What is File Match, and what does it do for a file service?

A file service does the same jobs again and again. The same car comes back after a software update went wrong. A dealer sends the read you tuned last month. Someone buys a second van from the same fleet. Your tuner opens the file, recognises it, finds the old work if they can, and sends it. That takes minutes they could spend on a new file, and at night it does not happen at all.

File Match takes that job. It has two halves, and it helps to keep them apart.

What is the difference between the library and File Match?

The library is where your finished work lives. Every original and every tuned file, kept together and found by software number, hardware number or ECU. On screen it is called AI File DB, and it comes with every package from Solo up. Start has neither the library nor File Match.

File Match is the part that acts on it. When a new job arrives it checks the library, and when the job is a true repeat it sends the file by itself. Master has it in the package; on every other package from Solo up it is a paid add-on. The price page has the figure.

Without the add-on you still have the library and the search, and your tuner still sees what was done last time. Nothing goes out unless a person sends it.

What happens when a repeat file comes in?

1. Your customer uploads the read and says what work they want.
2. The portal compares the file with the originals in your library, byte for byte.
3. If it is the very same file, the portal looks for a tuned file that does the whole order.
4. It runs its checks, from whether the tuned file is still intact to whether the customer's read has fully arrived.
5. If the job is paid, or owes nothing, the tuned file goes on the job and your customer is told it is ready.

The full order of those decisions is in how File Match decides, and every reason it can stop is in when File Match holds a file back.

yourname.tunerengine.com

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What happens when it is not an exact repeat?

Nothing goes out. Your tuner opens the job and sees a panel called "Have we done this before?", with the closest work from your library: same software and hardware first, then same software, then the same engine. They can download it, compare it, or send it if it fits.

That is deliberate. Two cars with the same software number can differ in a few hundred bytes, as software and hardware numbers explains. A number tells a tuner where to look. It is not a reason to send a file to a car nobody has checked.

Is the match a guess?

No. The match that sends a file is an exact comparison of the file, and the check on the work is a comparison of what was ordered with what the tuned file is recorded as doing. There is no judgement to get wrong, which is the point: a file going into an ECU should not depend on a guess.

What do I have to do to use it?

Three things, in this order.

1. Bring your old files in, so there is something to match. If you keep WinOLS projects, they can be imported too.
2. Make sure each tuned file says what work it does. A tuned file with no work named is offered to your tuner and never sent by itself.
3. Switch File Match on in its settings, in Simulate first, so you can see what it would have sent before it sends anything. It only sends in Live.

Locked files have a few rules of their own, covered in File Match and locked slave files. If you want to know whether it is worth it for your shop, count your repeats first.