Sources are one of the key concepts of AutoFocus. They represent the locations where documents and other items (images, movies, etc.) can be found. Sources are explicitly defined by the user, providing full control over what information is being searched through.

Source types

AutoFocus distinguishes between various type of sources:

Folder sources represent folders on a local hard disk or on a shared/network drive.

Website sources represent documents on a website or intranet site.

E-mail account sources represent one or more mail folders in a mail account. Currently this is limited to IMAP mail accounts.

Aduna AutoFocus Server sources represent pre-defined sources (typically Folder or Website sources) located on an Aduna AutoFocus Server server. This facilitates sharing of sources with multiple users in enterprise environments.

Adding sources

When you want to add a new source to AutoFocus, select "Add New..." from the Sources menu, press the Add New Source button in the Sources panel's toolbar or simply press CTRL-N. This starts a wizard that will let you choose a source type and configure the source's details.

For more information on defining a particular source type, see:

• Adding a Folder source
• Adding a Website source
• Adding an E-mail Account source
• Adding an Aduna AutoFocus Server source

All defined sources are shown in the top left panel labeled "Sources". It contains a toolbar with buttons for adding, editing and refreshing sources and lists all currently defined sources.

Each source has a check box behind its name, indicating whether the source is currently used for queries. Uncheck this box if you temporarily do not want to receive any results from this source.

Scanning and refreshing

After definition, AutoFocus will "scan" the source: it will inspect all documents and other items that it can find in this source. This enables AutoFocus to return instantaneous results when searching. The only exception to this are AutoFocus Server sources: these are immediately searchable as AutoFocus Server has already done all the scanning work for you.

Scanning usually takes place right after definition of the source. Furthermore, sources can be refreshed upon user request. During a refresh, AutoFocus will reinspect the source to check for new, removed and changed items. This guarantees up-to-date search results. When you decide not to scan the source right after you have defined it, the initial scan will take place when you issue a refresh.

An initial scan will take quite some time as the contents of each file is inspected for keywords. Subsequent scans are typically much faster as AutoFocus only inspects new or changed files.

During scanning, you see a dialog telling you which file or other type of item is currently being processing as well as some statistics. Usage of the application is blocked while this dialog is being shown.

The statistics in this dialog reveal the number of new, changed, removed and unchanged items that AutoFocus has found in the source(s) that are being scanned. Naturally, the initial scan will only find new items. Subsequent scans will usually contain only a limited amount of new, removed and/or changed items and a large amount of unchanged items, though all depends on the dynamic nature of the source. The processing overhead of unchanged and removed items is negligible, only new and changed items need full processing.

Be aware that these numbers count both files and folders, i.e. a folder with two files in it counts as three items. This may explain why the number of scanned items is higher than the number of items that can be found in the source afterwards.

As processing the contents of new and changed items is expensive, AutoFocus tries to detect changed items as best as it can. In practice, this works flawlessly for Folder and Mail sources. For Website sources it depends on whether the web server supports the If-Modified-Since HTTP header for that item. If this is not the case, an unchanged item is also reported as changed and will be reprocessed.

At any time, you can abort the scan process by pressing the Stop button. AutoFocus will finish processing the current item and then let you close the dialog. If you press the refresh button again, AutoFocus' incremental scanning will continue right where it left off, so your previous scanning efforts are not lost.

If for some reason you suspect that the search results have become corrupt, you can always try a Full rescan. AutoFocus will then remove all scan results that it has gathered and will start to rescan sources as if it were scanning them for the first time. A Full Rescan option that fully rescans all sources is available in the Edit menu. Alternatively, you can also fully rescan a single source by opening the Source Editor (type CTRL-E) and right-clicking on the source name. This opens a pop-up menu with a Full Rescan option for that particular source.

When you have refreshed one or more sources and query results are being displayed, these queries will be reevaluated to represent the new state.

Editing sources

The configuration of your sources can be changed at any time. Only the source's type is fixed, all other information can be changed.

To edit a source's configuration, select "Edit Sources..." from the Sources menu, press the Edit Sources button in the Sources panel's toolbar or press CTRL-E. A window opens that shows the list of sources.

Below the list are three buttons that let you add a new source, remove the selected source or refresh the selected source respectively.

Right-clicking on a source in the list shows a popup menu that lets you remove the source or start a refresh or full rescan of the source.

When you click on a source, you see its details shown in the area to the right of the list. The name and type are shown as well as source type-specific details such as folders to scan, file size restrictions, etc. See the section on Adding Sources above for the precise meaning of these settings per source type.

Furthermore, each source (except AutoFocus Server sources) has a checkbox labeled "Include this source when refreshing all sources" that by default is switched on. This checkbox drives the behaviors of the global Refresh button and menu item. When switched off, the source will not be refreshed when this button is pressed or menu item is selected. The source can then only be manually refreshed through this window. This may be practical for large sources that update rarely or for which you want to maintain the same state for a while.

When you make a change in the source's configuration, the Apply button will become enabled. Only when you press Apply will the changes be made effective. When the button is enabled and you select a different source or press the Close button, a dialog appears that asks whether you want to apply or forget the changes or cancel the operation.

When you close the window and changes have been made to one or more sources (ecluding AutoFocus Server sources), AutoFocus asks whether you want to refresh those sources. Depending on the nature of the change, it may for example be that some items now fall within or outside the scope of the source whereas before they did not.

Shortcuts

The following source-related keyboard shortcuts are available:

• CTRL-N starts the Add New Source wizard.
• CTRL-E opens the Edit Sources window.
• CTRL-R starts a refresh of all sources, excluding AutoFocus Server sources and sources that were explicitly excluded from being refreshed in a global refresh.