File Name Decoder Overview

Edition: Professional, Business, Enterprise

User-level: System Administrator

Previous steps: The Document Control Add-on

The File Name Decoder is used to identify the data within the file names of files received by, or sent by, your organisation. It can make it vastly faster to register incoming and outgoing files in the Synergy Document Register, for sharing or storing.

Define a pattern, then upload your files to the Document Register, where Synergy will decode the file names using the first matching pattern and extract the various pieces of data captured within the file name. Then, Synergy will automatically organise your project files in bulk, including:

The File Name Decoder Basic setup has some default rules to recognise the most common strings of text used for the various document fields that could be uploaded.

The File Name Decoder reads each file name as a string of text and attempts to match the filename to a pattern. It goes through the list of patterns in the order the patterns are displayed in, until it finds a match. It does this using a pattern matching tool known as a ‘regular expression' (Regex). To make life easier for you, our basic pattern matching style is much simpler than Regex and should be easy for you to master. But in the backend, it’s Regex - we convert the simple style to a proper Regex to get the job done.

The file name is read by Synergy from left to right, matching each string of text in sequential order to a document field until a complete pattern is matched. If it fails to find a match using the first pattern, it tries the next, and so forth.

If patterns that are created in the Basic setup are failing to recognise your file names, you can customise your patterns here in the Advanced setup. If you are still having trouble, please contact support.

Below are the Synergy-supported field terms and their corresponding term to be entered into your pattern:

Some document fields can be described differently, so refer to the Synergy Document Field Glossary to identify the appropriate terms for your patterns.

To ensure your file name can be decoded unambiguously, you may need to ensure Synergy can read each document field uniquely. This means you must customise the rules for how the string of text for that field is read, defining a specific pattern that can interpret the conventions for your file name.

An example of when you might have to use advanced formatting is to distinguish between these 2 file names:

In this example, each file name could match either pattern - they both have a bunch of text on either side of a hyphen (and dot suffix at the end). Using some advanced formatting, it’s quite easy to help the decoder differentiate between these 2 files, and use the correct pattern.

In this case, if we can assume “a document number is always a letter followed by 3 digits” then it’s easy to know which pattern should match which file name. We will get into the details next, but it’s as simple as updating the pattern to be '<project> - <docnum:A000>.<suffix>' and the problem is fixed.

To customise the way each field is identified, enter the following rule components within the document field brackets as follows:

Please ensure to include the ":" before entering rules and close the field with a ">". E.g.: <title:W*>

By default, all fields will match any letter, number, space, or special character until the File Name Decoder identifies the character that matches the delimiter defined next to the document field. E.g.:

If specific rule components are entered within the document field, then it will replace the default rule and follow the rule components defined in the customisation. (E.g., <Field:A0CW*>)

The customised pattern below would be able to decode the following file names:

<docnum:A000> [<revision:C+>] <title:W*>.<suffix:AAA>

But it won't match:

The sequence the File Name Decoder would go through to identify each term and match the pattern is as follows:

If you are a bit of a technical guru, you can build expert pattern matching with a technology known as Regex. This powerful technology allows you to build very specific pattern matching, but requires some technical expertise.

You can learn a bit about building regular expressions by using Synergy's simplified format, and inspecting the regex that we create. There are many excellent online resources to learn more about building a regex. Our favourite is Regex101.com

Where to next?

Enabling the Unified Workspace Add-on

What other features does this relate to?

SynergyPIM