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Before You Index > Retrieve Content > Connectors

# Connectors

IDOL Connectors retrieve and aggregate data from repositories.

Your organization is likely to have data in many different formats, distributed across many different repositories. Connectors and CFS automatically retrieve, process, and index this data so that you can use IDOL Server to extract meaning from it.

There are IDOL connectors to extract data from over 150 types of repository, including:

- Local and network file systems.

- Internet servers, Web sites, and social media feeds.

- E-mail servers such as Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Notes.

- Database servers such as SQL Server, Oracle, or MySQL.

- Document and Content Management Systems such as Microsoft SharePoint.

## Retrieve Information

Connectors retrieve over 1,000 different file types, such as PDF files, Microsoft Office documents, XML, and plain text files.

By default, connectors retrieve all the files from a repository. However, you can configure them to retrieve exactly the information you need, and ignore information that you do not want to index.

When you configure a connector, you can specify where the connector starts searching for files. For example, when you configure a File System Connector you specify a folder, and when you configure an Exchange Connector you specify a message store.

To retrieve or ignore specific files, you can set parameters in the connector configuration file. You can configure many connectors to retrieve or ignore data when a file, database, or item name matches a regular expression. You can also write custom Lua Scripts to filter the files that are retrieved, and discard files that you do not want to index.

After a connector has retrieved files from a repository, the files are copied to a local temporary folder so that they can be processed.

The connector keeps a record of the files that it has retrieved, and continues to monitor the repository. If files are added, updated, or deleted, the connector automatically extracts the new information.

TIP:

When a connector runs the `synchronize` fetch action, it keeps a record of the files that have been extracted from a repository. If you run the `synchronize` action again, the connector processes only new or updated files. If you want to reset the connector so that it retrieves the same files again, you can purge the datastore file for a specific fetch task from the Service Control tab on the Console page in the Control section of IDOL Admin.

## Aggregate Data

A single connector can aggregate content from many repositories of the same type. For example, a single ODBC Connector can extract records from any number of different databases, stored on any number of servers.

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