The Scan ESRI Files tool is used for scanning, and if applicable, rescanning ProjectWise folders to search for ESRI shapefiles (SHP) and their related files in the datasource.

To scan a file with the Scan ESRI Files tool, you must have Write and File Write access privileges to the file in question. Also, the document must be checked in for the scanning process to work. If a document is ignored by the scanning process, it will not be specified in the log file. However, the log file information clearly underlines the access and status constraints.

The first part of setting up the wizard is to identify all the folders to scan for ESRI files. Once you have specified the folders and documents, you can tell the scanner which document types to search for. For example, you can set the scanner to scan for files of type “ESRI Shapefile” in these folders.

The second part in setting up the wizard is to determine how you want to search for the documents. Two different approaches are available:

• Setting up a Priority Search — specifying a list of folders in which to search and defining a search priority for those folders.

• Setting up a Proximity Search — using the folders and documents selected to search for ESRI files as the starting point for a Proximity Search. Or, you can set some folder level above the selected folders and documents as the starting point for scanning. Optionally, subfolders can be searched.

When scanning ESRI files, the scanning tool uses various strategies to group together the scanned file and its constituents. The strategy depends on what type of file is being scanned. The strategy is the following:

• The scanned file is a shapefile (.shp) — The scanning engine will ignore the preconfigured search strategy and will look in the scanned file’s folder for files that have the same name (but not the same extension). For example, if the scanned file’s name is “lotlines.shp”, the file’s folder will be searched for files whose name is “lotlines.*” (for example, lotlines.shx, lotlines.dbf). Each file with the same name will be added to the scanned file’s logical set.

• The scanned file is a raster — The scanning engine will use the same strategy as for shapefiles.