The Sentinel Orphan Finder locates all documents in a database that do not have an associated parent document. The most common reason for the occurrence of orphans is deletion of the parent document without deleting the responses first.
How the Orphan Finder works
The Sentinel builds a collection of response Notes in the designated database. It then takes each Note, one by one, and searches the same database for the designated parent. If it does not find a match, the Sentinel has located an orphan. Once it is located, it can do one of the following: 1. Report Create a DocLink to the Orphaned Document. 2. Convert to Main Document This changes the status to a main document, which will make them appear in views. 3. Delete This removes the orphaned document.
Reporting is a good way to inspect the orphaned documents to try to understand how they became orphaned. These can be studied. If you want to salvage these documents, re-run the same task, this time selecting Convert to Main Document. This will make the orphans appear in some of your views (or you may have to build a new view to see them).
Once all useful orphan documents are salvaged, you may want to re-run the task, this time selecting Delete to remove the orphans from the database completely.
To run the Orphan Finder, compose the task 3. Administration Tools \2. Orphan Finder. Select the Notes Database to Inspect, as follows:
The Sentinel creates a log of all orphans found, with doclinks to the documents. These results are logged in the regular message log.
Points to Remember
1. Always run Report first to discover any orphans. You may want to save these documents.
2. Convert to Main Document changes the status to a main document, which will make them appear in views. You can run formulas on these documents.
3. Delete This removes the orphaned document. This process is irreversible. Be careful!