Datamaton Digital Manager Release History

Version 2.1.8006 (December 2, 2021)

• We’ve completely redesigned the “Summary” page of a Data Source and Virtual Folder. This page now shows useful information like the content type breakdown; top-10 files and folders by size and count; top email senders and recipients; breakdown of type and size of data by year etc.
  • These summaries are aggregated too. That is, if you select “Local Devices” in the left panel, you will see a summary that applies to all your local devices that Knit is indexing. If you select “Cloud Storage”, Knit will generate a summary that analyzes all your cloud storage accounts (and so on for “Email Accounts” and “Messaging Accounts”).
  • You can also ask Knit to generate the same type of summary for any sub-folder within a local hard drive, email account, cloud storage etc. via a “Summarize” context menu option.
  • You can customize the appearance of the graphs and charts that summarize your data.
• We’ve significantly optimized our rule execution engine so your searches will run faster when you search a virtual folder.
• Miscellaneous features and bug fixes:
  • We’ve fixed a bug in the Task Manager that caused backup tasks to fail if the backup destination was the root folder of a local drive.
  • Knit would sometimes crash when trying to display an error message while displaying search results. We’ve fixed that problem.
  • Sometimes, Google requires us to re-acquire your permissions to incrementally re-index your Google Gmail account. Under some special circumstances, Knit was not showing the re-authentication prompt and reacquiring your permission. We’ve fixed that problem.
  • We’ve fixed a problem where Knit did not properly recognize an “invalid permissions” error returned by Microsoft Outlook Mail servers. Knit now detects that properly and takes you through the permissions request flow again.
  • All content tabs (“Documents”, “Audio”, “Video”, “Other Files” . . .) now show content sorted by date. Previously, only the “Emails” and “Messages” tabs did this.

Version 2.1.7935 (September 23, 2021)

• We’ve added support for backup tasks that copy emails from one email account to another. Earlier, the backup task could only backup emails to files on a hard disk or to cloud storage, but not to another email account.
• We’ve added support for backup tasks that copy appointments from one calendar account to another. Earlier, the backup task could only backup appointments to ICS files on a hard disk or to cloud storage, but not to another calendar account.
• We now allow you to create a backup task that copies photos/videos from anywhere to Google Photos. Previously, you could create a task that copies them to cloud file storage (Google Drive, OneDrive…) but not to Google Photos.
• Earlier versions of Knit did not support indexing and downloading “Google Forms” that are auto-saved on Google Drive. We’ve added this support.
• Miscellaneous features and bug fixes:
  • In some instances Knit was not running a backup task to copy files, emails, appointments or text messages immediately as they arrive at your web based account. We’ve fixed this problem.
  • We’ve fixed a bug that showed an incorrect folder hierarchy for local drives like C:\, D:\ etc.
  • A Knit appointment backup task would sometimes fail to re-copy an appointment that had changed since the previous time it was backed up. We’ve fixed that bug.
  • We’ve fixed a bug that caused backup tasks that copy files from one cloud storage account to another to fail sometimes.
  • We catch and fail the special case where you try to re-copy an email to the folder where it already resides.
  • If you create a backup task to copy files from anywhere to Google Drive but don’t specify a destination folder, Knit now assumes “My Drive” as the destination folder.
  • After a backup task finishes, it now deletes files temporarily downloaded from a remote email or cloud storage account for backup to another such remote destination account.
  • Knit now supports “Constantly” re-indexing the local calendar on your computer’s hard drive.
  • Knit had a bug that if you open an existing backup task and change its source, it would run the task immediately even if you’d set it to run manually. We’ve fixed that problem.
  • We’ve fixed a bug where an email backup task would fail if you ask it to back up a mix of normal emails and emails embedded inside another email (as email attachments). Knit now backs up the normal emails even when the embedded emails cannot be backed up.

Version 2.1.7886 (August 4, 2021)

• We’ve made major changes to how often Knit incrementally indexes local computer drives, USB storage and network drives. Your searches will return higher quality results, as we update them more often.
• Performance improvements:
  • We’ve significantly improved (up to 400%) the performance of incremental re-indexing of network attached drives, local computer hard drives and USB drives. As a result, we re-index them more often now.
  • Knit now runs certain background indexing and backup tasks at an even lower CPU, disk and internet access priority. Your computer should remain usable for something else while Knit runs background tasks.
• Other miscellaneous features and bug fixes:
  • For Microsoft Office365 ccounts, Knit now uses the more secure OAuth login method, not the older login-id and password based method. For Microsoft Office365 and Google Workspace / GSuites Email accounts, Knit lets you switch between more secure OAuth and less secure password based login. This is in case your account’s IT administrator won’t allow Knit to use one or the other login methods.
  • Knit now better tracks and deletes index files it no longer uses, to save disk space. This is more useful for SSD drives, since they tend to be smaller and more space constrained.
  • We’ve fixed a bug in the Datamaton Task Manager (that runs backup tasks) which can prevent it from copying modified files from your local hard drives.
  • We’ve fixed a bug related to automatic email backup tasks. With this bug, Knit would report that some emails were not backed up when in fact they were.
  • To work with Knit, your Apple email and calendar accounts need app-specific password, not your normal Apple account password. We now remind you of this when you enter the password.
  • We’ve fixed a bug causing some Google Photos files to be re-indexed multiple times. This bug could also cause these files to be temporarily not displayed in Knit.
  • Earlier version of Knit had a bug where videos in your Google Photos account were only reported at the parent/root account level, not in the specific album in which they existed. We’ve fixed that bug.

Version 2.1.7833 (June 12, 2021)

This is the first release of the Datamaton Digital Manager Version 2. We’ve changed the version 1 name “Blob” to the version 2 name “Knit”.

• We’ve significantly updated the user interface.
  • Knit now supports high definition (2K, 4K) screens and multiple monitors. The user interface will adjust its size, fonts, icons etc. as you open it or move it to displays with different resolutions.
  • It now supports dark themes (check out the “Halloween” dark theme).
  • We’ve updated most Knit icons and use the latest official Google, Microsoft etc. icons to show your accounts and content at these places.
• We’ve improved Knit licensing support for a smoother user experience. It now looks up your purchase history based on your email address, in case there are key validation problems.
• We’ve introduced a new “At Work” version of Knit, in addition to the existing “At Home” version. We’re still restricting its distribution, so we can provide proper support to our existing “At Work” users before we open it up to wider audiences.
• Knit supports many new Data Sources.
  • It now support Google Workspace (formerly called Google GSuite or Google apps for business). This includes Google Workspace Email, Drive, Photos and Calendar accounts. Many business and school/college accounts use Google Workspace accounts.
  • We support Slack now, for text messaging at work.
  • Knit now supports a variety of FTP Servers. It support the secure FTP (SFTP) protocol used by most modern FTP servers. It also supports the less used FTP over SSL (FTPS) and plain-old FTP servers.
  • Server Messaging Block (SMB/CIFS) and Samba shared storage is now supported. It can now index network attached storage that is not explicitly mapped to a disk drive letter in Windows. We also support discovering available shared drives over the network.
  • We now support email and calendar accounts hosted at on-premise and off-premise Microsoft Exchange Servers. This is in addition to the Microsoft Office365 based email and calendar accounts (hosted at Microsoft) that we’ve supported for some time.
• We significantly rewritten support for many Data Sources that were also supported by version 1 “Blob”.
  • We use interfaces provided by Google, Microsoft, Slack, Dropbox etc. to index your account there. They constantly change these interfaces, and we had to rewrite our code to deal with this.
  • We updated some Data Sources for improved security. For example, we now only use TLS version 1.2 for Slack accounts; use the more secure OAuth authentication method for Microsoft OneDrive accounts and use short-lived access tokens when indexing your Dropbox accounts.
  • We updated some of the Data Sources to support new capabilities (e.g. “Shared Drives” and “Trash” folder for Google Drive…).
  • We’ve also removed old obsolete Data Sources like Picasa Web Albums and Google+. We’ve (hopefully temporarily) removed Facebook support too, as Facebook now significantly restricts the information available to 3^rd party apps, making it less useful. For example, Facebook won’t provide photo/video or calendar information to 3^rd party apps to index.
• Other miscellaneous features and bug fixes:
  • Email senders can embed images inside them (even just 1×1 pixel size, so you don’t even see them!). Malicious senders can embed tracking code in them, so these can be a security and privacy risk. Knit will now open emails without showing/opening embedded images by default. You can use a new “Show Images” option in the email to display them if you trust the sender.
  • You can move or copy files and emails to deeply nested folders via the Knit context (right-click) menu. Previously, the context menu only displayed one level of folders. Thus, to move or copy a file/email to a nested folder, you had to expand to that folder in the v1 Blob left panel and then drag-drop the file/email to it.
  • When you open an email that has an appointment (including an ICS appointment attachment file), Knit will now automatically decode and display the appointment details when you open the email.
  • Knit saves are restores its user-interface size and position when you close and open it. In multiple monitor setups, it will remember the monitor on which you last used it too.
  • If a folder on your local drive or cloud storage account has a Microsoft Outlook PST file with emails, Knit will show the emails in their own Emails tab when you view that folder’s content (just like it will show documents, photos, videos etc. in their own tabs).
  • We now have more robust support for remote calendars and recurring appointments.
  • The Knit user interface starts up quicker now, uses less memory and other system resources.
  • When you install Knit and use it for the first time, it asks you about your storage locations. We restrict you to adding at most five at that time, so indexing them does not overwhelm your computer.