What's New in Grooper 2024

WIP	WORK IN PROGRESS!! Please excuse our mess. This article is under construction.

Grooper version 2024 is here! Below you will find brief descriptions on new and/or changed features. When available, follow any links to extended articles on a topic.

Moving Grooper fully into the web

Deploying Grooper over a web server is a more distributable, more secure, and more modern experience. Version 2022 started Grooper's foray into web development with a web client for user operated Review tasks. Versions 2023 and 2023.1 expanded our web client to incorporate all aspects of Grooper in the web client. Version 2024 fully cements our commitment to moving Grooper to a web-based application.

Thick client removal

In 2024, there is no longer a Grooper thick client (aka "Windows client"). There is only the Grooper web client. This opens Grooper up to several advantages for cloud-based app development and cloud-based deployments.

All thick client Grooper applications have an equivalent in the Grooper web client. Most of these are now pages you will navigate to from the web client. For those unfamiliar with the Grooper web client, refer to the table below for the web client equivalent versions of thick client apps in version 2024.

Former thick client application	Current web client equivalent
Grooper Design Studio	The Design page
Grooper Dashboard	The Batches page
Grooper Attended Client	The Tasks page
Grooper Kiosk	The Stats page (displaying stats queries in a browser window)
Grooper Config	Grooper Command Console (GCC) See below for more information
Grooper Unattended Client	Replaced by "gcc services host" command in GCC

Grooper Command Console

Grooper Command Console (or GCC) is a replacement for the thick client administrative application, Grooper Config. Previous functions performed by Grooper Config can be accomplished in Grooper Command Console. This includes:

• Connecting to Grooper Repositories
• Installing and managing Grooper Services
• Managing licensing for self hosted licensing installations

Grooper Command Console is a command line utility. All functions are performed using command line commands rather than a "point and click" user interface. Users of previous versions will find the difference somewhat shocking, but the command line interface has several advantages:

• Most administrative functions are accomplished with a single command. In Grooper Config, to accomplish the same function you would perform several clicks to do the same thing. Once you are familiar with the GCC commands, Grooper Command Console ends up saving you time.
• Commands can be easily scripted. There was not an easy way to procedurally execute the functions of Grooper Config like creating a Grooper Repository or spinning up new Grooper services. GCC commands allow you to do this.
• Scaling services is much easier. While we have done proof-of-concept tests to ensure Grooper can scale in cloud deployments (such as using auto-scaling in Amazon AWS instances) dealing with scaling Activity Processing services was somewhat clunky. Using commands to spin up services makes this process much simpler. Grooper Command Console also has specific commands to make scaling with Docker containers simpler.

For more information about Grooper Command Console, visit the Grooper Command Console article.

Grooper as a document repository

Moving away from "Batch oriented processing". Moving away from "delete Batches as soon as data is out of Grooper".

Search Page & AI Search

Job oriented processing Indexing Behavior (and related indexing object commands to add and update search indexes) Indexing Service Generators

Miscellaneous

Azure-based text analysis extractors

Key phrase, named entity, and PII extract