Release Notes

Upgrading

Upgrading from a previous Kingfisher version 2.5.

Copy Kingfisher.Config (in <installation location>\bin) and the Job Condition files.

Uninstall the existing version of Kingfisher and then install the new version.

License Keys

Version 2.5 keys work with all versions of Kingfisher 2.5.

Upgrading to Version 2.5

See the Version 2.5.2105.19 section for details of the changes from 2.1 to 2.5.

Requirements

Kingfisher now requires Microsoft .NET Framework 4.7.2 to be installed. This will be checked during the installation of Kingfisher.

Under some circumstances it may be required to manually install the .NET Framework 4.7.2.

Email Settings

SMTP passwords will need to be re-entered. See section 2.3.2 of the Reference Guide.

Preserving existing Condition files when upgrading

Condition files are upgraded automatically when the User Interface is started for the first time.

However, if you do not have a current backup of your conditions file, it is recommended to back up the Condition files before installing the new version of Kingfisher.

The condition files are located in the folder [installation folder]\Conditions.

License Keys

Version 2.5 of Kingfisher requires a new license key.

This is a free upgrade for holders of a current Support and Maintenance Contract (included in the first year of a perpetual license) and holders of a current Subscription License.

Please contact [email protected] for additional information.

Upgrading

Kingfisher can be upgraded by uninstalling the existing version of Kingfisher and then installing the new version.

Version 2.5.2404.12

License Keys

Uses existing version 2.5 license keys.

Improvements and Bug Fixes

KF-186 SharePoint Exclude Locations issue where location includes escaped characters

When the location included escaped character (such as %20), the Exclude Location would not be excluded. This has been fixed.

KF-185 Additional notes on SharePoint operations

Detailed notes on regular expressions and exclusion locations (see also KF-186)

Version 2.5.2404.11

License Keys

Uses existing version 2.5 license keys.

Improvements and Bug Fixes

KF-184 Additional notes on SharePoint locations

Added notes to Reference Guide

KF-183 SDK update

Rolls in SDK updates.

KF-182 PDF Split operation leads to garbled rendered tex with some files.

Certain files displayed garbled text after split operation – due to odd font used in file.

This has been fixed.

Version 2.5.2402.05

License Keys

Uses existing version 2.5 license keys.

Improvements

KF-178 Renaming file containing special chars does not generate correct name for SharePoint handler

Some characters that are valid for file system cause issues with SharePoint locations. This has been fixed by replacement.

Version 2.5.2312.14

License Keys

Uses existing version 2.5 license keys.

Improvements

KF-177 Improve tool tips

Fixed.

Version 2.5.2312.11

License Keys

Uses existing version 2.5 license keys.

Bug Fixes

KF-164 Rename based on text match does not use Text Matches Pattern to extract text when Selected Zone is All

Fixed

Version 2.5.2311.29 (Limited release)

License Keys

Uses existing version 2.5 license keys.

Bug Fixes

KF-171 Infinite loop on certain files

Fixed

KF-169 SDK maintenance release

Rolls in SDK updates.

KF-167 Selecting DataMatrix barcode only not working.

Fixed.

KF-166 Selection of 2D Barcodes is not reliable.

Fixed.

KF-165 Using “select all text in line after” option causes unresponsive crash.

For certain files selecting this option caused the Kingfisher UI to become unresponsive when the extracted text was viewed.

This has been fixed.

Version 2.5.2210.10

License Keys

Uses existing version 2.5 license keys.

Bug Fix KF-153 Advanced Export – Area selected barcodes not being read

If a barcode was selected by area, the value was not being written to the output XLSX or CSV file. This has been fixed

Version 2.5.2210.03 (Limited release)

License Keys

Uses existing version 2.5 license keys.

Bug Fix

KF-160 Overwrite Existing File – SharePoint bug

Kingfisher was not throwing an error for SharePoint destinations when trying to overwrite an existing file when this option was set to Off. This is fixed.

NOTE: This bug fix may cause existing job conditions to fail if the Overwrite Existing switch is off.

KF-155 Fix Splash screen date

KF-148 Add licence agreement file to installer

Version 2.5.2207.25

License Keys

Uses existing version 2.5 license keys.

Bug Fix

SDK-188 Output file sizes after SPLIT BY RANGES are larger than input file size

Some PDF source files were found that when using split by ranges generated output files that were larger than expected.

This has been fixed.

Version 2.5.2205.10

License Keys

Uses existing version 2.5 license keys.

Improvements

KF-149 Add a ‘Force OCR’ option in config for files with electronic signatures / Bates numbers etc.

Image only PDF pages with applied Bates numbering or which have received electronic signatures may have a character count above the value in the application configuration field SearchableThreshold. This will mean that the page is identified as “Searchable” and will not be OCRd.

This improvement adds a forceocr field in the job condition files which will cause the page to be always OCRd.

<forceocr>True<forceocr>

This field (with a default value of False) is added automatically when a job is saved by version 2.5.2205.06 or later of Kingfisher. Set this value to True to force OCR of all PDF pages processed by this job.

Make a copy of the job condition file before editing and only edit them while the Kingfisher UI is closed. Contact support for more information.

Latest Aquaforest OCR and PDF engine

This release includes the latest version of the Aquaforest OCR and PDF engines.

Version 2.5.2204.29 (Limited release)

License Keys

Uses existing version 2.5 license keys.

Bugfixes

OCR issue in 2.5.220426 fixed.

Version 2.5.2204.26 (Limited release)

License Keys

Uses existing version 2.5 license keys.

Improvements/Bugfixes

KF-151 SP upload fails ‘the attempted operation is prohibited because it exceeds the list view’

Updated SharePoint connection object. Fixed

Version 2.5.2204.05

License Keys

Uses existing version 2.5 license keys.

From 31 March 2022 Kingfisher is only available as a subscription product.

Existing permanent Kingfisher 2.5 licenses will remain valid (and function as permanent licences).

Additional Support and Maintenance Cover (SMC) for existing permanent licenses will continue to be available for version 2.5.

Improvements/Bugfixes

KF-148 Licence information display

Kingfisher license information is included in the installation.

KF-147 Add option to allow Errored jobs to be scheduled without being cleared.

By design Kingfisher will not run a scheduled task if the previous run generates an error. Two new fields have been added to the kingfisher.config file that allow controls over this behaviour for jobs scheduled either Once Per Day or Continuous.

<add key="ScheduleOncePerDayContinueAfterError" value="false" >

<add key="ScheduleContinuousContinueAfterError" value="false" >

KF-145 Documentation - describe the use of template files

While creating new job conditions, it is tempting to use a file in the Source location. This might be moved subsequently which causes a message to be displayed when the job condition is viewed.

The use of a template folder is described in the reference guide.

KF-144 Document that UNC path names must be used instead of mapped drives

All file paths used in job conditions must use either local drive names or UNC paths.

This is now documented,

KF-143 Custom script “archiveinputs.wsf” does not show an error if the archive folder is on a non-valid drive.

The revised custom script raises the following Exit Codes:

0 - Success

1 - Destination folder not found

2 - Error in process

3 - Source file not found

The previous custom script is still included in the zip file.

KF-130 License keys without ‘Subscription’ or ‘Trial’ selected but with expiry date do not display expiry date

Under certain circumstances license keys may be generated that are not tagged as Subscription or Trial. They now display the expiry date.

Version 2.5.2202.28

License Keys

Uses existing version 2.5 license keys.

Bugfixes

KF-140 Append Data to an existing XLSX file – formatting lost

Subsequent data appended to an existing XLSX file was not formatted correctly

This has been fixed

Version 2.5.2111.29

License Keys

Uses existing version 2.5 license keys.

Bugfixes

KF-128 When a SharePoint location becomes inaccessible, the job does not return an error.

If an authenticated SharePoint location becomes inaccessible, possibly due to a certificate expiring, it did not return an error exit code. Error information was added to the log.

This has been fixed.

KF-127 When the last Job Condition is deleted it is still possible to click “Save” and Kingfisher crashes.

This has been fixed.

Version 2.5.2110.13

License Keys

Uses existing version 2.5 license keys.

Bugfixes

KF-126 Job Wizard for Export PDF content operation does not have a Next for Select Variables

Fixed bug in the job wizard which displayed a blank Select Variables tab and did not allow progression by clicking on Next. Export PDF content as text does not use the Select Variables tab.

Version 2.5.2109.29

License Keys

Uses existing version 2.5 license keys.

Improvements/Bugfixes

Bugfix to barcode settings relating to bits per pixel setting.

Version 2.5.2109.21

License Keys

Uses existing version 2.5 license keys.

Improvements/Bugfixes

KF-124 Barcode reader returns phantom barcode values on some diagrams

Some documents containing diagrams with lots of parallel lines could be read as Code 128 Short barcodes.

Short Code 128 has been added as a selectable/unselectable barcode type so it can be unselected if required

KF-123 Barcode settings available in the UI

The two settings mentioned in release 2.5.2106.11 are now available in the Kingfisher UI.

Graphical user interface, text Description automatically generated

Option Description
Barcode renderer DPI Set the DPI used by the barcode engine to read the barcode.

With certain images, results can be improved by increasing the DPI above the nominal image DPI.
Barcode color depth Set the color depth (bits per pixel) used by the barcode engine to read the barcode.

Though barcodes are traditionally in black and white, color images may include barcodes where the lines or background are in shades or are crossed by colored lines. Changing the color depth can improve results.

KF-121 Common.Log file incomplete with “default” Kingfisher.Config Logpath

The default Kingfisher.Config LogPath setting used a relative path, this could lead to log file information being mislaid if the “current folder” value changed during processing. This was a potential issue when the application was installed on drives other than C:.

This has been fixed.

KF-119 Identify missing SMTP settings when saving

List missing SMTP settings in error message.

Version 2.5.2106.11

License Keys

Uses existing version 2.5 license keys.

Bug fixes/Improvement

Barcode reading on color documents

The default settings for reading bar codes work for most cases. Color documents and certain other documents occasionally require the job condition file to be manually edited.

The following are suggested settings suitable for color documents with very fine bar codes

<barcodedpi>400</barcodedpi>

<pdftoimagebpp>8</pdftoimagebpp>

Make a copy of the job condition file before editing and only edit them while the Kingfisher UI is closed. Contact support for more information.

Issue with Anonymous SMTP email setup resolved.

SMTP tab now has option for Anonymous access.

Graphical user interface, application Description automatically generated

Set the Basic SMTP to off for Anonymous SMTP.

Anonymous SMTP with O365/Exchange Online.

If using Exchange On-Line the email sender and recipients must be on the same domain.

For O365/ Exchange Online see: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/mail-flow-best-practices/how-to-set-up-a-multifunction-device-or-application-to-send-email-using-microsoft-365-or-office-365

Version 2.5.210602

License Keys

Uses existing version 2.5 license keys.

Bug fixes

This version fixes a bug in the Split by Barcode and remove Barcode Page.

Version 2.5.2105.19

Upgrading to Version 2.5

Requirements

Kingfisher now requires Microsoft .NET Framework 4.7.2 to be installed. This will be checked during the installation of Kingfisher.

Under some circumstances it may be required to manually install the .NET Framework 4.7.2.

Email Settings

SMTP passwords will need to be re-entered. See section 2.3.2 of the Reference Guide.

Preserving existing Condition files when upgrading

Condition files are upgraded automatically when the User Interface is started for the first time.

However, if you do not have a current backup of your conditions file, it is recommended to back up the Condition files before installing the new version of Kingfisher.

The condition files are located in the folder [installation folder]\Conditions.

License Keys

Version 2.5 of Kingfisher requires a new license key.

This is a free upgrade for holders of a current Support and Maintenance Contract (included in the first year of a perpetual license and holders of a current Subscription License).

Please contact [email protected] for additional information.

Upgrading

Kingfisher can be upgraded by uninstalling the existing version of Kingfisher and then installing the new version.

New Features

Kingfisher 2.5 uses the new Aquaforest SDK 3.

Updated OCR Engine

The new Aquaforest SDK 3 Standard OCR engine improves performance and accuracy.

See the SDK release notes for more information.

Updated PDF Toolkit

The Aquaforest SDK 3 PDF Toolkit includes a number of minor improvements.

The SDK release notes contains more information.

Updated Bar Code Engine

The Barcode Engine now has improved barcode recognition. Additional default settings are available in the Kingfisher.config file located in [installation folder]\bin.

Settings Description
“BarcodeDPI” PDF to Image conversion DPI setting
“PdfToImageBpp” PDF to Image Bits per Pixel

Job Conditionfiles contain the values used for that specific job.

The following bar code types are no longer supported:

MAXICODE

AZTEC

MSI

Plessey

See the reference guide for more information.

Modern Authentication for SharePoint On-Line (Office365)

The Modern (or OAuth2) Authentication provides a more secure method to access resources such as SharePoint/Office365 and email. This release of Kingfisher has an option to use OAuth2 authentication.

See https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=2083908 or the Kingfisher Reference Guide for details on setting up Modern (OAuth2) Authentication and its usage.

Modern Authentication for Email (Office365)

Modern (or OAuth2) Authentication is provided as an option for email.

Modern (OAuth2) Authentication for email can use either Client Secret or a Certificate.

See https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=2083908 or the Kingfisher Reference Guide for details on setting up Modern (OAuth2) Authentication and its usage.

Minor improvements

KF-120: Choosing to not save changes to job condition should discard changes

Previous versions of Kingfisher did not discard changes when ‘no’ was selected in response to a Save Unsaved Changes dialogue. Selecting ‘no’ now discards changes and reloads the job condition from file.

KF-112: Extended the file naming templates available in Kingfisher

Additional file naming templates are available.

These include zero padded versions of %INDEX% (%INDEX2%, %INDEX3%, %INDEX4%, %INDEX5%, %INDEX6%) plus %YEAR% and %MONTH%.

See the Reference Guide section 2.2.6.1 for more details.

KF-109: Add a progress indicator while a job is running

Some job types did not display progress information, which made it difficult to determine if jobs (especially split jobs) involving large files were processing. Progress information is now written to the log.

KF-100: Add Office 365 Modern Authentication to Aquaforest Kingfisher

See 1.2.4

General log files path changed

General log files are now generated by default in the folder:

[Installation location]\ logfiles\GeneralLogs

See section 8 (Kingfisher.Config) field LogPath for details

Bug Fixes

KF-116 Handle Log File display when selected job has not previously run.

A previous log file of another job was being displayed when either the selected job has not previously been run or the previous log files for that job have been deleted. This has been corrected.

KF-115 Display Current Service Status

If the Kingfisher Server is stopped via Services or another program, or suffers an internal fatal error, this is not reflected on the Kingfisher UI.

This caused the display of misleading error messages when the UI is used to start a job.

The Kingfisher Service Status is now updated as part of the UI update.

KF-114 Removed Language setting in Options

Kingfisher is available in US English only.

KF-113: Kingfisher command line does not work when Kingfisher is installed to another drive

When Kingfisher was installed on the non-default drive, command line calls fail to complete. This has been tested with this version and this issue has been resolved.

KF-111: Error Codes not returned during command line calls

Some error codes were not being returned to the command line. This has been fixed.

KF-110: Extract pages mislabelling documents

Under certain conditions pages extracted from large documents were not being named correctly. This has been fixed.

KF-108: PDF Rasterizer causing some PDFs not to display properly

This has been fixed.

KF-107: Barcode zonal detector does not work if zone extends off page

If a zone extends off the page, the barcode was not read. This was only an issue where the document contains both landscape and portrait pages.

A zone that extended the whole length of the portrait page would hang off the bottom of a landscape page, resulting in the zone being void.

The zone used on the page is now cropped to that page size.

KF-106: Kingfisher crashes when job is changed from one type to another (tested with rename to split)

The Kingfisher UI would crash if a job was changed from rename to split. This has been fixed.

KF-105: Kingfisher SP/O365 Paths are case sensitive

SharePoint and Office365 paths supplied as source or target location with different case to the actual path failed to upload. This has been fixed.

KF-101: Advanced Extract to Excel: Set overwrite existing to true when append to file is selected.

The overwrite file flag is now internally set true when append to file is selected (the overwrite file toggle switch is disabled). Append to file requires the overwrite permission.

Version 2.1.190627

New Features

Updated OCR Engine

We have added our new OCR SDK to Kingfisher, this contains bug fixes and improvements.

Bug Fixes

KF-91 Text in line after value was returning all the text in the zone

This bug has been fixed.

KF-90 Code Encryption was causing some operations to fail

In some environments the following operations failed due to the code hiding algorithm in use:

  • Using the Next button when creating new jobs in the wizard.

  • Barcodes were not getting picked up in some environments.

  • SharePoint Uploads and Downloads

This has been corrected.

Version 2.1.190607

New Features

KF-85 Retain Bookmarks in split PDF files

Kingfisher now has the ability to retain bookmarks in the output of split PDF files

Bug Fixes

KF-87 Kingfisher not considering new line (\r\n) as a word delimiter

When recognizing words in a PDF file, Kingfisher used a space to know it has arrived at the end of the word, but if the word appears at the end of the it will have new line characters (\r\n) instead of a space. Previous version did not take this into account.

KF-86 Kingfisher not executing custom script until there is an output file

In the previous versions of kingfisher, we were not running the custom script if the job did not produce an output file, we have now changed it to run the script every time the job is executed.

KF-79 Parsing Floats in a different culture

Kingfisher uses float numbers to define the coordinate or zones. When we parse these floats in some cultures the full stops are treated as commas, as a result 45.20 will become 4520. Due to this issue the user will get empty or random text values extracted. We are now using integers to represent zones in Kingfisher.

KF-77 WCF opening too many session instances

The Kingfisher service was creating too many WCF instances and this was causing the service to hang.

This has been fixed.

KF-74 Incorrect Custom Script argument “OldFilePath”

The temp file location was being passed to the script instead of the original file path as the OldFilePath argument in Kingfisher.

KF-72 When using “Text in Zone” Kingfisher sets all the text to lower case

KF-71 When a Value is empty, Kingfisher places it with the next value

When using a Split, Rename or Extract Pages step, Kingfisher allows you to use 4 values to rename the output file. If there was not text extracted for one of the values, kingfisher will replace it with the next value: i.e. if %VALUE2% is empty, the value of %VALUE3% will go where if %VALUE2% was supposed to be and **%VALUE3%**will be replaced by an empty string.

Version 2.1.190412

Upgrading from earlier versions

Requirements

This release requires both version 3.5 and version 4.6 of the .NET framework. The setup will check whether they are installed on your system and if not, will take you to the appropriate Microsoft site to download and install.

Preserving Existing Job Definitions when Upgrading

Existing job definition and status files from earlier versions are not compatible with Version 2.1. Kingfisher will Upgrade these files when the GUI is opened for the first time.

The job definition files are in the “conditions” and “status” folders in the product installation folder. If the new release is installed in a different location (which by default was installed under “C:\ Aquaforest\kingfisher\ these folders may be copied to the new location.

License Keys

This version has the same license key as version 2.0.

If you have any questions about upgrading to version 2.1 please contact Aquaforest support: [email protected]

New Features

SharePoint Integration

We have added the ability to use SharePoint and Office 365 document libraries as source and destination locations for kingfisher. As a result, we have added a new tab to the kingfisher Job settings as shown below. See section 2.2.2 of the reference guide for more details.

Filter Locations by Regular Expression

You can now specify patterns that input file must match before they can be processed in Kingfisher. See section 2.2.2 of the reference guide for more details.

Excluded Locations

You can now specify paths that will be skipped by Kingfisher. See section 2.2.2 of the reference guide for more details.

Skip-Row Header

We have added the option for the “Advanced Extract to Excel” step to skip the header row if you wish to output many files to the same XLS/CSV.

Extract Metadata to CSV

We have added the ability to extract Metadata from PDF Files as part of the “Advanced Export to CSV/XLSX”.

Improvements

Data Matrix Barcodes

The former versions of Kingfisher struggled with recognizing Data Matrix bar codes, this has been improved in this version.

Warning Message is displayed if you try to open Kingfisher when it’s already running

Ref: KF-50

Bug Fixes

Rename Step: Regular Expressions not being applied properly

Ref: KF-70

PDF to CSV/XLS – Table id numbering starting from zero

Ref: KF-69

Tables are automatically numbered from 0 to n, but the product asserts that the minimum table id should be 1, as a result, you get a validation error when you try to exclude a table with id zero.

In this version, the table id will start from 1.

PDF to CSV-XLS – Scrolling through the grouped tables crashes the GUI

Ref: KF-68

Scrolling through the grouped table list using the controls highlighted below causes the GUI to crash.

This has been fixed in this version.

PDF to CSV/XLS: Remove the option to exclude tables/groups from the “Document View Tab” as it doesn’t work

Ref: KF-67

Export to PDF to CSV/XLS: Empty message when no tables are found

Ref: KF-64

Some conditions exist where kingfisher was not returning a message when it failed to detect any tables.

Special characters in text expressions where not getting escaped.

Ref: KF-60

If a special character (. Or “)”) exist in an expression, it might produce an unpredictable output because kingfisher was not escaping the special characters.

Kingfisher does not cope with rotated pages and multiple zones

Re: KF-58

Split and Extract pages not labeling the output files accurately

Ref: KF-55

This is caused by inaccurately ordering the split files before renaming it. In Kingfisher we perform the whole split in one operation, as a result, we:

  • Split the files into integer named files e.g. 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14.

  • We rely on the ordering of the file to correctly match the extracted text to its file counterpart.

  • When the temp is on a network location, the algorithm used picked up the file in the following order 1,10,11,12,13,14,2,3,4 instead of 1,2,3,4,5.

When processing UNC Path’s on a Single File, we are incorrectly generating the output path

Ref: KF-35

Split by Page Range & Repeating Page Ranges Step not showing some user controls

Ref: KF-48

When using Split by Text Match, Split by Text Change & Extract Pages based on Text Match the OCR stops at page 10

Ref: KF-48

Barcode values that have been matched are not used to determine the split condition

Ref: KF-44

This is a bug, we are returning the barcode picked up from the page instead of the refined and matched barcode. As a result, we use the original barcode picked up to decide whether to split the page or not.