Connector Actions

The primary purpose of connectors is to extract data from repositories so that the data can be indexed into IDOL Server. This is accomplished using the connector’s Synchronize action. However, connectors can also perform many other actions.

The following table describes all of the actions that are supported by IDOL Connectors.

NOTE: A connector might not support every action. Some connectors do not support all of these features due to limitations of the repository or APIs used to access the repository. Many repositories do not have, or do not expose, the functionality necessary for a connector to provide these features. To see which actions are supported by a specific connector, see Supported Connector Actions.

Action Description
Synchronize

The synchronize action brings IDOL up to date with the information in a repository. The connector searches the repository for new, modified, and deleted information. The connector also searches for updated permissions. This information is extracted from the repository and sent to Connector Framework Server.

TIP: As an alternative to running the synchronize action, you can use the Synchronize button on the Overview tab in the Status page of IDOL Admin to search for document updates.

Synchronize (with identifiers) The connector ingests the specified documents from the repository, regardless of whether the documents have been updated. You can use this type of synchronize action to re-ingest documents that failed to complete the ingestion process.
Synchronize Groups The connector brings OmniGroupServer up to date with the security group information from a repository. This action is provided by some connectors where the repository uses a non-standard security type. For repositories that use standard security types, such as Active Directory/NT/LDAP, OmniGroupServer can retrieve the group information directly.
Collect The connector retrieves documents from a repository and sends the documents to a specified destination (for example a shared folder on disk). The documents to collect are specified by a list of document identifiers.
Identifiers The connector retrieves a list of documents in a repository and returns identifiers for the documents. This action can be used by front-end applications to provide an interface for browsing a repository.
Insert Inserts documents into a repository.
Delete/Remove Deletes documents from a repository. Delete and Remove are different names for the same action.
Hold Places a hold on a document. This means that the document cannot be modified or deleted from the repository by a regular user. This action is usually used by applications to prevent users modifying or deleting documents that are relevant to a legal case.
ReleaseHold Releases a hold that has been placed on a document.
Update Updates the metadata of a document in a repository. The metadata that you can update depends on the repository.
Stub Inserts a stub, a link to a document in another repository. A records management application might use a connector to insert a stub when a document is moved to another repository or is deleted. The stub can point to the new location, or in the case where the document has been deleted, explain why the document is missing.
GetURI Accepts a document identifier and returns a URI to the document in the repository.
View The connector retrieves a document from the repository and returns the original file. You can use a View server to convert the document to HTML format so that it can be viewed in a Web browser.