With the update a couple of weeks ago of the Directory Watcher add-in, I was thinking (probably like many of you) that is a neat idea – how can I make use of it? Clearly there are some areas where notifications being sent out if a file is added or deleted to a share can be useful – photos or videos for example. However, could I come up with something more practical?
Firstly, here is the review part. Directory Watcher is a pretty straightforward add-in. Daniel Buschke’s own description is to the point.
It is possible with this add-in to monitor any folder on the home server, e.g. if, for memories of the finished downloads, or storage of files in user directories. Because a watched folder monitored at the same time all subdirectories, people can store files in their user directory and you will be notified by email about it. Can you not reach your email account, so you can retrieve the feed on the public website with all the changes.
With English not being Daniel’s first language, we can forgive him, but in essence, if you add or remove a file from a folder in a designated tree, the add-in will trigger and create an appropriate alert.
The add-in installation is just as you would expect. Put the downloaded msi file into the \\SERVER\Software\Add-Ins folder, Then open the Console, go to Settings and pick the Add-Ins option. On the Available tab you will find Directory Watcher. Click to install and let the Console restart.
When you open the Console again, you will find the extra tab corresponding to Directory Watcher. All very simple so far. Assuming you have a reason to need Directory Watcher on your WHS, the first thing you will need to do is sort out the Settings.
There are a number of elements to the Settings screen that are all totally self-explanatory. You can add one or more folders to be monitored. These can either use drive mappings (i.e. D:\Shares) or full URL’s (i.e. \\Server\Video\DVD). You can also select file types either to include or exclude. Unfortunately, you cannot set a filetype for a specific folder and I would hope this is resolved in a later release. Over on the right-hand side of the window, you can set up the mail server details to allow the application to send out the notifications. You can also chose to group notifications into scheduled summaries, or send emails whenever a change is noted. If you want to build your own RSS feed of changes, there are a couple of options available. However, the documentation for this feature is lacking and I could not get a response on either the internal or external links suggested on Daniel’s web site. Clearly this is an area for additional work as explained in the issues list.
The View option shows a history of the changes detected and notified.
All straightforward so far. If all you want is email alerting of changes in your shared folders, you can stop here.
Where Directory Watcher 1.1 scores a big hit, is in the new feature to run a program or batch file when a change is detected. It is not obvious from the Settings screen, but where you add an email address for the notification to be sent, there is a new box for running an executable. This can be set on a folder by folder basis.
Now all you need is the imagination on how to make use of this new feature.
My Sample Application
I have been fed up for a long time on all the manuals you get with everything you buy cluttering up shelves and generally not being that user friendly. Also, anything that ships with a CD or DVD as part of the setup tends to have documentation on the disk and again never to hand when you want it. Generally, the electronic format is PDF, and if you had a paper manual, more often than not you could find a PDF version on the manufacturer’s web site. Hence I have built up a PDF Manual Library on my WHS. This is OK as I can fire up a PC, open Explorer, go to the shared folder with the PDF’s and open up the right one when needed. Acrobat Reader (or your own favourite variant) has good search capabilities too.
I have long sought a neater means of handling my growing document collection. Unfortunately, nothing in the standard WHS allows you to manipulate a library of documents in the web site presentation. I looked for a simple solution and while I could have gone for the commercial DA Document Manager add-in, I felt this was overkill for my needs. I resorted to adding the folder to my WHS web site using Whiist.
That was fine, but a folder full of PDF’s does not display in Internet Explorer or any other web browser I had. The next move was to find a simple program to create a set of web pages from a directory. You may have a favourite of your own, but I found ‘dirhtml’ (catchy name) on one of the freeware sites I frequent. If you try searching you will find quite a few pop up. I have opted for one by Eric Nitzsche that can be found here – http://dirhtml.home.comcast.net/~dirhtml/index.html for a few reasons:-
- It is free
- It doesn’t need installing
- It can create a batch file from your settings to be run outside the Windows program
