Document queue processor

To process document queues automatically, Content Manager has a document queue processor.

You can also process a document queue manually by right-clicking it and selecting Process.

  • Content Manager Queue Processor is accessible from Start - Program Files - Content Manager shortcut group.

    Once activated, the Content Manager Queue Processor button appears in your Windows taskbar notification area.

  • Click the button to display the Content Manager Queue Processor dialogue box.
  • Use the Windows scheduling agent to set the document queue processor to start automatically.
  • Right-click the button for processor Start, Stop, current status, Options and Exit.

  • NOTE: Any changes made to an automatic document queue will be applied without having to start and stop the queue.

This dialogue box enables you to maintain the document queue processor.

  • Close - closes the status dialogue box
  • Stop - stops the document queue processor
  • Options - to set the document queue processor options, you must first click Stop.
    • Sleep Interval (Seconds) - sets the duration of the interval for when the document queue processor will check for new documents.

      By default, it is set to 60 seconds.


General tab

The General tab displays the status of queue processing and the document queues that have been set up on the current computer:

  • Running Since - date and time the process was started
  • Processed - number of documents processed
  • Errors - errors that may have occurred during the process.

To prevent a particular queue from being processed, select it from the list and click Disable.

To reactivate a queue that has been deactivated, click Enable.


Logs tab

Select the Document Queues page within the Logs tab to display events that have occurred in document queue processing.

The Logs tab also shows the other log pages that Content Manager maintains.

NOTE:

  • Windows folder queues and locking
    When processing a document queue of any type, the queue is locked so that no other user or queue processor will accidentally process the same queue. Content Manager stores information about who has the queue locked. This has two issues for Windows folder queues:
    • If you want to set up a queue that points to C:\DOCUMENTS, you will need to create a different one for each user, which can be many in a large organisation. Otherwise, only one user will be able to process the queue at a time, despite the fact that for each person, C:\DOCUMENTS is actually a different location.
    • If you set up two different queues that point to the same physical location - for example, one points to \\User1\C\DOCUMENTS and the other points to \\User1\DOCUMENTS - two different folders - then two people could be processing the same physical files, despite Content Manager assuming they are different. This is not a recommended option, as the queue locking function is simply a warning that someone else is processing the same queue and there is potential for two users processing the same items in the queue. It is recommended you do not do this unless you know which documents in the queue are likely to be processed by the other person who has it locked, for example, one user processing Excel spreadsheets and the other processing Word documents - or if you know that they do not really have it locked, or example, the other user has simply left their computer on. To resolve these issues, as part of the queues subsystem, Content Manager will query a queue whether it is capable of locking itself. If you process a queue that is currently in use by another user, Content Manager will prompt you with a warning message that the queue is currently in use.
  • Editing documents from a folder that is set to Allow automatic processing of this Document Queue
    You can open documents or files from a Windows Explorer folder that is configured within Content Manager to be an automatic document queue. If this document queue is currently running automatically and you make changes to the open document, then effectively, you are creating a new revision and therefore, Content Manager will process it automatically - every time the document is saved. This leads to two possible scenarios:
    • Manual save - when you save the document manually, you overwrite the original document, effectively creating a new revision; and as a result, Content Manager will create a new revision of that document for the relevant Content Manager record during the next process cycle.
    • Automatic save - when Microsoft Word saves a document automatically, the queue processor will ignore it and will not create a new revision within Content Manager during the next processing cycle. This will prevent Content Manager creating an infinite number of revisions without your knowledge.
  • The document queue processor does not process items in sub-folders. Instead, you will need to create a separate queue to process this folder.