Efficient smart rule to check for remotely changed documents?

DEVONthink Automation
1

I’ve got a folder of ~1200 PDFs. I want to check for PDFs which have changed remotely (e.g. by adding highlights to them with DTTG), before I apply my custom action (Update annotation) via a separate Smart Rule. How can I check most efficiently for updated PDFs so I prevent running my “Update annotations” rule on every PDF again and again?

  • Add custom metadata “custom-changed-date” which I run on each record I update with my Smart Rule “Update annotations” on macOS
  • Create a new Smart Rule to check on “After synchronization” if the custom-changed-data > current data (via an Applescript action). This takes ~3-4s to run on 1200 documents.
  • I can ‘limit’ the Smart Rule to only check for e.g. documents modified in the last week.

Would you have other suggestions or tips how to do this efficiently?

2

Assuming that the rule gets applied to internally edited documents too, the easiest approach would be to remember the last modification date.

1 Like
3

Thanks, that’s the approach I’m currently using. Custom meta data to the rescue once again :slight_smile: