV_FILE_B%_200x200.png"

And below you see 2 pictures showing how to configure the basket. First we add a Filter action (new in yesterday's beta) so only pictures are allowed for the piped Run action.

The Run action is configured to run a script called F:\testing\fv_resize.bat, this is the script shown above.

This is just a small example how you can create your own actions for File Viking. If you can imagine it, you can do it.

Parlez-Vous Français? - ¿Habla usted español?

2009-12-20T13:32:00.000-08:00

I must admit, my French and Spanish is really bad.... That is why we hired Jacob (French) and Hans (Spanish) to do the French and Spanish translations of our programs. More important: French and Spanish Support!

Currently, WatchFTP is already available in Spanish. Jacob is busy with a French translation of WatchFTP, it should be ready early 2010.

Our new File Viking program will be translated to French and Spanish as well, "really soon now". When we release v1.0 (or really soon after)

For WatchDirectory, we will start French and Spanish "slowly". A first release will have Spanish and French helpfiles and support, a later release will also have a translated User Interface.

Contact Us

We also have a new website, very much under construction at the moment. Our "Contact Us" and "Buy Now" pages will be moving to this site soon.

All our email addresses will also move to @gdpsoftware.com, our old email addresses will redirect to the new domain so you should not have a problem with this change.

WatchDirectory on Windows Terminal Server

2009-12-11T05:08:00.000-08:00

German language support recently did some "debugging" of WatchDirectory tasks on Terminal Server. Tasks set to run as a Windows Service didn't run properly...

He wrote a German language blogpost describing how WatchDirectory works with Windows Terminal Server. Basically, you need to make sure Terminal Server is in "Install Mode" (change user /install) when you install WatchDirectory. You already knew this, of course, it is the same for all programs you install on Terminal Server.

However, WatchDirectory and WatchFTP can also create Windows Services.... When you create (or change) a WatchDirectory/WatchFTP task so it will now run as a Windows Service (or change it from Service back to "normal") you must make sure Windows Terminal Server is running in "Install Mode", also don't forget to change back to "user mode" (change user /execute) when you're done.

More info from Microsoft is available here: Starting the installation on Terminal Server.

Just For Dummies.... (Guess that's me)

2009-12-05T08:24:00.000-08:00

You know the book series XXX for Dummies?? (Networks for Dummies, Windows for Dummies...) I always thought it sounded quite stupid, but the books are a huge success. You know what? These books are not about Stupid, they are about Easy.

Easy does it

No, we didn't create File Viking for Dummies, but we did do something quite interesting: Programming made easy for everyone. And I feel like a dummy why I didn't think about it before... Thank you, Charles, for suggesting this. We really need your input. Charles showed us we are the dummies ;-)

Pipes

We added "Pipes" to the next File Viking beta (yes, I know, that term is far to technical). The simple idea is the output of one Action is the input of a follow-up action.

For example, the ZIP files action has a zip file as output. You can configure the Email files action as a follow-up, it doesn't email the files you drop on the File Viking basket but the output of "Zip" instead - The zip file is emailed.

I have been testing this pre- pre- pre- beta-3 a few days now and can only say: this is a huge improvement over previous versions.... Charles, we owe you, thanks again!

Wow! Next Beta, Next Week! Join us!

PS, more Programming for Dummies

Yes, we will make this "programming" even better in future "1.x" releases. For example filtering comes to mind (only do this branch of the tree of actions for *.txt files)

File Viking - beta 2

2009-11-12T09:04:00.000-08:00

The beta for our new File Viking (Drag & Drop File Processor) started last week. The first bugs were found and quickly fixed.

For those who tried beta 1..... Did you find "Settings -> Options -> Move Baskets shortcut"?
For example, use CTRL+SHIFT+/ to "move them". See vikings dancing on your screen - press the shortcut to move those baskets out of the way (quickly press again and again to have some fun!)

New Beta Version

The new beta release adds ZIP support... Drag & drop files on an icon floating above your desktop and they are zipped to
D:\MyBackups\{yyyy}{mm}{dd}\{hour}{min}.zip.
Missing directories are automatically created. Yes, {yyyy} is replaced by 2009.

New: 64 Bit downloads are available.
New: When a basket is processing the files you've dropped on it, it will show you a progress indicator.
Fixed: Crash when repeatedly closing an empty "configure basket" window (Thank you for reporting, Dees).
Fixed: Tooltips on Windows XP (and probably other compatibility issues on XP and Win2000).

Do you want to help Beta Testing

Send me an email (support at fileviking dot com).

Graphics

Below are some mockups Nataly made for File Viking (click for a larger version). I wish I could link to her website, but I don't think she has one yet. Anyway, don't you agree even the mockups look great? Do we really need 64mln "True Color" pictures? Personally, I like this charcoal style. But sure, full color images will be added.

These are exciting days! Expect File Viking early 2010, we will add a lot more features for you before we release!!

Some Quick Notes....

2009-10-23T03:19:00.000-07:00

Are you already getting bored by messages from software-vendors telling you their programs are "7" compatible? I won't bore you with the details, but rest assured, our programs are compatible with all current Windows Operating Systems.

In other news...

We now also have a German Language Blog.

Progress on our new File Viking program is great. We hope to have the first beta ready next week. On the website are a few (clumsy) demo video's and helpfiles available for you to look at.

New WatchDirectory Beta

2009-10-08T03:43:00.000-07:00

We just uploaded a new beta for WatchDirectory with the following new features and fixes:

Fixed: The Auto FTP plugin would try to "CWD" to the file on the FTP server. This was harmless on most FTP servers, but some servers would abort the upload.
New: All plugins that support Dynamic Naming have a new variable for milliseconds: {msec}.
New: The Run Any Program plugin can now be used as a SubTask in the SubTask plugin.
New: Various plugins that support the File Security settings now also allow you to select "do not change file permissions".

You can find the download on our beta forum.

WatchFTP 2.2 beta 3

2009-10-04T12:18:00.000-07:00

Hi,

We have a new WatchFTP beta on available on our support forum. This new beta supports 4 new Proxy methods and has the ability to rename files it has downloaded.

We expect to release this new version relatively soon, maybe 1 or 2 weeks from now.

Gert

Why I Love Microsoft

2009-10-03T01:17:00.000-07:00

It has become a common issue to give "bad press" on everything Microsoft related, so I thought I should write about my recent experience.

Recently, one of our computers refused to install Vista Service pack 2. I called Microsoft (Yes, I had to wait a long time on the phone, yes, the "telephone menu" was annoying, yes, the music while waiting was not my taste).

First I got contact with, what I believe, was their first line support (the guy that asks you to try to reboot your computer to see if that helps). WOW! This was a good experience: I spoke to a Dutch guy (my own language), he immediately understood this issue was not "reboot-to-see-if-it-helps".

He connected me to their 2nd line support and I talked with Roy for about an hour. He was polite, very patient, and extremely helpful. The funny thing is: the issue with this computer is not resolved yet (I probably need to reinstall), but I still feel Roy helped me a lot!

Oh, I am totally off-topic on this post already, so... If you are a Developer, check out these links, The History of Visual Studio:
part 1
part 2

A really interesting story about VS, how it all started (yes, Visual Basic 1.0).

File Viking - Status

2009-09-13T03:39:00.000-07:00

I mentioned this new program in an earlier post. As always, progress is slower than originally planned - this says more about our planning- than our programming-capabilities, by the way ;-)

Beta Testers

We can still use some beta testers for this new program. Beta testers receive a free copy when it is released, obviously. Interested? We expect to have the first beta available somewhere next month.

If you want to help, send an email to gert@watchdirectory.net, use the subject "SKUNKWORKS - Beta".

The Truth About Amsterdam

2009-09-06T00:49:00.000-07:00

The capitol of The Netherlands, Amsterdam, received some bad press by TV host Bill O’Reilly from Fox News. Two inhabitants of Amsterdam created a website called The Truth About Amsterdam where they defend Amsterdam. Below are 2 video's with their answer to Bill. More videos are available on their website.

The truth about Amsterdam, our response to Bill

Amsterdam versus O’Reilly 2

WatchFTP 2.2 beta 2

2009-09-01T00:54:00.000-07:00

We have a new beta for WatchFTP: 2.2 beta 2.

New in this beta:

Previously, files bigger than 4GB would not download properly.
French language support (helpfile is not translated yet).
We are very interested to here about the quality of this translation. Any remarks you have, please send an email to eric@watchftp.com
Separate installers for each supported language.
Previously, the user interface language was detected by the operating system. There was no way to use the English interface on a German language operating system. This new version will bypass the automatic detection and always use the language depending on the download you have installed.

Download links can be found in this forum post.

Many tasks, little time

2009-08-07T03:34:00.000-07:00

The last WatchDirectory update introduced several features that help people who run a lot of WatchDirectory tasks. This post describes them in more detail and introduces a little undocumented feature.

Find Tasks

Version 4.5.9 has a new option to Find Tasks. Use the menu "View -> Find" or the keyboard shortcut CTRL+F to invoke it. Enter any search term and the WD Control Center will search all visible columns for the entered text. All tasks that have a matching text will be selected and optionally scrolled to top.

There is also an option to "Clear previous results". If you deselect it you can do multiple "finds" to select all the tasks you want.

When all desired tasks are selected you can Start them all at once by clicking the "Play" button. If one of the tasks selected is already running you will find the play-button is disabled (grayed). To enable the play-button you must either:

De-select the running tasks:
Ctrl+Click the selected running task to de-select it
Force the Play-button to become active:
Hold down CTRL and SHIFT while you click play. Only the not-running selected tasks will be started.

Group Tasks by Color

Also new: you can assign one of 6 colors to a task. Select one or more tasks and right-click them. Select the menu-option "Set Color" and assign a color to the selected task(s). After doing this for the first time, 2 things will happen:

A new column will show
This column contains a colored "dot" for the tasks. Clicking the column header will sort all tasks by their assigned color.
A new color toolbar will show
This toolbar allows you to quickly select all tasks having the same color. You can disable this new toolbar using the "View ->Toolbars" menu option.

So now you can, for example, assign "green" to all tasks related to "Incoming Customer Orders" and assign "red" to all tasks related to "Fulfilled Orders".

Click the red dot on the new toolbar to select all "Fulfilled Orders" tasks and start or stop them all at once.

Undocumented - named colors

Maybe "red" is not so obvious... You may be wondering, was it green or red I used for "Fulfilled Orders"?? When you hover your mouse over the colors toolbar, the Control Center will read the description to show from the Windows Registry. If not found there, it will use the default (non descriptive) text for this color to show.

If you want easier, intuitive descriptions for these colors, download this file: ColorDescriptions.txt. (you must right-click, "save as" this link, otherwise it may show as rubbish in your browser). Save it to your desktop and open it with notepad (or another plain-text editor). Inside the file you find several lines like:

"1"="Statusbar message for Red\\npopup for red"

(followed by "2"=, "3"=..."6"=, one for each color). Change the text anyway you like, but please make sure it keeps this same format (especially the "\\n" part is important). For example, change this line to

"1"="Select all Fulfilled Orders\\nFulfilled Orders"

The text before "\\n" is showed on the statusbar. The text after "\\n" is shown as a little yellow notification when you hover your mouse over this color.

After you made the desired changes to ColorDescriptions.txt, rename it to ColorDescriptions.reg (ignore warnings from Windows). Now double-click the ColorDescriptions.reg file to import these settings into the Windows Registry. When you restart the WatchDirectory Control Center, you will see your new descriptions.

Just a reminder

If you have bought a version 4.x license from us, you can upgrade this license free of charge. Just install the latest "evaluation version" on top of your current install so it will see your current settings, tasks and license info.

Download here or for the German lanuage version: here.

Q&A - Load Balancing Humans

2009-08-01T06:27:00.001-07:00

Q&A

One of our customers, USA Transcription Services, uses WatchDirectory to automatically send work from clients to transcriptionists. Clients upload work to a directory monitored by WatchDirectory and WatchDirectory sends it to the transcriptionist assigned to the client.

Normally each client has a dedicated transcriptionist, but some clients send a lot of work to transcribe - more work than one employee can handle in a reasonable time. What is needed is to assign 2 transcriptionists to such a client, making sure no work is duplicated (done by both).

Lori, my contact at USA Transcription Services, asked if I knew a way to solve this.

Solution Outline

Instead of sending work directly from the directory where clients upload work, we first need to distribute these files into separate directories, assigned to different transciptionists. These directories can then be monitored by another WatchDirectory task to send the work to the individual employees.

Solution 1 - Sort Files

Use the Sort Files plugin to distribute the detected files to employee folders. Create multiple "sort rules", making sure they are all "final" (so a file is only copied to one employee folder).

This solution depends on the names of the files uploaded by the customers. If you can be sure these names are quite random, you can base the sort rules on, for example, the first letter of the filename. The first sort-rule would use a mask like

*\a*;*\b*;*\c*;*\d*;*\e*;*\f*;*\g*;*\h*

so it copies all files with names starting with a, b, c, d, e, f, g and h (ignoring case), and the second rule would just use * as the mask - matching all files not handled by the first rule.

One problem: the masks as entered for sort-rule one will also match the file C:\Directory\ZZZZZZZZ.TXT because of the mask "*\d*".
So, in this case, it is better to enter the file masks as *directory\d* (or just *ory\d*).

Another problem, it can be quite hard to guarantee all files uploaded by clients have random names. Maybe better to use masks based on the second character of those names:

*\?a*;*\?b*;*\?c*;*\?d*;*\?e*;*\?f*;*\?g*;*\?h*

This post is not intended to go into the linguistic analysis of filenames but I think the letter 'E' is quite common as the second letter in English filenames

Solution 2 - A Batch File that distributes randomly

This is the solution Lori is using now. If you don't need rocket science precision (exactly half of the files go to directory-1, the other half goes to directory-2), this will work fine. Especially if you are dealing with a large number of files to distribute.
This solution uses the Run a Batch File task to start a script that uses the environment variable %RANDOM% to determine the target directory (and thus the employee that transcribes the file).
Here is the script:

SET TARGET1=C:\Uploads\Employee1
SET TARGET2=C:\Uploads\Employee2
rem get a random number (0 - ~32000)
rem and get the remainder of divide by 2, so we have a number 0 or 1 as the result
SET /a REMAINDER=%RANDOM% %% 2
SET TARGET=%TARGET1%
IF %REMAINDER% EQU 1 SET TARGET=%TARGET2%
rem move the detected file to TARGET
MOVE "%WD_FILE%" "%TARGET%"

If a client needs 3 employees, the script can be changed to (changes highlighted):

SET TARGET1=C:\Uploads\Employee1
SET TARGET2=C:\Uploads\Employee2
SET TARGET3=C:\Uploads\Employee3
rem get a random number (0 - ~32000)
rem and get the remainder of divide by 3, so we have a number 0, 1 or 2 as the result
SET /a REMAINDER=%RANDOM% %% 3
SET TARGET=%TARGET1%
IF %REMAINDER% EQU 1 SET TARGET=%TARGET2%
IF %REMAINDER% EQU 2 SET TARGET=%TARGET3%
rem move the detected file to TARGET
MOVE "%WD_FILE%" "%TARGET%"

Solution 3 - No Randomness

Random can be a tricky concept... I will let Dilbert Explain. To guarantee an even distribution of files you need to count the files, please see this forum post.

PS: I found the Dilbert comic only on web.archive.org. It must be somewhere on the official dilbert.com site as well, but I could not find it. If you have a link to the original pic on dilbert.com, please let me know.

August Special - Free Agenda At Once license

2009-08-01T01:20:00.001-07:00

If you buy 2 or more WatchDirectory or WatchFTP licenses in August 2009, you can get a free license of this Great Organizer and ToDo-list program. A $40 gift from us to you!

If you are already a customer and buy one extra license (remember to contact us first for a 25% discount), this offer for a free Agenda At Once license is also valid.

Simply forward your order-confirmation email to support@watchdirectory.net, please allow a few days to process your request.

About Agenda At Once

Agenda At Once PIM for Windows combines the best aspects of other personal organizer applications. It's a complete PIM system, integrating to-do management, scheduling and planning, contact and note functions. In addition, it is easy to use and responsive, while being feature-packed but not power-hungry. With its optimally-designed interface, Agenda At Once will rapidly put you in charge of your - or your team's - personal information. You'll be saving time and accomplishing so much more that you'll be wondering how you ever managed without it.

8 processors but still waiting

2009-07-28T00:35:00.000-07:00

Our new build system has lots of ram and a multicore hyperthreaded cpu: 4*2 processors. It is just unbelievable how responsive this Vista-64 machine is.

We are currently making some changes to the build process of WatchFTP, creating separate installers for each supported language. Previously, we created just one installer with a multilingual executable (thank you Sisulizer for a great localization product). The multilingual approach worked fine most of the time, however when a German customer living in France wants to run the English version of WatchFTP on his Spanish-language operating system it was just not possible. The operating system would select the language to display, not much you could do about it.

Future WatchFTP versions will have the desired display language build-in. Sisulizer will create language specific (German, Spanish etc) copies of the original (English) executables. The display language will only depend on the installer you download from our websites.

Steps in our build process

Build a "release" version of WatchFTP
(Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 - C++ by the way)
Run Sisulizer to create the multilingual executables
Protect the core components (2 executables)
Code-sign the EXE and DLLs
Run Inno Setup to create the installer
Code-sign the setup file
Test the setup
When we find issues, fix them and go back to step 1.
When all is OK, a lot of other tasks like uploading to our website etc

The most time consuming step (several minutes) was step 3 (software protection). Not really a big deal, we don't release new versions that often. However, step 7 (test setup) can cause a lot of rebuilds (start at step 1) and the delays for software protection become very annoying.

It gets Worse!!

When we implement separate installers for the different languages we support, we will have to do step 3 (protect) for each language (currently German, Spanish and English. Soon we will have a French version as well).
This will make our already long build process 4 times longer - totally unacceptable.

Our great new computer doesn't help at all because all those steps need to be sequential. We can not code-sign (step 4) before the protection (step 3) is completed. Also, the protection phase is done with a single-threaded program, even if the computer has 1000 cpus, it will only use one of them.

How we solved it

Obviously, the protection step (nr 4) needs to be paralleled. We can launch the protector as a separate process for each of the languages. A first attempt (WRONG!!) in our build batch script:

....
ECHO ==STEP 2 Complete==>>C:\Temp\buildlog.txt
ECHO ==STEP 3 Starts - Software Protection==>>C:\Temp\buildlog.txt
Set LANGUAGE=ENGLISH
Start "Protecting %LANGUAGE%" "E:\Build\Protect.bat"
Set LANGUAGE=SPANISH
Start "Protecting %LANGUAGE%" "E:\Build\Protect.bat"
Set LANGUAGE=GERMAN
Start "Protecting %LANGUAGE%" "E:\Build\Protect.bat"
Set LANGUAGE=FRENCH
Start "Protecting %LANGUAGE%" "E:\Build\Protect.bat"
ECHO ==STEP 3 Complete==>>C:\Temp\buildlog.txt
ECHO ==STEP 4 Starts - Code Signing protected Executables ==>>C:\Temp\buildlog.txt

(note: the scripts shown in this post are very simplified without error checking etcetera).
The protect.bat file is called and based on the LANGUAGE variable it will protect a specific language version of WatchFTP. The beauty of the Start command is that it will launch a separate console (command prompt) to run the protect.bat script. In the example above 4 language versions are protected simultaneously, each using their own CPU. Obviously, because of disk usage, there is some slowdown - it won't complete 4 times as fast.

A small problem...

In case you didn't realize, the above script is sort of wrong: it continues running while the 4 "Protect.bat" files are not finished yet. So it gladly goes on to Step 4 (code signing), but there isn't anything to code-sign yet. We need to wait for the 4 protect.bat processes to complete before we can continue with Step 4.

And an easy fix

We have a small command prompt program called GdPUtil (Free Download). Please read the description of the -join parameter.

We added the following lines at the end of protect.bat so it signals to the main script it is ready:

....
"C:\Bin\GdPUtil.exe" -join protect%LANGUAGE% 1000
EXIT

And changed the original build script to

....
ECHO ==STEP 2 Complete==>>C:\Temp\buildlog.txt
ECHO ==STEP 3 Starts - Software Protection==>>C:\Temp\buildlog.txt
Set LANGUAGE=ENGLISH
Start "Protecting %LANGUAGE%" "E:\Build\Protect.bat"
Set LANGUAGE=SPANISH
Start "Protecting %LANGUAGE%" "E:\Build\Protect.bat"
Set LANGUAGE=GERMAN
Start "Protecting %LANGUAGE%" "E:\Build\Protect.bat"
Set LANGUAGE=FRENCH
Start "Protecting %LANGUAGE%" "E:\Build\Protect.bat"

ECHO ==STEP 3 waiting for protection to complete ==>>C:\Temp\buildlog.txt

"C:\Bin\GdPUtil.exe" -join protectENGLISH 1000
"C:\Bin\GdPUtil.exe" -join protectSPANISH 1000
"C:\Bin\GdPUtil.exe" -join protectGERMAN 1000
"C:\Bin\GdPUtil.exe" -join protectFRENCH 1000

ECHO ==STEP 3 Complete==>>C:\Temp\buildlog.txt
ECHO ==STEP 4 Starts - Code Signing protected Executables ==>>C:\Temp\buildlog.txt

Now our script works like a champ! Even though it has to do 4 times as much work, it is only slightly slower than it used to be.

Why does this matter to you?

If you have long running scripts, have a good look if they can be broken up like we did in our build script. For example, are you uploading a file to multiple FTP servers in your script? If you have enough upload bandwidth but it is the FTP servers causing the slowdown, this technique can be very helpful.

SkunkWorks - New Program, New Name, Contest, Testers.....

2009-07-19T10:53:00.000-07:00

Hello,

We are currently working on a new program. Functionality is going great so far but we have a strange problem ;-) More on that further down below...

The Program

So far our programs WatchDirectory and WatchFTP concentrated on doing things automagically. This new program is different.
It allows you to select files (in Windows Explorer, for example), add these files to a "basket" (an icon floating above explorer) and then perform "actions" on those baskets. A few actions we are currently implementing:

COPY - copy the files dropped into the basked to a pre-configured directory.
MOVE - same as copy, but move the files instead.
EMAIL - email the files to a pre-configured email address.
FTP - upload the files to an FTP server.
BATCH (you already knew this was coming, I guess ;-) - Run a script for each of those files - program your own action.
YourIdea - we are always interested to hear from you.

The Name

So... if you read the above... any idea for a good name? There are a few important features the name must have:

English - our biggest market.
Web - the www.TheNameYouThinkOf.com name must be available.
Attractive/Mysterious - if the name wows people who see it, making them curious, that would be great!
Not offensive - need I explain this?
File - it would be great if it has the word "file" in its name.
Short - not as important as the above, but shorter names are easier to type (url in webbrowsers).

We already thought of several names (all very boring), do you know a good name? A good program name can make the difference between success or failure for a new program, so if you suggest the "winning name" to us we will compensate you for it. Beside a free copy of the program and our everlasting gratitude - a $1000 reward or 50% of the first month sales of this program - you choose!

Send an email to gert@watchdirectory.net, use the subject "SKUNKWORKS - Name". Tell us the program name and why you think it is a great name to use.

Beta Testers

It may take a month, maybe 2 months before we have the first beta ready, but we need beta testers for this new program. Beta testers receive a free copy when it is released, obviously. Interested?

Send an email to gert@watchdirectory.net, use the subject "SKUNKWORKS - Beta".

Update - July 22, 2009

We just bought the domain www.FileHalla.com (thank you Peter Wester) - any Vikings reading this ;-)
If you have a better idea, the contest is still open, probably until the end of the month.

Update - July 25, 2009

We just bought the domain www.FileViking.com (thank you Al Harberg). He didn't actually suggest this name but warned me about negative feelings the name Valhalla/Walhalla might cause.

Am I sure about FileViking? I think some ancestors of mine were slaughtered by Vikings... It has been some time ago, though...

Tweet your files with curl

2009-07-16T03:28:00.000-07:00

This post shows how you can let WatchDirectory or WatchFTP post a new twitter message when they detect new files. Excuse me if I get some of the twitter terminology wrong - I grew up when computers were something you see in movies ;-)

Curl

This page shows that posting a message to twitter is as simple as

curl -u username:password -d status="your message here" http://twitter.com/statuses/update.json

So, we need Curl to post. I used the non-ssl version while testing. Make sure to download a Windows version from their download page.

Batch File

If you want to "tweet" when a new file is detected, create a new task and select the Run a Batch Script task (for WatchDirectory) or Run a Batch Script Action (for WatchFTP).

Let it run the following batch file (may not show correctly in all blog-readers):

@echo off
SET CURL=E:\bin\curl-7.19.5\curl.exe
SET TWUSER=TheTwitterUser
SET TWPASS=TheTwitterPassword

rem if we are called by WatchFTP, copy its variables to WD variables
rem so this script is compatible with both programs

IF "%WF_REASON%" NEQ "" (
  SET WD_REASON=%WF_REASON%
  SET WD_FILE=%WF_FILE%
)


GOTO :%WD_REASON%

:FILENEW
SET MSG="New file: %WD_FILE%"
GOTO :SendIt
:FILEDEL
SET MSG="Deleted file: %WD_FILE%"
GOTO :SendIt
:FILECHNG
SET MSG="Changed file: %WD_FILE%"
GOTO :SendIt
:FILEREN
SET MSG="Renamed file: %WD_OFILE% to %WD_FILE%"
GOTO :SendIt
:DIRNEW
SET MSG="New directory: %WD_FILE%"
GOTO :SendIt
:DIRDEL
SET MSG="Deleted directory: %WD_FILE%"
GOTO :SendIt
:DIRREN
SET MSG="Renamed directory: %WD_OFILE% to %WD_FILE%"
GOTO :SendIt


:SendIt
"%CURL%" -u %TWUSER%:%TWPASS% -d status=%MSG% http://twitter.com/statuses/update.json

Make sure to properly change the first few lines (where did you install curl, what is your twitter userid and password).

Twitter Limits

A tweet is a short message (I believe limited to about 140 characters). If your directory and filenames are long, you may need to shorten the messages a bit. For example, change %WD_FILE% to %WD_FILE_N% everywhere in the script so it will only tweet the filename (without the directory path).

Twitter also has some other limits you may hit if you call it too often.

Blogging your Files?

This post shows you how.

WatchFTP 2.2 beta

2009-07-16T02:38:00.000-07:00

A beta version for WF 2.2 is available on our forum.

New in this beta release is that you can enter all kind of "timing" related settings for each task. Among other things, this gives you easier access to all the "secret settings" described in this blogpost.

This beta does not have the new features translated to German and Spanish yet - the new items will show in English.

To install (and keep your current settings and tasks):
* Do NOT uninstall your current WF version
* Install the beta and use all proposed settings of the installer (same directories)

WatchDirectory 4.5.9 released

2009-07-16T01:15:00.000-07:00

We just released a new WatchDirectory version - another free upgrade for all WatchDirectory version 4 customers.

Changes in this release

Fixed: The tip window sometimes caused the WD Control Center to crash at startup
New: The Auto Copy plugin can now MOVE files. When you move files on the same disk, this is faster than copy followed by delete.
New: The Folder Size plugin writes a timestamp and filename of deleted/moved files to <Task Directory>\<Task Name>\removedfiles_YYYYMMDD.csv. These files are automatically removed when they are a month old.
New: The Folder Size plugin can check for several new "events"
Fixed: The "Last Message" column of the WatchDirectory Control Center was not always updating properly
Fixed: The Auto UNZIP task now supports far larger files (tested with a 2GB zip containing an 8GB file)
Fixed: The Auto ZIP task now supports far larger files (tested up to 8GB)
Fixed: The Auto Copy option to remove directories when they become empty in some cases also removed the monitored directory.
New: The thumbnail plugin can now be used as a SubTask in the SubTask plugin
New: The thumbnail plugin has a new option to prevent overwriting existing thumbnails
New: You can set the "color" of a task. If you have a lot of tasks, this allows you to organize them in different "groups". Give a task one of 6 colors using the "right click" context menu. You can sort the tasks by color by clicking the header in the WD Control Center. You can select all tasks having the same color using the new "Colors Toolbar".
New: When you let the email plugin combine emails, you can now set the separator between emails yourself.
New: Use CTRL+F (or View -> Find) to find and select tasks.
Fix: The Automatically Start any Program plugin did not properly set the environment variable WD_REASON when a new directory was detected.

How to install

Stop all your WD tasks, stop the WD Control Center. Now install the new version in the same location as your previous installed version (overwrite it).
This will keep all your settings and tasks intact.

Download

Download Here (English) or Here (German).

July Special - Free ShowSize license

2009-06-30T23:01:00.000-07:00

When you buy 2 licenses of WatchDirectory or 2 licenses of WatchFTP during July 2009, you can get a free license of ShowSize, normally sold at $49.95.

To get your free copy of ShowSize, forward your WatchDirectory or WatchFTP order confirmation to support@watchdirectory.net. Please allow a few days to process your request.

About ShowSize

You already know that Windows Explorer does not show folder sizes in its list. ShowSize can do that and much more. See how your disk space is distributed in various folders and file types, and so on. ShowSize is the next generation software that can process terabytes of disk space and millions of files. Using ShowSize, you can also list or print folder contents in ways not possible with Windows Explorer.

YourSurprise.com - One of our Customers

2009-06-16T05:16:00.000-07:00

YourSurprise.com is a company which sells personalized Gifts via the Internet. The personalized gifts mostly exist of a product, personalized with an image. For every order we create an order form in PDF format.

For our new website, released somewhere in 2008, we were looking for a program to automatically download the images and PDF’s and print these PDF’s on demand. From my previous internship I already knew WatchDirectory, PDF print on demand. Browsing the website of WatchDirectory I’ve noticed that they also had the program WatchFTP. So one company which solved our problems!

These images, created by the users, are automatically downloaded with WatchFTP to our local server where the gifts are created, handled and shipped. The order form PDF’s are also downloaded and printed on demand with WatchDirectory. We had some questions about tuning/configuring the products and within no time we had a reply with the solution.

In short, two top products which fit to our needs exactly.

Niels van der Linde
YourSurprise.com

Vlaggetjesdag

2009-06-09T06:44:00.000-07:00

YES! Today in Holland we celebrate "Vlaggetjesdag" (day of the flags?). It is traditionally the day the first salted herrings of the new season are sold. Most Dutch eat the Herring with raw onions, these onions were originally added to camouflage the smell of rotting fish. These days they are not really needed anymore, and Holland is divided in 2 camps about adding onions (I like my herring with onions, thank you).

The herring is sold as "Hollandse Nieuwe" (Dutch New) when it is at least 16% fat (yummie!) and prepared in the traditional way (salted and "gekaakt"). The first barrel with herring is always sold at ridiculous prices (€66,000 this year), the money goes to charity.

I lived in Denmark for a year and sadly enough, they don't sell Herring prepared the "Dutch way". Luckily, their "Sild i Karry" (Herring with a lot of herbs and Curry sauce) was super as well - actually, besides Carlsberg Porter, it is one of the main reasons for my frequent visits to Denmark.

Remotely start/stop WatchDirectory and WatchFTP services

2009-06-05T03:10:00.000-07:00

A great free tool from Sysinternals (now owned by Microsoft) is the psexec program. With psexec you can run programs on other computers and it supports full interaction with remote command prompts. This allows you, for example, to start or stop Windows Services by running the "NET START" or "NET STOP" command.

Initial Setup

I always create a new user on the computer I want to access with psexec and name it psexec as well. I give this user administrator privileges so it can do "whatever I want". This step may not be necessary, see the psexec help (just run psexec without parameters).

Control a Service on another machine

Okay, lets assume I want to stop the WatchDirectory task "unzipbiggies" that runs as a Service on computer \\Test01. First, you need to know that when WatchDirectory creates a Windows Service, the Service name is prefixed with "watchDirectory:", so the actual Windows Service name for the task "unzipbiggies" is "watchDirectory:unzipbiggies".
WatchFTP prefixes Service names with the string "WatchFTP:".

First we need to open a command prompt on the remote computer:

C:\Users\gert>e:\bin\psexec.exe \\Test01 -u psexec -p topsecret cmd

This assumes you created a user "psexec" with password "topsecret" on the \\Test01 computer.

After a while this opens a command prompt on the remote computer, but it shows on your computer. Enter the following command to see all running Windows Services (including the WatchDirectory and WatchFTP services):

C:\Users\gert>NET START
These Windows services are started:

... snipped a lot of services....
   Terminal Services
   Themes
   UPnP Device Host
   User Profile Service
   watchDirectory:unzipbiggies
   wdPostMan
   WebClient
   Windows Audio
   Windows Audio Endpoint Builder
... snipped a lot of services....
The command completed successfully.

To stop the WatchDirectory task, enter

C:\Users\gert>NET STOP "watchDirectory:unzipbiggies"

To start the task again, enter

C:\Users\gert>NET START "watchDirectory:unzipbiggies"

Other uses

There are a lot of other things you can do with psexec. For example when a file is detected by WatchDirectory on "this" computer, let psexec run a command on another computer. You get the idea, I guess.

WatchFTP 2.1.9

2009-05-17T00:23:00.000-07:00

Today we released a minor update for WatchFTP. This free update has the following fixes/new features:

A few more problems with accented characters were fixed
In certain cases files were not removed from the FTP server
The "History Viewer" allows you to show the full timestamps of messages

You can download the new version here:
http://www.watchftp.com/download.html
or http://www.watchftp.de/download.html
or http://www.watchftp.es/download.html

Stop all your tasks and install the new version "on top" of your current install so it will see your settings/tasks.

Let us not forget...

2009-05-15T06:49:00.001-07:00

Our Brave Soldiers

Our heroes, Captain Kroon and his troops, they serve our country while we are sleeping. Soon (May 29, 2009) Captain Kroon will be awarded for his own and his troops' bravery.

Marco Kroon, the first person in a long time (50 years) in The Netherlands to receive the most honorable honor, our most prestigious medal: the Williams Order.
Marco, and your troops, you understand this is for all of you, so: THANK YOU!

This rare honor is only awarded for the highest bravery. Sometimes (extremely rare!) it is honored to a whole regiment. Even rarer to a foreign regiment, so far this has happened only twice in hundreds of years....

Our Polish Friends: 1st Independent Parachute Brigade
Our American Friends: 82nd Airborne Division

Update - I have just seen the ceremony on TV, very impressive!

(Marco Kroon being decorated by Queen Beatrix)
If you understand Dutch, here is a short interview with our hero, this was just after he heard he will be knighted.

Update - A short clip of the ceremony (~2 minutes). With a simple slap on the shoulder, Marco is knighted - did I tell you I love traditions?

How Many Tasks does WatchDirectory support?

2009-05-14T03:19:00.000-07:00

A question that sometimes comes up is
How Many Tasks does WatchDirectory Support?

If this is for making a purchase decision (Do I need WD Standard or Professional), the answer is:
WD Standard supports 3 tasks. WD Professional supports..... mmmmm, well it depends.

Number of Tasks

There is no artificial limit for the number of tasks that WatchDirectory Professional can run. There are, however, other limitations (mostly memory related) that limit the number of tasks.

Available Memory
Each task you run requires some memory. The amount of memory needed depends on several things, most importantly on the Monitoring Method you use.
Size of Monitored Directories
If you use the "Default" or "Polling" Monitoring Method, your task will have a representation of the monitored directory in memory. Large directories require more memory. The "File Age" and "Fast" monitoring methods do not require this representation.
See also Monitor Huge Directories.
Run Mode
If you run your tasks as a Windows Service, there are some Windows limitations for the number of Services supported. The actual limit depends on your Windows version and on the number of other services you have running. If you reach this limit, you will typically receive error messages like this:
StartService fails: Error Code:1053
Description: The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion.
The last few posts in this forum topic describes a few work-arounds.
The Size of your Brain
Can you really manage 200 (WatchDirectory) tasks?

Why so Many?

Often it can be easy to replace several tasks by just one, especially if their monitored directory "share" a common parent directory. A few tips....

Replace multiple "Copy Files" by one "Sort Files" task

If you want to copy files to multiple destinations, you don't have to create multiple "copy files" tasks. Instead create just one "Sort Files" task. Each "rule" you create can have another destination.
See also The Sort Files plugin.

Merge multiple "Email Notification" tasks into one

When the email address is the only thing that's different for each task, you may want to look at the "Advanced Addressing" options for the email plugin. This allows you to specify different email addresses depending on the sub-directory where the file is found. An old newsletter also describes this.

Update (WatchDirectory 4.6.2): When you use Advanced Addressing, using the "email.txt" trick, you can also set the Subject and message body depending on the directory where the file is found.

See also The Email Plugin and Advanced Addressing.

Convert tasks into Subtasks

WatchDirectory v4.5.8 introduced a new plugin that can run other tasks as Subtasks. There are a few limitations described further in the help file.
See also The Run Subtasks Plugin.

Q&A - Run bwavinfo for detected files

2009-04-17T07:15:00.000-07:00

Q&A

Adam on our Forum asks:

Hi all,

I'll confess I'm no expert on scripting, but I've had a good deal of success in running simple batch files on watched directories, up until now..

I'm trying to run a command 'bwavinfo' via a simple .bat file. For the command to work, it requires an "--info" switch after the bwavinfo command, and before the input/output filenames (i.e. bwavinfo --info in.wav >in.txt). I have a working batch file which will do this outside of watchdirectory using the above script, though when i try and run it via watchdirectory, i'm met with a 'bwavinfo is not reconized as an internal or external command' message.

Here's my WD batch file:

bwavinfo --info "%WD_FILE%" >"N:\%WD_FILE_B%.wav.txt"

bwavinfo relies on Ruby and Java to run, but has been installed correctly, and works fine via a command prompt. Where am I going wrong?!

Adam.

Adam,

bwavinfo --info "%WD_FILE%" >"N:\%WD_FILE_B%.wav.txt"

May I suggest to you to always use full path-names in batch scripts. Something like this:

"C:\Program Files\bwa\bwavinfo.exe" --info "%WD_FILE%" >"N:\%WD_FILE_B%.wav.txt"

That way, the bwainfo program can be found no matter how your PATH is setup.

Also, redirecting to "N:\...."... it looks like N: is a mapped network drive? Remember that these drive-mapping will not work if you run this WD task as a service. It is probably a better way to use the UNC name of the drive-mapping, something like

"C:\Program Files\bwa\bwavinfo.exe" --info "%WD_FILE%" >"\\Server\share\%WD_FILE_B%.wav.txt"

Finally, for the Ruby & Java issue, you also need to remember that the environment (among other things the PATH setting) may be different for Windows Services. You could temporarily change the PATH in your batch-script yourself, to work-around this, something like

 
SET PATH=C:\Program Files\Java\jre1.6.0\bin;%PATH%
SET PATH=C:\Program Files\RoR\Bin;%PATH%
"C:\Program Files\bwa\bwavinfo.exe" --info "%WD_FILE%" >"\\Server\share\%WD_FILE_B%.wav.txt"

Convert TIFF to PDF

2009-04-11T01:03:00.000-07:00

A request we often get is a way to convert TIFF files to PDF with WatchDirectory.

While WD does not have a native way to do this, you should be aware that WD's "Automatically Run a Batch File" plugin can do almost anything. If there is a command line tool available, WatchDirectory can "run it".

Anyway, we have found 2 ways to convert TIFF to PDF using command line tools. The batch scripts below should be started by WD's "run a batch file" plugin. It is also a good idea to create a filter so WD will only start the script for TIF and TIFF files.

ImageMagick and Ghostscript

ImageMagick is one of my favorite tools for image manipulation. If a format is not "natively" supported by ImageMagick, it can delegate to other tools. ImageMagick needs Ghostscript for PDF support.

Downloads needed:
ImageMagick, I currently use v6.5.1, available here: http://www.imagemagick.org/script/binary-releases.php#windows.
Ghostscript, I currently use v8.6.3, available here: http://mirror.switch.ch/ftp/mirror/ghost/GPL/gs863/.

The ImageMagick/Ghostscript script. Note you don't see any reference to Ghostscript, but it must be installed otherwise the script won't work.

@echo off
IF "%WD_FILE_E%" NEQ "TIF" (
   IF "%WD_FILE_E%" NEQ "TIFF" GOTO :EOF
)
rem where is ImageMagick installed???
SET IMADIR=C:\Program Files\ImageMagick-6.5.1-Q16

"%IMADIR%\convert.exe" "%WD_FILE%" "%WD_FILE_D%\%WD_FILE_B%.pdf"
IF %ERRORLEVEL% NEQ 0 GOTO :EOF

rem if you want to remove the tiff after it has been converted
rem uncomment (remove the "rem") the next line
rem DEL "%WD_FILE%"

Irfanview

Another great tool, I didn't even know it supported command line conversions until Dirk (German language support) told me. You can download Irfanview here.

The Irfanview script:

@echo off
IF "%WD_FILE_E%" NEQ "TIF" (
   IF "%WD_FILE_E%" NEQ "TIFF" GOTO :EOF
)
rem where is Irfanview installed???
SET IMADIR=C:\Program Files\irfanview

"%IMADIR%\i_view32.exe" "%WD_FILE%" /convert="%WD_FILE_D%\%WD_FILE_B%.pdf"
IF %ERRORLEVEL% NEQ 0 GOTO :EOF

rem if you want to remove the tiff after it has been converted
rem uncomment (remove the "rem") the next line
rem DEL "%WD_FILE%"

IrfanView settings

Current releases of IrfanView will prompt you with a little popup window (to preview the PDF). Obviously, you don't want that when you are automating the creation of PDF files.

Just start IrfanView, open a TIFF file and save it as PDF. Next to the "Save As" window, where you enter the pdf filename, is a little window where you should select the "not needed" option. From now on, the script above will not cause those prompts.

Q&A - Clear the email queue

2009-04-09T23:27:00.000-07:00

Q&A

Flyinglow on our Forum asks:

I have Watch Directory installed on a Management server. It watches directories on a database server. The database server crashed and had to be rebuilt on a new machine. All the files were copied over via a backup. I went into the Watch Directory jobs and just changed the server name for all the directories it was watching as we recreated the folder structure exactly.

When I started the jobs Watch Directory viewed all the files in the folder as new or changed and started sending out mass emails. I turned off all the jobs to stop it. Now when I turn on the System.Mail job it keeps sending out more messages even though all the other jobs are still turned off.

Is there any way to clear the queue for System.Mail? I already went into all the jobs and turned off the missed events option but I haven't turned any of them back on since I can't start System.Mail without flooding my email server.

When a WatchDirectory task sends email, the email message is only prepared: it is written to a directory monitored by the System.Mail task (the wdPostman program). When System.Mail detects the new message in this directory, it is read and sent.

If, for some reason, you want to clear this email queue, you should remove all files in the following directory:

C:\ProgramData\watchDirectory\System.Mail\Out

The directory above is the default location on Windows Vista.
You open the "System.Mail\Out" directory by right-clicking the System.Mail task and select the "Explore ..." menu option. Alternatively, select "Tools -> Explore Task Directory" (this opens C:\ProgramData\watchDirectory) and navigate to the System.Mail\Out sub-folder.

The directory contains files with a wdmail extension. These are the actual email messages waiting to be sent by System.Mail/wdPostman. If you have WatchDirectory tasks that are set to "Combine" email messages, you will also find files with a wdmailcombine extension in this directory. Delete these as well.

Small WatchFTP update

2009-04-02T00:48:00.000-07:00

Ä
Ö

We just released a small update for WatchFTP that fixes an issue for people that use accented characters in file or directory names.

Depending on the actual name, the file did not download. Other filenames with accented characters did download, but if you set the task to remove the FTP file after download, the delete failed.

The new release is available on our English, German and Spanish sites.
Just install this release "on top" of your current install and it will keep your configured tasks and settings.

USA Transcription Services - A customer of WatchFTP and WatchDirectory

2009-03-24T00:42:00.001-07:00

What a pleasant and unexpected surprise in this day and age to get not only a superb product with WatchFTP and WatchDirectory, but unbelievable customer support, as well!

These products have shaved hours off my workday. So much so that I am actively seeking new customers now! Before these great products, I was spending hours doing the mundane tasks of moving files from one place to the other. Not any more! (read more...).

WatchFTP 2.1 Released

2009-03-22T05:25:00.000-07:00

We just released WatchFTP v2.1, the download is available here.

Changes in this release

New: A new column in the WatchFTP Control Center showing you the number of files downloaded and the number of files waiting to download. These counts are for the last 24 hours.
New: The context menu of tasks (right-click the task to see it) now shows the downloaded filenames. When you click a filename, it will start Windows Explorer with that file pre-selected.
Fixed: Better detection of corrupt downloads - the downloaded file will be deleted and redownloaded.

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

New WatchFTP beta

2009-03-16T03:22:00.000-07:00

There is a new beta available for WatchFTP 2.1.

This new version fixes an issue where unreliable internet connections could cause corrupt downloads.

There are also a few new features in this release:

The main window has a new column showing the number of files downloaded and the number of files waiting to be downloaded during the last 24 hours.
The "right-click" context menu of tasks shows the downloaded files. Clicking a file starts Windows Explorer with that file pre-selected. After you have selected a file from this menu, it will appear on the menu with a checkmark.

You can find the download on our forum: http://www.watchftp.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1237198278

New WatchDirectory beta

2009-02-28T03:25:00.000-08:00

We just released a new WatchDirectory beta for version 4.5.9.

See this forum post for the download link.

The beta has one bugfix and one new feature.

The plugin to "launch programs" did not set the WD_REASON variable for new folders properly (it was set to DIREW instead of DIRNEW). This has been fixed - thanks for reporting this, Mark.

A new feature in the WD Control Center allows you to Find (and select) tasks. Use CTRL+F (or the View -> Find menu) to find tasks. This can be very helpful if you have a lot of tasks to manage.

GMail as your SMTP server

2009-02-23T01:57:00.000-08:00

GMail requires secure connections

If you want to configure WatchDirectory to use GMail as its SMTP server, you will find that currently WatchDirectory does not support secure (TLS/STARTTLS) connections for email. To work around this, you will need to run another program (stunnel) to "wrap" WatchDirectory's connection to GMail. WatchDirectory will then connect to stunnel, which will connect to gmail.

Download / Configure stunnel

Download stunnel-4.xx-installer.exe (I tested with version 4.26) and run the installer. Install stunnel to the directory C:\Stunnel.

Inside the c:\Stunnel directory create a text file called gmailsmtp.txt with the following content (8 lines).

; SMTP configuration for Gmail
output = SMTPgmail.log
taskbar = no
cert = stunnel.pem
client = yes
[ssmtp]
accept = 10.0.0.1:8025
connect = smtp.gmail.com:465

Change 10.0.0.1 to your computer's IP address or name. Do not use "localhost" or 127.0.0.1 as that won't work.

Open a command prompt (cmd.exe) and navigate to the stunnel install directory (CD C:\Stunnel). Enter the following 2 commands to run stunnel as a Windows Service:

stunnel -install gmailsmtp.txt
net start stunnel

Configure WatchDirectory

Now you need to configure WatchDirectory's Email Settings to connect to stunnel.

Your SMTP server: enter the same name or IP address you entered in gmailsmpt.txt
Port: 8025
Authentication: Login
Userid: your gmail address (john@gmail.com)
Password: your gmail password

Now press the "Test" button. If you configured everything correctly, a test email will be sent. This test email will also show up inside your gmail account in the "Sent Mail" folder.

Last Access Time on Vista

2009-02-21T04:08:00.001-08:00

Just a quick note about Windows Vista (and probably Win2008 and Win7).

WatchDirectory's File Age monitoring method can detect "old files" based on their "Last Access Time" (the last time the file is opened). This timestamp is maintained on NTFS volumes when the registry key
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem\NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate
is set to zero or does not exist.

Windows versions before Vista defaulted this setting to zero, so the Last Access timestamp was maintained for files on NTFS volumes. To improve file system performance, Microsoft disabled Last Access recording on Vista.

If you want to detect "old files" based on their Last Access time, please make sure this registry setting is set to zero.

More information:
http://blogs.technet.com/filecab/archive/2006/11/07/disabling-last-access-time-in-windows-vista-to-improve-ntfs-performance.aspx

Monitor Huge Directories for Changes

2009-02-14T04:25:00.001-08:00

Just a few quick tips if you want to detect new, changed or deleted files in *huge* folders.

The most important setting (performance wise) in WatchDirectory is the Monitoring Method. You can select between several methods, but only the "Fast" method is independent of the size of the monitored directory. The other three methods work by scanning the directory for changes - large directories take more time and memory to process.
The "Fast" monitoring method doesn't need to scan the directory - Windows will inform the task of the exact change that happened.

If you can not use the "Fast" method, make sure to exclude all subfolders you do not want to monitor. Also filter out unneeded files and/or directories.
If you have the choice between "exclude sub-folders" and "filter", the optimum way (performance) is to exclude subfolders. An excluded subfolder is never scanned for changes. The filter events settings are applied at a much later stage - after the directories are scanned.

Even if you do use the "Fast" monitoring method, in some cases WatchDirectory will actually "scan" the directory. This happens when you

Select Fire FILENEW/DIRNEW events for all files at startup or When starting up, check for missed events on the Other Settings window.
Select Trigger for all files and subdirectories below the renamed directory on the Events to detect window.

I hope this post helps you understand the effect of the options you select in WatchDirectory.

WatchDirectory 4.5.8

2009-01-30T03:00:00.001-08:00

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

2009-01-25T03:36:00.000-08:00

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

2009-01-23T01:48:00.000-08:00

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

2009-01-20T22:44:00.001-08:00

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.

WatchFTP customer - Idonix

2009-01-08T03:01:00.000-08:00

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

2009-01-07T01:30:00.001-08:00

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

2009-01-04T06:04:00.000-08:00

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

English Download Page
German Download Page
Spanish Download Page

WatchFTP 2.0 Beta

2008-12-15T22:09:00.000-08:00

WF 2.0 Beta 1

A new beta for WatchFTP is available, see our forum for download links.

This beta 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

When released, this new 2.0 version will be 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.

WD 4.5.6 - Run multiple tasks for the same file

2008-12-02T23:39:00.000-08:00

New 4.5.6 release

We released version 4.5.6 of WatchDirectory a few days ago and this version has a new Plugin: Run multiple SubTasks for detected files.

Here is a copy/paste from the helpfile with some reasons why you may interested in this new plugin:

Less tasks to run.
A SubTask consumes less resources (CPU, memory...) than a "real" task.
Less disk access.
All SubTasks share the same file-detection of their main task.
Guaranteed order of execution.
If you have multiple tasks monitoring the same directory, you can not be sure which one will detect a new file first. SubTasks will always run in the configured order.
Better Overview, easier maintanance.
Ten tasks, each having ten SubTasks (10*10=100 SubTasks), are a lot easier to manage than 100 "real" tasks.
Overcome Operating System limitations.
Windows™ has limits to the number of Services it can run. By combining several tasks, you prevent hitting that limit.

We have made it as easy as possible to "convert" your current tasks to SubTasks. You can "import" the settings of an existing task by selecting it from the "create new SubTask based on" drop-down. This will copy the plugin settings from the selected task.

Supported SubTasks

This release does not support all plugins to run as SubTasks, future versions will support more.

Download

Download the new version here:
English version
German version

This is a free upgrade for all WatchDirectory 4.x customers. Install the new version "on top" of your current install so it will "see" your previous tasks/settings.

WatchDirectory 4.5.6 Beta 2 - Combine Tasks

2008-11-18T22:00:00.001-08:00

We have a new beta of WatchDirectory available with an exciting new feature:
Run multiple SubTasks - a way to do multiple "things" for a detected file.
It is only the most requested feature, and now we have implemented it.

Not all plugins are currently supported by the "Run Multiple Plugins" task. We will make more plugins capable to run as a SubTask in future releases. Also note that currently, a SubTask can not (directly) use the output-file of an earlier SubTask. We have great plans for this new plugin for future releases and we are open for suggestions.

After you have installed this beta and create a new task, you can find the plugin on the "Other plugins" tab.

Make sure to read the help for this plugin!

Visit our beta forum for the download.

Gert

WatchFTP 1.0.9

2008-11-16T00:02:00.001-08:00

We have released WatchFTP 1.0.9 with the following fixes:

If you configured a task to run as a Windows Service, the userid & password were not always properly set.
When a task starts it will first do a check upon the configured "local directory" to see if it is accessible.
When configuring/starting a Windows Service task, you should get better feedback in case of errors.
When configuring/starting a Windows Service task, the annoying "dos box" is eliminated.

You can download the new version here: http://www.watchftp.com/download.html
En Español - http://www.watchftp.es/download.html
Deutsche Version - http://www.watchftp.de/download.html

To install the new version while keeping all your settings/tasks etcetera, make sure to install it "on top" of your previous version. The installer defaults to your previous selections, so just "ok" through all the setup pages.

WatchFTP 1.0.8

2008-11-07T03:24:00.000-08:00

WatchFTP Version 1.0.8 has just been released and has the following new features:

New: Proxy support.
New: Right-click a stopped task and let it "Run Once & Exit".
New: Let WatchFTP remove FTP directories after all files are downloaded.
Bugfix: The "Run a Batch File" action failed when the path to the Batch file had spaces in it.

You can download 1.0.8 here:
http://www.watchftp.com/download.html

Gert

Automatically split PDF into separate pages

2008-10-30T22:15:00.001-07:00

Split PDF into separate pages

In a previous post I showed how to add a header page to a PDF using Pdftk. This example uses the same program to split a PDF into separate pages. See the previous post for Pdftk download info.

The previous post only mentioned WatchDirectory, but you can obviously also use WatchFTP's Batch File Action to do the same thing.

The Batch Script

Use the following batch script to let Pdftk automatically split the newly detected PDF.

If you want to use this script with WatchFTP, to automatically split downloaded PDF's into separate pages, you need to change some variable names in the script.
All variables that start with WD_ must be changed to WF_, for example %WD_REASON% in the script below must be changed to %WF_REASON%.

(The script does not show properly in some blog-readers, please copy it from the original post)

Make sure to properly configure the script in the first few lines (the variables PD and OUTDIR). You probably want to make sure the OUTDIR variable is not set to the directory your WatchDirectory task is monitoring. If it *is* set to that directory, WatchDirectory will call your script again (and again) for the split pages.

Undocumented - WatchFTP stops after 10 fails

2008-10-23T01:25:00.000-07:00

Please note: the current WatchFTP release (2.2.6, released February 14, 2010) has a new window where you can change the settings mentioned in this blogpost.

FTP Server connections are unreliable

Connections to any internet based services, including FTP servers, are quite unreliable if a program expects to "look at it" 24 hrs a day.

Your PC may be down, your internet connection may be down, the DNS server that translates "ftp.helloworld.com" to "208.xx.16.38" may be down, the FTP server software itself may have crashed (or is overloaded).......

So you see, a program such as our WatchFTP that intends to monitor an FTP server 24/7 needs to take care of this problem. It must not just "crash" when a connection or download fails, or should it?

Why the program SHOULD crash

I've listed a few reasons above why a connection to the FTP server may fail. I am quite sure there are a few hundred others, most notably: you entered the wrong userid/password for the FTP server. In such cases (wrong password), do you want the program to keep running? Trying again and again to login with the wrong password? Giving you a nice green icon, suggesting everything is OK - no need to look in the logs???
Surely Not! You only want to see the green icon if everything is OK.
Green Icon = No Action Required from you
Red Icon = Something is wrong - You must investigate!

When the program should NOT crash

When connection failures are temporary, you want WatchFTP to retry. Most connection problems (not, for example, password problems) will solve themselves after a few seconds and work can continue.

How WatchFTP solves this for "new tasks"

When you create a new task, or change an existing task, the WatchFTP user interface (wfcc.exe) writes a "bit" to the configuration file, telling the runtime component (wfrun.exe) this is an "untrusted" task. A task that has never run successfully before.

The very first run of a "new task"

When you start the new task, and wfrun.exe encounters an internet error, it will look at that "bit". If the bit is set (this is a new/untrusted task), wfrun will write the error to the log and exit. 99.9% of the time, the error will be caused by an invalid setting - you have entered a wrong password?.

If the first run is successful, wfrun will reset the "untrusted" bit, so the next time it connects to your FTP server, wfrun will behave as in the next paragraph.

Next Runs - The task already exists

This task has proved itself. A previous run has connected to your FTP server and downloaded some files. If this task encounters an error it should ignore any error and retry.

Well, almost. Maybe the administrator of the FTP server has changed the permissions (password)? Should WatchFTP try to connect again and again?

Undocumented Settings

(note that these settings are currently not available in the User Interface of WatchFTP. Future versions may change this).

What will happen on connection failures (for existing tasks, not for new tasks), is that wfrun will retry several times (with a delay in-between) to connect to the FTP server and download new/changed files.

The number of times to retry is a setting inside the "config file" (contains all settings of this task - see below). If it is not explicitly set (and remember, the user interface doesn't have an option to set it), it defaults to 10 retries. If it fails 10 times, the task will stop.

Between each retry, the task will pause a while (to give the problem time to resolve itself). This pause is also read from the "config file" and, if not present, defaults to 60 seconds.

The above defaults give your internet/FTP server 10 minutes (10 retries * 60 seconds) to resolve its problems.

Changing the Defaults

Like I said earlier, currently these setting can not be changed using the User Interface of WatchFTP. You need to change the file containing the settings directly. Below, I describe how to change both settings for a task called MyTask.

Stop the task.
Right-click it - a popup menu opens.
In the popup menu, select Explore Task Directory
(actually, the menu-entry below it showing MyTask as the last part of the path) - Windows Explorer opens inside the directory with log-files of MyTask.
This is one directory to deep, select the containing ("higher") directory in explorer
In this directory, you will find a file called MyTask.config. This is the file that contains all settings for the MyFile task.
Open this file with notepad (not with a rich-text editor like MS-Word)

In notepad, find the line that says

[FTP]

Immediately after (on a new line) it enter those 2 new lines:

maxfailures=123
sleepafterfailure=10

so it becomes

[FTP]
maxfailures=123
sleepafterfailure=10
... the rest that was here before ...

(If you read this in a blog-reader like Google-reader, the formatting above may be wrong, please see the original post)

The above settings will retry to connect a lot more (123 times, instead of 10 times) and will wait 10 seconds between each retry (instead of the default 60 seconds). This will allow ~20 minutes downtime for your FTP server (123 times * 10 seconds = ~ 20 minutes)

So, if your FTP server if often not reachable for short periods, you will want to set sleepafterfailure to a low value (retry with short intervals).

If your FTP server is sometimes not reachable for long periods, you will want to set sleepafterfailure to a high value (retry with long intervals).

The maximum value for both settings is ~30000. 30,000 retries, 30,000 seconds. Unless I miscalculate, that will give your FTP server ~28 years to recover ;-)

WatchDirectory, WatchFTP and File Viking news

Working on WatchFTP v3.0

New Features

Planned features

Free Upgrade

Help with the Beta

Walk to end Alzheimer's

After printing the PDF, I want to...

Locate the batch Script to change

Make the changes

Delete the PDF after printing

Move the PDF after printing

Print the PDF twice

WatchDirectory v4.6.7 Beta 3

WatchDirectory v4.6.7 Beta 2

Gandlake - a WatchDirectory customer

WatchDirectory v4.6.7 Beta

Bubble Sort

For those....

Great Customers - Operating Engineers Funds Inc.

Cober electronics - a WatchFTP customer

Just Released - WatchFTP 2.4

Free Upgrade

New in this Release

WatchFTP 2.4 last beta

Delete FTP File, but NOT now

See also

WatchDirectory v4.6.6 beta

A world without Alzheimer's disease

A Terrible Disease

My Mother

Your Mother?

WatchFTP beta

New in this Beta

Is a WatchDirectory task Running?

The wdIsTaskRunning.bat Script

Alternative Implementation

WxRemote v1.5 released - includes Web interface

New in this release

WatchDirectory v4.6.5 released

Happy New Year!

Old and New technology

And a Batch script

WxRemote v1.5 beta

New in this beta release

Thank You America

Giving Back a Little

The United States

New WatchFTP release - v2.3

New / Fixed in this release

So embarrassing....

Downloads

Just a few more days

Move File Viking to another Computer

On the Old Computer

On the New Computer

See Also

A Collection of Links

WxRemote version 1.1 Released

New in this Release

Free Upgrade

Future version

How I use File Viking

File Viking v1.1 Released

What's New

Aussies - Do you want to get our software Free and help a good cause?

About YoungCare

Automatic Video Transcoding with HandbrakeCLI

Settings

Important Setting

If you use File Viking

Hey Sysadmin, Do you like Scripts? 101% Flexibility!

File Viking - The Drag & Drop File Processor

WatchDirectory - Monitor Directories for Changes

WatchFTP - Monitor your FTP Server for new Files

WxRemote - Remote Control of your WatchDirectory & WatchFTP tasks

File Viking Released

Introduction Offer

Send a Task Backup to Support

Enable Debug Info