Renditions Updater Tool

When you move from using AutoViewer to using PDFTron, if you want to see previous renditions of your documents you must create those renditions. As of 2021 R2, you can use the Renditions Updater tool, which allows you to generate these renditions in bulk.

When you use this tool, the rendition settings from the current version of the document are applied to all previous renditions of the document.

Renditions created using this tool are not visible in the native PowerUser viewer, they are visible only in the PowerWeb and Explorer clients. However, if you use a 3rd-party viewer, you can view renditions in PowerUser.

Important!

We recommend that you generate an updated rendition of the current version prior to running the renditions updater. The reason we recommend this is because our best practice recommendation is to have a different rendition job for historical versions of your documents.

When the current document revision is in a workflow and its rendition is not up to date, you cannot generate prior renditions using the Renditions Updater. For this reason, we recommend you only generate renditions for documents that are not currently in a workflow, or update the rendition of the current revision using the Update Rendition command or the Document.UpdateRendition method in script.

ClosedUse the Tool

To change an existing mapping, click the Edit Map button. If you want to clear the settings for a mapping, click the Unmap jobs button.

To use the updater tool:

  1. Navigate to C: > Program Files > BC-Meridian > Program.

  2. Double-click RenditionsUpdater.exe.

    The Renditions Updater tool opens.

  3. Click the Select button to the right of the Target Vault field.

  4. Select the vault you want to work with.

    In the next step, you can choose between two options: you can select a dynamic shared collection or use a wildcard. Selecting a collection allows you to generate renditions for a specific subset of your documents, while using a wildcard will generate renditions for all documents in the vault that match your criteria.

  5. Choose between two options:
    • To generate renditions for documents in a dynamic shared collection:

      1. Click the Select button to the right of the Collections field.

      2. Select the collection you want to generate renditions for.

    • Enter the type of documents you want to map in the Wildcards field.

      Enter each document type using the following syntax: *[file extension]. If you want to enter more than one document type, separate the document types with semicolons. For example, if you wanted to map Microsoft Word documents and CAD drawings, you would enter *.docx;*.dwg .

  6. Click the Map Jobs button to the right of the Wildcards field.

    A Job Mapping window opens. The collections or wildcards you entered in step 5 appear as line items in the window.

  7. Select the item you want to map from the top pane.

  8. Select the rendition job you want to use for this item from the drop-down menu.

    Note:

    Our best practice recommendation is to create a rendition job which is configured to not raise script events in Meridian, and then include that job name in your argument. If you do not do this, you run the risk of triggering events which might not be applicable to historical versions of the document.

  9. Click the Select button.

  10. Repeat steps 7-9 for each collection or wildcard.

  11. Click OK.

    To change an existing mapping, click the Edit Map button. If you want to clear the settings for a mapping, click the Unmap jobs button.

  12. Enter the number of items per job you want to process in the Items per job field.

  13. Choose between two options:

    • Select the Wait for job completion check box.

      This check box will create a job in the Publisher for the first batch of renditions, but it will not create the next batch until the first batch has been processed.

    • Clear the Wait for job completion check box.

      Clearing the check box will tell the tool to create all publisher jobs immediately. This may decrease the performance of the server. Other users of the system may be affected.

  14. If you want to modify where the log file is stored for the renditions updater, change the path in the Log file path field.

  15. Choose between two options:
    • If you want to append new logging data for the renditions updater to the previous log, select the Merge logs field.

    • If you want to overwrite the previous logging data for the renditions updater, clear the Merge logs field.

  16. Click the Start button.

ClosedUse Command-Line Options

These settings cannot be modified in the command line, but they are still applicable:

  • The items per job is set to 20

  • The wait for job completion setting is set to true

To use the renditions updater tool with command-line options:

  1. Navigate to C: > Program Files > BC-Meridian > Program.

  2. Open a Windows Command Prompt.

  3. Type RenditionsUpdater.exe into the command prompt window, and then add one or more of the following arguments.

    If there is a space in a parameter, put the parameter in quotation marks.

    • v-<Vault Name> – vault name of the vault where you want to create missed renditions. You can omit this parameter if:

      • the vault name matches the datastore name AND

      • you include the datastore name in your argument.

    • d-<Datastore Name> – datastore name of the vault where you want to create missed renditions. You can omit this parameter if:

      • the datastore name matches the vault name AND

      • you include the vault name in your argument.

    • m-<Machine Name> – name of the machine with EDM Server that serves the vault.

    • j-<Job Name> – (Optional) name of the rendition job you want to use to create missed renditions. Use this parameter if you want to use a rendition job that is different than the default Publisher rendition job.

      Note:

      Our best practice recommendation is to create a rendition job which is configured to not raise script events in Meridian, and then include that job name in your argument. If you do not do this, you run the risk of triggering events which might not be applicable to historical versions of the document.

  4. Once you have entered your command, press Enter on your keyboard.

    The command executes.

Here are some examples of valid command line arguments:

RenditionsUpdater.exe v-TestVault M-computer123 
RenditionsUpdater.exe D-TestVault m-computer123 "j-Rendition Job 123" 

2021 R2