Managed Properties in Compliance Kit

I don't have any real knowledge of the design decisions made for this module but my guess is that they have wanted to keep the logged-in user in the audit trail since it was his/her operation that triggered the update on the other object and these updates are done during the same transaction. You would have the same end result in the audit trail if the Managed Properties module was not used and the user went and manually updated both objects to create the bi-directional references.

In audit situations it should be possible to connect these updates on the related objects by looking at the logged-in user and the timestamp in the audit trail of both objects.

Hi Joonas,

Hm, that is kind of strange as managed properties are clearly configured on server side and are based on specific rules (e.g. matching properties). So, these changes should happen in case no one is currently log on. Users should get an update when they log on but it should be stated that this happened automatically through the system. The fact is that managed properties are updated automatically and no user really do it manually. I think that in history new version should be labeled under "M-Files" user as other automatic actions (e.g. automatic transitions based on precondition in workflows). I am not aware that manage properties need to be triggered by some logged in user, my understanding is that it happens automatically when conditions matches. Perhaps I am missing some point.

Thanks.

D.

Hi D.
Often the conditions are met because some user has created or modified the object that matches the criteria defined in Managed Properties. In that case it makes sense that the same user is logged also on the objects that gets automatically updated.
Sometimes the process is triggered by the M-Files server itself when e.g. an automatic transition is triggered by a script or a "days to/from" setting. In that case I believe the updated objects have "M-Files server" logged as user on the new version.
At least that seems to be the case in a vault where I use Managed Properties quite intensively.
BR, Karl

Hi Karl and Joonas,

Thanks for your explanation. I do agree with you: in the most cases managed properties are updated due to change on some metadata by particular user, so it makes sense that the bi-directional side (other document matched over the same metadata) is also changed in a name of that particular user because it is a follow-up action.

One other thing bothers me still: it seems that update of the managed properties happens in the same thread as actions of just changing local properties for a document. This can cause significant delays and simple updates can take more time for end users (they are not aware that M-Files synchronously search for matching documents over specific properties and than updates relation property).
I think it would be much better if matched property actions are started in a separate thread. So that users can easily change metadata, separate thread would be started to find matching documents and would than update both matched sides accordingly (bi-directional matching between documents). In that way, user experience would be not degraded with a growing number of documents and matches.

Actually, I have already written about this problem https://community.m-files.com/index.php?topic=15402.msg41714#msg41714. Our load test for uploading of documents started to be at least 3x faster after we disabled managed properties rules! With increasing number of documents synchronous searches by update of metadata will get slower and slower. Asynchronous search over matching properties (in separate thread) would be very handy and would improve this uploading significantly.

Could you consider this as an improvement for next releases of Compliance Kit?

As I mentioned above, this is such a great feature and so unique on the market (automatic document links and even on a metadata-level based on configurable rules, just awesome!)

Best regards,
Dejan

Please add my vote for that request. Certainly would be a welcome improvement.

Yes, there are performance aspects you need to be aware of when configuring this module. As you've noticed in some situations the module needs to perform searches to the vault content and if those searches take a long time, the whole update operation gets slow. The update logic is described in the Compliance Kit configuration manual (page 74 in the current version).

Asynchronous updates are a good idea, I've recorded this as a feature request for our product team to consider. The request ID is 158115.

Done!

Thank you both! I really appreciate it.

Dejan