39.6 Customizing Indexing

By default, the POA indexes 500 items in a user or library database, then moves on to the next database during each QuickFinder indexing cycle. The indexing cycle is established on the QuickFinder property page of the POA object. By default, QuickFinder indexing is performed once a day at 8:00 p.m. If a database has more than 500 items that need to be indexed, items beyond 500 wait for the next indexing cycle.

Occasionally, circumstances arise where indexing needs are especially heavy for a short period of time. This can occur when you move users to a different post office or if the QuickFinder indexes for a post office become damaged. Startup switches are available for temporary use in the POA startup file to customize the way the POA handles indexing. In general, they are not intended for long-term use. You might want to set up a separate POA just to handle the temporary indexing needs, as described in Section 39.5, Configuring a Dedicated Indexing POA (Windows Only), and use these switches only with the dedicated indexing POA.

Because the switches are placed in the POA startup file, you must stop and then start the POA to put the settings into effect.

39.6.1 Determining What to Index

You can configure the POA to index just user mailbox contents or just library contents. Use the ‑‑qfnousers switch to focus on indexing library contents. Use the ‑‑qfnolibs switch to focus on indexing user mailbox contents. Use the ‑‑qfnopreproc switch to suppress even the generation of document word lists that are normally written to user databases that reference documents.

When you have a large number of user databases that need to be indexed, you can configure the POA to index a specific range of databases based on user FIDs. For a task of this magnitude, you should run multiple dedicated indexing POAs with each POA configured to process a specific range of databases. Use the ‑‑qfuserfidbeg and ‑‑qfuserfidend switches to define the range for each POA. You can determine the FID numbers of the databases by listing the user databases (userxxx.db) in the ofuser directory. The xxx part of the user database name is the FID.

You could also use these switches to single out a specific user database for indexing. Specify the same FID for both switches. To determine a user’s FID, click Help > About GroupWise in the GroupWise client. In Online mode, the FID is displayed after the user name. In Caching or Remote mode, the FID is the last three characters of the Caching or Remote directory name (for example, gwstr7bh).

39.6.2 Determining Indexing Priority

The POA carries on many processes at once. If you are not using a dedicated indexing POA, you can configure the POA to make indexing a higher or lower priority task than responding to users’ activities in their mailboxes. You can also control how many items the POA indexes in each database that it processes. Use the ‑‑qflevel switch to control indexing priority. The table below explains the priority levels:

Priority Level

Description

0

Index a maximum of 1000 items at a time, rather than the default of 500.

1

Index a maximum of 500 items at time, using a low-priority thread. This keeps frequent daytime indexing cycles from interfering with users’ activities in their mailboxes.

2

Index a maximum of 1000 items at a time, using a medium-priority thread. This allows additional items in each database to be processed in each indexing cycle. Using a medium-priority thread makes indexing more important than some user activities in mailboxes. Users might notice some slowness in response from the GroupWise client.

3

Index a maximum of 2000 items at a time, using a high-priority thread. Using a high- priority thread makes indexing more important than many user activities in mailboxes. Users will notice some slowness in response from the GroupWise client. This is warranted only when the immediate completion of indexing is extremely important.

999

Index constantly until all databases have been indexed, then wait until the next indexing cycle set on the QuickFinder property page of the POA object before starting to index again.

If you have users who consistently receive more items than are processed during your current daily indexing cycle, you could implement an appropriate ‑‑qflevel setting for permanent use.

39.6.3 Reclaiming Disk Space

The POA uses .idx files to store compressed indexes. It uses .inc files to store incremental indexes that have not yet been compressed. At regular intervals, the POA compresses the contents of the .inc files and adds the data to the .idx files. Afterwards, it retains the previous .idx and .inc files for a period of time. Use the ‑‑qfdeleteold switch to delete the previous versions of the .idx and .inc files to conserve disk space during periods of heavy indexing. It is primarily applicable when using ‑‑qflevel=1 where indexing is a lower priority task. For ‑‑qflevel=2 and ‑‑qflevel=3, indexing itself is a higher priority than compression and deletion cleanup tasks.