[Athen] OmniPage Batch Manager question

[Sean J Keegan]

Hello all,

I think I found an answer regarding the issue I encountered with 
OmniPage 17 Professional and wanted to pass it along to others.  For 
those not familiar, there is the full description of the problem below.

Also, just as a note, I also obtained a copy of Abbyy Finereader 
Corporate Edition and the "batch manager" function works exactly as you 
would expect; it processes incoming files and then saves out those files.

Buried in the OmniPage Help documentation for its Batch Manager (or poor 
excuse thereof) is a section on Job Life Cycles.   It states:
"Life cycles are important because saving of a job result will always be 
performed at the end of a life cycle."

The end of a life cycle only occurs when it has been deactivated. 
Basically, when the Job has been deactivated, then whatever the workflow 
process was actually processing will be saved.  For a job that involves 
"Folder Watching", the save process will begin when the job itself is 
deactivated.  You can set up a daily, weekly or monthly job process 
where the system will deactivate (and then, in theory, reactivate), but 
I was not able to leave my computer running alone for several days to 
test this.

Also, I found that if you dump three separate files into a "watched 
folder", then when the job life cycle ends, the results of all three 
files get saved to the same file.  Total pain if those three files are 
all separate.  You can force the Batch Manager to ask for file names, 
but if trying to set up a truly independent "in/out" system based on 
folder watching, you will be disappointed.

So for those who were also having issues with folder watching and the 
actual "save" part of the workflow, it looks like OmniPage 17 Pro is not 
the answer (at least for full automation).  That being said, Abbyy 
Finereader Corporate Edition seems to have gotten the process correct 
and it works just as you would expect.

Take care,
Sean

On 1/21/11 3:39 PM, Sean J Keegan wrote:

> Hello all,

>

> I am working with the Batch Manager for OmniPage Pro 17 in an attempt to

> automate some processes. I have set up "input" and "output" folders as

> well as specified a job workflow (i.e., watch the input folder, OCR

> file, process, save the file, etc.).

>

> The job workflow is able to load the file from the "input" folder and

> perform OCR and process any corrections. However, when I get to the

> final step of the process to saving the exported file, the automated job

> workflow process seems to freeze. The only way I get the completed files

> to appear in the "output" folder is to manually stop the specific job

> workflow OR add a new file to the "input" folder to start the job

> workflow process again.

>

> I know I am probably missing something simple, but have been through the

> interface several times and cannot figure out why the job workflow seems

> to freeze at the "Save" step.

>

> Take care,

> Sean

>

>


-- 
Sean Keegan, M.S.
Associate Director, Assistive Technology
Office of Accessible Education - Stanford University
http://studentaffairs.stanford.edu/oae