After running into a couple issues with the iManage IDOL 8.5 SP1 release in our production environment, I was able to complete the index build using the 8.5 SP1 P1 release that was released last week. Our initial errors were found in our Content Engine logs referring to a lack of free disk space, even though we had successfully had our IDOL 8.5 (pre-SP1) index on the same volume earlier. In any case, I added some space and then recrawled using 8.5 SP1 P1. I’ve read some similar reports on user forums, so if you have a smaller volume for your IDOL indexer, just keep this in mind.
Using the 8.5 SP1 (and above) Deploy Tool, you can now choose whether to include the Active Content Engine (ACE) in your deployment. Nice improvement over the first iteration where the entire ACE implementation was a manual process. There’s also an option to perform an Initial Indexing procedure. From the Indexer Administrator’s Guide:
Initial Indexing– Select this option to build a pre-configured deployment package for the initial build of the index. With this setting enabled, the WorkSite Indexer is optimized to index a large dataset quickly; the Active Content engine is not used with this option enabled. This option is strongly recommended to decrease the time it takes for WorkSite Indexer to complete the initial index build. After the initial index has been created, deselect this option, regenerate the configuration files and apply them to run WorkSite Indexer in normal mode.
The thing to be aware of with this option is that documents weren’t committed until the entire crawl was complete. So users were unable to get full text results during the initial build — much like the first release of the 8.3 Indexer (driven by the Vivisimo engine). If you are building this index in parallel with a production indexer, then users aren’t affected.
The other thing for you to keep in mind is that even though 8.5 SP1 P1 was released after the 8.5 SP1 Incremental Update, you still need to apply the Incremental Update to your environment. Autonomy has informed me that the Incremental Update will be included in a P2. No word on when that is to be expected, however.
In summary, the 8.5 SP1 P1 install and deployment is much slicker and automated than the previous 8.5 IDOL indexer releases. The integration of the ACE into the Deploy Tool is a nice feature. The Initial Index feature is nice, as long as you know the potential user impact during the crawl.