Watch Folder from the Box service not working

[Bryan Britt 0]

My company uses the cloud service Box to deliver reports.  I set up a Watch Folder to upload those reports to my Evernote.  It works fine on first creation, but it does not upload subsequent additions to the folder.  I've set the Box folder to actually download the files and not just link to the cloud copy, but that didn't help. If I delete and recreate the Watch Folder, it uploads all of the files and then again doesn't upload any files added later.

I've tested on my own Box folder and if I upload a file to the Box website and let it sync down, it doesn't get imported.  The file dates and folder dates update.  If I drag a file into the sync folder, it does sync to Evernote.

[gazumped 11,652]

Hi. Does your Watch folder setup delete the original files on import?  If the only thing that changes is the update date on an existing file, I'm not sure that would trigger another import.  You may be better off using an automation app - something like IFTTT or Zapier - to create a new note if/ when there is a change.

[Bryan Britt 0]

I do not have permission to delete the file (Read only), so no.  And existing documents don't change, so that's not a concern.  But what's not happening is that it's not picking up the new document (or two) that the company adds to the folder each month. 

And the same thing occured in my test when I added a document to another folder on the website. When Box copied the file down to my machine, Evernote didn't import it.  It may be a bug in Evernote.

[gazumped 11,652]

2 hours ago, Bryan Britt said:

When Box copied the file down to my machine, Evernote didn't import it.  It may be a bug in Evernote.

It's really not a bug as such - just that Evernote does not play well with remote file storage,  or folders synced with remote storage. Apart from syncing with its own servers and out to any device connected with the account, Evernote works best when dealing with local device storage.

The file permissions, file locking and security involved with sharing files with third party remote storage - even if there's a linked folder on the local hard drive - would involve a whole other coding problem.  In this sort of situation it would be most efficient to find a way to deal with these files  which fits in with Evernote's limited abilities.  I'd strongly doubt the company would even consider trying to extend the app for such a specialist situation.

There are many variations on automation - one app I use a lot is DropIt! Which is a third-party folder watcher. It can move or copy files automatically, or you can set up various 'profiles' that will process files in particular ways if a folder contents are dropped onto the icon. 

Something like that could - possibly - watch the remote folder for you and copy newly posted files into another local Windows folder on your hard disk.  If you set up such a folder as an Import Folder it may work more effectively than the current system.

(For a while I was having problems scanning documents to a watched import folder on my hard drive.  The issue turned out to be the scanner creating a new file when it started the process, and then waiting for a minute or so while it scanned and OCR'd the image.  The file would be locked during all this processing,  and meantime while Evernote would become aware that a new file was being created,  it was locked out for a period and 'timed out' - failing the import completely.  The solution was to use two folders - I did my scanning to folder and then manually dragged and dropped the content of the scanner folder -typically around 30 files- into another folder I'd set up for the import.)