Question:
How can index entries be corrected easily?
Answer:
The DocuWare Index Cleaner can be used to easily and quickly make all similar values for an index field consistent. It can be used to correct typing errors as well as the order of words entered into an index field. This article describes how you can make the most of this tool.
Please note that the Index Cleaner is not available for DocuWare Cloud installations due to technical limitations.
Preparations
Before you start the Index Cleaner, check if the storage location used by the file cabinet is read-only or effectively read-only and, should that be the case, ensure that DocuWare is able to write there or that it does not write any changes to the file system. Furthermore, you should make sure that you run the Index Cleaner at a time when the DocuWare system is not being used actively, as access to the documents that are modified by the tool will be blocked. Hence, it is recommended to only run the Index Cleaner outside normal working hours.
Configuration
To use the Index Cleaner, start by choosing an index field that requires consistency. This field must be a text field. Additionally, the general contents of this field are important: Fields with almost arbitrary values like summaries, email subjects or annotations are not well-suited to be cleaned up with the Index Cleaner, but fields that have specific contents, such as company or contact names are. The goal is to achieve consistency so that, for example, Peters Engineering is not written as Peters Egnineering, as incorrect values may lead to issues when searching for documents.
In the configuration page, you can configure the following additional settings:
- Ignore special characters: If this option is activated, special characters are ignored when comparing two index values. For example, two values like "Doe&Doe" and "Doe & Doe" may not be recognized as similar if this option is deactivated but are considered similar if the option is activated. Which characters are seen as special characters can be configured in the Index Cleaner's settings file (C:\Program Files (x86)\DocuWare\Index Cleaner\DocuWare.IndexCleaner.Client.exe.config).
- Ignored words list: This feature can be used to ignore words that are used frequently and may cause two entries to be considered similar. Without having any words in this list, two values like "Company International Ltd." and "OtherCompany International Ltd." are considered similar. By adding "international" to the list of ignored words, the values are reduced to "Company Ltd." and "OtherCompany Ltd." at the time of comparison and no longer considered similar.
- External entries: In some scenarios, deciding which entry is correct depends on lists from external tools, for example a CRM or ERP system. This list can be exported to a file, with each value occupying one line, and selected here. When doing so, values that are contained in the list will be highlighted in the result page to make the identification of correct values easier.
Once the configuration is done, you can continue to the result page by clicking on the "Check similar entries" or "Start word order check" button.
Index entry correction
The result pages shown above list all index entries that have at least one similar entry. Values that are unique and have no lookalikes will not be listed here. By default, the list is ordered by the number of occurrences of the respective index entries and is divided into main and subentries. Main entries are marked by a darker background and subentries have check boxes in front of them. If the main entry is also present in the external entry list (if any), it will be marked with a check mark in the "Ext." (External entry) column.
To correct any incorrect values, it is only needed to check their respective check boxes. Subentries that have been marked for correction will no longer be listed as main entries. In the example above, when checking the box in front of "Incorrect value", the main entry for "Incorrect value" will disappear because it's marked to be corrected.
You can also use the a subentry's context menu to perform any of the following actions:
- Mark the subentry as main entry
- Ignore the subentry
- Search for documents which have the subentry as index entry (opens in the default browser)
- Add parts of an entry to the ignored words list
- Remove parts of an entry from the ignored words list
Finally, to confirm any changes that you have selected, click on the "Perform changes" button.
