Batch Comparison

The batch comparison takes two folders and compares all files with the same sub-path and file association in both folders. Each of the comparisons in the batch is backed by the storage of the owner of the task and is subject to the quota limits in terms of size and total number of comparisons.

The Batch Comparison is almost the same as a single-file comparison - that is why only differences are documented here.

Since this job type allows to read from the server file system, it's only available if the current user has the permission Server Administration.

Configuration Options

The following options are available in the configuration:

Profile: the comparison profile
Folders: which files will be be compared
Export format: which result should be returned
Job Details:

Profile

The profile configures what to compare and which comparison to use. Every profile that is available in the 'Comparison' module can be selected here as well. If a custom profile should be used, it has to be created in the 'Comparison' module first. If the selected profile is no longer available at run time, then the first profile in the list will be used. In most cases this default is 'Text only'.

Folders

The Folders fields define the input for the batch comparison. Both fields have to be set to a valid file path. URLs cannot be used here.

File association

The batch comparison does not compare any document in the first folder to any document in the second folder. Instead there is a matching algorithm to pair all files of the first folder with a file of the second folder. As a result there may be files with no counterpart in the other folder.

This property specifies by which rule the pairs of files are created that will be compared in during the batch comparison job.

Rule	Description
Position in alphabetical order	The files in each sub path of both folders will be sorted in alphabetical order. The documents will now be paired one by one in ascending order. The alphabetical only sorts lexicographical, even if there are numbers in the file name.
Position in alpha-numerical order	The files in each sub path of both folders will be sorted in alphabetical order. The documents will now be paired one by one in ascending order. The alpha-numerical order will interpret numbers in the file names and use their numeric value.
Postion in chronological order	The files in each sub path of both folders will be sorted in chronological order. The documents will now be paired one by one in ascending order.
Files with the same file name	For each file in the first folder a file with the same name and sub path will be searched in second folder. This is the default rule.
Cross compare all files per folder	Each file in the first folder will be compared to each file of the second folder. Caution: The number of comparisons will be `#firstFiles` times `#secondFiles` and thus grow very quickly for large folders.

Interrupt batch on invalid documents

This option defines how to proceed in case of invalid documents. If set, the whole batch job will be canceled and no output will be produced if a single invalid document is encountered. If not set, invalid documents will cause the pair of documents to be excluded from the batch. Pleas note that, depending on the configuration of the job, an invalid document can be mistaken for a comparison with no differences as both will yield no export result.

Export format

The Export Format defines how the job result will be presented and can be consumed by subsequent actions. The job can only provide one type of export at a time. The following export formats are available:

PDF - creates a side-by-side visual result of the comparison as PDF
Images - creates a side-by-side visual result of the comparison as page images
Report - creates an overview report along with an optional list of all differences
Json - creates a JSON file of all detected differences
Text - creates a textual log file of all detected differences

The export will run per single comparison in the batch and thus can create a large amount of exported files and take an significant amount of time.

Collapse equal pages (when printing)

This option will collapse the pages without differences in the output. It is recommended to use this option if the focus is on the differences only. When exporting to PDF or image the option will always affect the output. In case of an export as text or report this option will only have an impact on the result of the print action since text an report do not export the original pages.

Detailed differences

This option is only available for the Report export type. Enabling it will attach a textual list of all differences to the report PDF document.

Export even if there were no differences

By default, an export for a comparison is only executed if differences were detected. Activate this option to create exported files even when no differences are detected.

Tolerated differences condition

This condition is a required number of differences for the job to pass its result to the actions.

A simple use case would be an email notification in case of differences. For this scenario a tolerated differences value of 1 and an email action to only execute in case the condition is fulfilled should be configured.

Provided Placeholders

The comparison job provides several placeholders which can be used in actions:

Key	Description	Example
[comparison.folder1]	the name of the first folder	pdfs1 for a path of 'C:\batch\pdfs1'
[comparison.folder2]	the name of the second folder	pdfs2 for a path of 'C:\batch\pdfs2'
[comparison.profile]	the name of the profile which was used to compare the documents	Text only
[comparison.exportformat]	the selected export format	PDF if PDF export is selected