What’s new in NXPowerLite Server 10?
6 Min Read
We are delighted to announce a major update to our server clean-up tool NXPowerLite Server! It includes a big boost to the compression of Microsoft Office formats and a suite of improvements to the set-up and configuration experience.
What can you look out for in the new version?
Better compression
Improved configuration
View file history
Visual improvements for reports
Updated Quick Scan tool
Before we go further, if you don’t have it yet, you can download NXPowerLite Server here.
Better compression
Ultimately NXPowerLite is a tool designed with the principal aim of clearing space on your server. So these first updates are naturally designed to squeeze more compression from your files.
All changes to the core engine are thoroughly tested, and the features are first added to WeCompress.com, later Desktop before finally making their way to Server. These core features have had over a year of real world testing without issues before being included in NXPowerLite Server.
The improvements include:
Remove compatibility with Word 2007
Clean excess cell formatting in Excel files
Support new-style PowerPoint embedded objects
Preserve EXIF orientation flag in JPEG
You can read full details about these engine improvements in our original blog post.
These features are turned on by default, however, if you want to change this you will need to make a custom profile. You can do this from the menu option Profiles > Settings… then switch to the Word or Excel tab to alter the settings for that format.
We also updated to the latest versions of our low-level PDF and JPEG processing libraries, which has fixed some known issues that prevented some files from being processed in earlier versions.
Improved configuration
Previously a folder would need to be removed and then fully reconfigured when it needed to be processed again. Not a problem if you just point it at the top level folder and forget about it, but if you want a little more control over when and where NXPowerLite operates then you will appreciate this new feature.
One example we heard from customers was that they wanted a way to quickly focus NXPowerLite’s efforts on a specific folder – so they could deal with unexpected problem folders. With version 9 this would require you to remove all the other folders from the list and replace them with the problem folder. This would leave you having to recreate your list of configured locations and settings again later.
Set folders inactive
With version 10 it’s easy to select any folders that you have already configured and set them inactive to remove them from processing. For our example above of targeting a specific folder, you would select all of the existing folders and set them inactive – then add the folder you want to target and click Start.
A new Status column shows whether a folder is Active or Inactive, and any Inactive folders will also be greyed out. When you want an inactive folder to be processed again, simply set it active and it will be included again going forward.
This works with multiple folders, so you can multi-select and make them all Active or Inactive at once. You can also still remove a folder if you no longer need it. This new feature makes it easy to pause compression in one set of folders to target other folders without losing your original folder configuration.
Inaccessible folders
Feedback from customers was that they were getting confused when folders were inaccessible because NXPowerLite wasn't compressing their files (or seeming to do anything). This is usually because the Service access permissions were not set correctly but in previous versions this was easy to miss.
NXPowerLite Server runs as a Windows Service, and without additional configuration will run as the local system account, which often doesn’t have the correct permissions for compressing files in all the locations that it needs to process.
This previously resulted in a short run, and a message on page 2 of your report explaining that NXPowerLite wasn’t able to reach all the files, which many people understandably missed.
To combat this we’ve introduced a suite of changes to try and catch this earlier and provide some guidance.
Now if you hit Start and the service is still configured to use the local system account, you will get a warning asking you to make sure this is correct.
At the end of a run, if NXPowerLite wasn’t able to access any of the locations at all, you will see an additional warning message letting you know that no files were processed. We’ve also added a new more visible warning to the top of the report, to alert you if any configured folders are inaccessible.
Hopefully this will result in less confusion and more compression. 🙂
Missing folders
We have also added a Not found status for when a folder cannot be seen by the frontend GUI. This could be because it has been deleted or moved since it was added.
Update date modified
It was also requested that we make it possible for NXPowerLite to update the modified date/time on files that are processed. Previously NXPowerLite avoided changing this on files it processed to keep its impact to a minimum. However, it is now possible in Preferences to override this and instruct NXPowerLite to write new compressed files with the current date and time.
File history
NXPowerLite keeps a record of each file that it tries to compress in a database. It uses this to to skip over incompressible or already compressed files more quickly on subsequent runs. Although this is primarily intended to increase how fast NXPowerLite runs, we realised that it would also be useful information for users.
View file history
There is a new option available from the file menu that lets you view the history of files processed by NXPowerLite.
This opens the View File History dialog that lets you view, filter and search the data we hold on files that have been processed by NXPowerLite. For each file you can see its path and status - so you will quickly see if a file has been compressed, or if it triggered an error. You can use this to check on individual files, or alternatively you can view a summary of a particular folder. You can read more about how to use View File History on our support website.
Clear File History (previously Clear Rescanning Data) has been moved from the Preferences dialog and is now directly accessible from the File menu.
Clearing this data ensures previously compressed files will be processed by NXPowerLite again. However, there is a performance impact while it retries all those older files. To help mitigate this, in version 10 you can now clear the compressed files data just for specific file types.
As we have added features to improve compression of Word, PowerPoint and Excel files in version 10, you can now clear just those 3 file types, minimising the performance impact while still allowing you to apply the new engine features to your existing files. You will also want to clear the Compression failure files which contain files that could not be reduced at all by previous versions. Our support site has more tips for updating to version 10.
Reports
Our reports have had a visual refresh to make them clearer and easier to read - see this example chart before and after.
These changes will apply to your existing reports as well as newly created reports.
Quick Scan
We’ve tidied up our quick scan tool which allows you to quickly build a personalised estimate of how much space can be cleaned up on your server. It now follows the same application layout as NXPowerLite Server and also includes refreshed reports like the main application.
We’ve updated and published the data used to create the estimates used in the scan reports, so you can see how they are being calculated.
Summary
NXPowerLite Server is the easiest way to clear up an astonishing amount of server space! If your storage is growing too fast or you are running out of space, it is the perfect antidote. You can try the fully-functional software in your own environment for 14 days to see if it will work for you.