I’m playing with the new smart rule function, and it isn’t quite working as I expected. I’ve indexed an external location, and I’ve got a smart rule that will trigger on that location “On Create”. I’ve also tried “on import”, “On Move To External Folder”, etc.
It seems to trigger very intermittently. If I run it manually it works, but dropping files on the file system at that location does not trigger the rule even though the files immediately show up in devonthink. Am I missing something?
Is a simple test smart rule displaying only an alert triggered?
Nope. It does not trigger. Tested on external (indexed) directory, and then tested again inside DB. Really odd. Screenshot below.
Notifications are only displayed if the app isn’t active. Please try an alert instead - thanks!
Same behaviour with an alert. It does not trigger on on creation, on move, on move into database, when dragging and dropping a file in.
on creation, on move, on move into database, when dragging and dropping a file in
These aren’t the event triggers for indexed files, unless you were explicitly moving indexed files into a database.
It’s *On Import and triggers the alert Criss suggested. It also triggers notifications when adding files in the Finder.
OK thanks. So now I have alerts triggering, on import, when dropping files into devonthink (yay). However it still does not trigger when dropping files into an indexed folder from outside devonthink, which was my original use case.
Additionally, dropping more than one file into devonthink at a time and applying a processing rule (eg OCR) processes only one of the files.
The next beta will fix this.
However it still does not trigger when dropping files into an indexed folder from outside devonthink, which was my original use case.
This is the scenario I was testing.
I have an indexed group with a smart rule to send a notification when adding files to the folder in the Finder.
I just added a file - Console - to this folder in the Finder and see this moments later…
Here’s exactly the same rule set up on my machine, as far as I can tell. Using console to “touch” a new file into the folder triggers the alert. Pasting a file in using finder triggers the alert. Dragging and dropping a file into the folder in finder does not.
Can you confirm your alert triggers when dragging a file into the folder in finder?
Thanks for then help with this. I think this is one of the most interesting new features- it looks like Devonthink could do most of what hazel does and more.
Can you confirm your alert triggers when dragging a file into the folder in finder?
Of course… since I would never copy and paste a file in the Finder. (This ain’t Windows! 
Sorry, I couldn’t resist!)
I am moving / copying files into the indexed folder in the Finder via drag and drop (as per the Mac way of doin’ it - 
) and it’s working as expected.
That file was just dropped into a folder indexed in my Downloads folder in the Finder.
