Devonthink for teacher

Indexing data on an NAS is possible, but as mentioned you do have to be aware of the potential effects of the network connection.

For support purposes, I have a folder indexed from a Synology NAS on my network. Changes made in the Finder, in the Synology web interface, and DEVONthink all correlate. However, there can be a perceptible lag (not extraordinary, but perceptible) when accessing those resources on my network.

Also, if you are syncing to a machine without access to the same NAS, you will end up with a pending file, like so…

This is because the absolute path - /volumes/myVolumes/… can’t be found for the indexed data.
Yet another reason to be cautious in indexing.

Thanks! So a general question. If I choose to buy devonthink and want to use it also on my own mac ( that I don´t bought yet) and therefore access the database from two different computers: will I need to buy two licences for that setup? And can I synchronize the DB somehow, or how do you approach that question? And for that I would definitely need to store the data on a network drive?

I should have better said, a person who has more knowledge than I do about networking. :face_with_monocle:

I will note that some time ago when I was running a Synology drive I found that I had to do the equivalent of viewing a folder on the mounted drive in order to get the drive to be recognized for any file search operations.


JJW

  • No,you wouldn’t need to purchase another license. A DEVONthink 3 purchase includes two seats - two per-machine licenses, so this would cover installation on both machines.
  • Sync is covered in ​Help > Documentation > In & Out > Sync​ .

And for that I would definitely need to store the data on a network drive?

  • I am not sure what data you’re referring to. If you’re using a WebDAV-enabled NAS, the sync data would be on the networked drive. If you’re referring to data in the database, the answer would relate to if you’re indexing data in the databases (and see my previous comment about the potential pitfall).
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Maybe I just don’t understand how to use the tool. Let’s say my wife and me want to use the same collection/database. So that I can add content that she is seeing on her Mac and vice versa. Let’s assume I do have a qnap 453mini nas. How would I need to setup devonthink for that. Is it possible? Thanks.

The first thing to do is separate the machines in your mind.
You are not accessing one central database. You are accessing local copies of the same database on each machine (and this is the decentralized data model we advocate).


I can’t comment on the capabilities of that NAS.
This is a link from QNAP’s support site, but I don’t know if it pertains to that model…

If it is WebDAV-capable, then you should be able to set up a WebDAV sync location in DEVONthink’s Preferences > Sync (and it should appear as a device on your local network in the preferences too).

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Thanks. But I still don’t understand the procedure. So the sync is just another Copy of the files that are located on the hdd? And with that I can sync multiple devices?

Technically speaking, no - sync is not just another ”copy of the files.
Practically, they function that way for the purpose of sync.
And yes, that WebDAV sync location can be used with multiple devices running DEVONthink or DEVONthink To Go.

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Thanks. I’m still trying to understand the tool. Unfortunately I don’t have too much time for it right now. Can you please tell me… What would be the best way to get the data into devonthink. I scan to a drive on my nas that is mapped to the Mac of my wife. The PDFs are in various subfolders by a coarse sorting like biology. German, Latin and stuff like that. Is it now possible to transfer new files in these folders automated to an biology inbox in the biology database, from. Where I somehow can subsort them? I still want to keep the files in the folder as a backup. Would a. Smart rule be a solution? I tried with folder actions but that didn’t work quite well.
Is there a way to automatically search the documents for a header and put that info into the file name.
Thanks.

OH and one more thing. Was the price of the software raised? To get it to Germany would cost 218euros. Is that the regular price?

If there is a parent folder which contains all of the child and grandchild subfolders, then all you need to do is to Import the parent folder and all else will follow.

I’m not sure from your reactions whether you already own a NAS or not (if so, sorry I read over it), but here’s heads up with regard to SMB and macOS Catalina.

As I understand Apple dropped support for SMBv1 in macOS Catalina, which might be the protocol your Brother uses to scan to a network folder. If you’re considering buying a NAS, please keep in mind the shared folder on a NAS might need to be approachable by file sharing protocols that both the scanner and macOS use.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250714129?page=5

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Hi… Thanks for the heads up, but I already have a nas. I scan the files to that location and I also generated a folder for the webdav sync.
My question is now how to set up rules to import the fresh added documents from that path to devonthink.

Well, one way to handle this:

  • Setup a folder on your NAS where you scans will temporarily be stored
  • Setup your Brother scanner to connect to your network share with write access to that folder
  • Mount that share in macOS finder (you can automate the mounting on login by dragging the disk icon onto the Login options window of the user account under Settings)
  • Install the folder action scripts add-on in DEVONthink
  • In macOS right click the mounted network folder and add the “Import, OCR and Delete” script (the file will be copied, OCRed and the original will be put in the trash)

Don’t proceed with any of the steps unless you succeed with the previous step, as it’s more or less useless if one of these doesn’t work.

But this is just one way to do it.

You could also skip the folder actions and use a more modern approach with smart rules and indexing the mounted network folder (although as mention that might be subject to slow network connections). @BLUEFROG has created a smart rule set to replace the above folder action scripts (import, OCR and delete).

The WebDAV sync store on the NAS you’ve already setup is the place where DEVONthink on it’s turn will ultimately store the files. AFAIK there is no way you can scan into the sync store directly, as this needs to be handled by DEVONthink.

One amendment…

  • Mount that share in macOS finder (you can automate the mounting on login by dragging the disk icon onto the Login options window of the user account under Settings)

I personally do not advise adding a networked volume to your Login Items. If the network is down or the device is unresponsive, it will slow and stall machine startup.

An alias in your Dock or on the Desktop is a good option and allows the Mac to fully and gracefully boot before attempting to load network drives.

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Thanks for the hints. Instead of indexing the network share is it also possible for devonthink to import from that location using a smart rule? So that I just can scan to the network drive (which is already set up and works flawless) and that devonthink just imports from there. Maybe detecting only changes, so only fresh files? That way I would have the network folder as an additional backup drive with the raw data?
Or do I need to use something like hazel to move the files from the network drive to a local folder (import folder)?

I couldn’t get it to work properly on a network share when I tried this recently.

I first thought indexing a network folder was not supported as I read in the DT manual that only local and attached drives are supposed to be indexed. As I later understood network folders can be indexed, but that might be troublesome if there is network latency. As I tested with a WiFi connection to approach the share that probably explained my experience.

I haven’t yet tried it with a cabled connection, but certainly will as a smart rule solution reduces the dependency on other software (folder action scripts or other).

Hm…I really clso to drop the project. It´s much more complicated than I thought it would be. Maybe I will give first Hazel a try, for sorting and naming the files. When I have my scanned files in a good folder structure on the NAS, I can then see how to index them with a software. I just don´t want to put too much work in an error prone tool. From my reading in the past weeks there are some many “you have to be careful” and “it might work that way” that I´m not sure whether I want to put my data in that tool.
Maybe I´m just to stupid, I don´t want to blame the software …I´m sure…if you are a pro with it it´s totally fine. But for me as a beginner the threshold is just too high. And I guess the only adavantage it would have for me in contrast to a pure folder structure is the searchablility of the files. Or am I missing something?
Argh just a little bit frustrated right now.

OK, well I really didn’t want to confuse you and tried to latch on to your knowledge. But there’s always a possibility with these communities the gap is bigger than I anticipated.

If you go through the 5 steps I posted 5 days ago. Those don’t use smart rules and should work in both Mojave and Catalina. One by one, at what step do you run into a problem?

I leave it to you whether there is value to a software product of course, but to me DEVONthink is much more than “Finder on steroid”.

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Thanks again for all your tipps and the time you invested in answering my questions.

I think I face a multiple layer problem here.
First the scanning:
I can scan using a PC, because direct scanning via network misses some features, like OCR and other. I scan to a network folder. So already here I need to choose what kind of stuff do I scan. I put it directly into the correct folder here which is named like “invoices” “insurrance” and stuff like that.
Now my first problem is to get the stuff in a sorted way into devon think, maybe I would use hazel to rename the files first so that they are tagged by that way for devonthink and move the stuff to an indexed collection folder. Here I could use the smart rule to do OCR if needed and to import the files into the correct group/folder in devonthink. But it seems that I would need to do an extra rule for each file type/name I generated.
Maybe my approach is to complicated.

OK, well it’s up to you of course, but the beauty of a network scanner is that you can place it anywhere with a network connection (be it cable or WiFi). OCR is handled by DT3. What other features do you get from Windows, that you don’t get from scanning to the NAS over your network?

But for now let’s work with your established Windows workflow.

I would suggest to first establish a simple “proof-of-principle” and work from there, instead of thinking through everything in every detail. You can do so once this works. So for now simply scan to one folder on your NAS called “Inbox”.

Then install the folder action scripts from DT3 as mentioned in step 4. Then open macOS Finder, browse to the mounted network folder and right click the “Inbox” folder.

From the context menu select Services (at the bottom) → arrow → and then Folder Action configuration. You get a pop-up to confirm. In the next window select the + button on the bottom left and search for your “Inbox” folder again. Then select the + at the bottom right. Now select the script “DEVONthink - Import, OCR & Delete”. Confirm and then don’t forget to enable the Folder Actions at the top of the window.

Now scan a simple one page document to the “Inbox” and watch as macOS starts the script (you’ll see a cogwheel turning in the macOS menu bar). When done the script has imported the scan into DEVONthink, performed OCR and deleted the original scan into the trash.

:blush:

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