Question

Does the Workflow activity "For Each File" make Import Agent redundant?

Import Agent Workflow Version 9 Capture

Updated December 27, 2013

asked on December 26, 2013

It seems to me that by using a scheduled workflow with For Each File and pointing it at a Windows file directory, in conjunction with Create Entry and Attach Electronic Document you could eliminate the need for Import Agent.

Am I on the right track here?

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replied on December 26, 2013

Attach E-Doc with For Each File attaches the file as an electronic document; it does not generate Laserfiche pages for the document and you would not be able to OCR it, so it is different than Import Agent in its functionality.

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replied on December 26, 2013

We tested not all that long ago, but Import Agent doesnt generate pages either correct? Again, we had a tad older version but bringing in PDF's using Import Agent did not generate pages either. We used the same account and had all our attributes set to generate pages when importing too.

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replied on December 26, 2013

Import Agent creates pages for imported image files, for PDFs it would act the same as For Each File and Attach Electronic Document.

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replied on December 26, 2013

This is one of the reasons I asked the question about Distributed Processing coming out of Beta earlier. Because of that very scenario you outlined, I would guess that this would work as a replacement for Import Agent only if you have Distributed Processing installed.

...And this is why I always assumed distributed processing would be a paid for add on, otherwise there would be no real reason to pay for Import Agent!

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replied on December 26, 2013

You would not be able to OCR the attached Electronic Documents, so it would still not be a replacement.

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replied on December 27, 2013 • Show version history

At the risk of being accused of being a pedant...

Electronic documents aren't OCR'd by any Laserfiche software.

For electronic documents, the Text Extraction process can be run with workflow. Also, even with out the Text Extraction process, the iFilter on the Laserfiche Index server will still make the contents searchable.

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replied on December 27, 2013

Just to summarize things....Yes, Create Entry with Attach Electronic Document in a scheduled WF does have the same functionality as Import Agent as far as electronic documents are concerned. Like it was said before in this thread, it will not work for images. And, yes, with the right IFilter on the search engine machine, these electronic documents will be searchable. Neither one generates image pages for PDFs.

The one thing that Import Agent does over this WF setup is handle documents post-processing. Import Agent can move or delete the documents from the Windows folder so they aren't imported again on the next pass. You have to deal with that yourself in WF.

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Does the Workflow activity "For Each File" make Import Agent redundant?

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