Reindexing when new helper is added

As far as I know, when a new helper is added, the previously already uploaded files with its extension are not automatically added to the index. What I was doing up to now was disabling and uninstalling the search_files module to cause that all related databases are deleted and then install them again. A more frequent cronjob would take care that the index of attached files is rebuild.

My question is if there is another way to do this may be by manually manipulating the database with phpmyadmin, or by a simple feature in the code