Functionality question re: auto-tag, tag-display, windows search index

[bhao]

Hello,

I've read through several pages of the forum and appreciate the clear answers; however, I am contemplating recommending PDF Explorer to my company and would appreciate your feedback on my specific use plan for PDF Explorer.

We have several hundred thousand documents saved on a shared directory that all employees access. After adding the directory as a library, Windows Search has become quite powerful, enabling much more flexible search, including meta-data tag filtering. However, of course, our PDFs do not have the same number of available tags when compared to our Office files. Here is our current plan:

1) Use PDF Explorer to create custom tags (e.g. 'categories', 'correspondence type', 'company name', etc.)

2) Use PDF Explorer to automatically populate these tags based on manual entry and/or folder name

3) Use our MS server to index the new tags for search purposes

4) Allow users to use Windows Search to be able to filter search results based on these tags

** It's NOT critical that the custom tags are visible to or modifiable by all users - it is critical that Windows Search can filter based on the custom tags

I believe 1 and 2 are possible with PDF Explorer (please correct me if I'm wrong), but would that result in 3 and 4? Or if you have other suggestions on how to accomplish this, that would be much appreciated as well.

Thank you kindly for any assistance,
Bruce

[RTT]

Hello Bruce,
In the end you will need a PDF property handler, to extend the Windows shell in order to access the PDFs metadata, or your PDFs metadata properties will not be indexed by the Windows Search. So, I suppose a better choice would be the PDF-ShellTools. It has a PDF property handler, and scripting functionality you can use for the automated metadata filling tasks.

[bhao]

Thank you for the response.

To clarify, would PDF property handler to extend the Windows shell only need to be applied on the server side (where all of the PDFs are saved)? I believe the search index is also on the server side. Said differently, would it be necessary for the individual users to also have the PDF property handler on their individual computers?

Thanks,
Bruce

[RTT]

For a typical file server scenario, I believe so (I'm not experienced with Windows Server systems). The property handler needs to be installed at the clients too, or the client shell will not be able to show the properties. There is also the problem with custom properties. The client needs to be aware of these custom property names, so it can construct the query referring these properties.

The PDF-ShellTools has more functionality than the property handler, but you can always create a custom installer to only register what you want at each client PC, e.g. install just the property handler and register any PDF custom properties you may be using.
The trial version is fully functional, so you can test it at your system before taking any purchase decision.

There are products, such as the Microsoft Search Server, that has a search interface available to the clients as a web service and executes the search at the server side, so the property handler may only need to be installed at the server.