Gandlake - a WatchDirectory customer

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

See also

Previous Beta Info

WatchDirectory v4.6.6 beta

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

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

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?

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

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.