Blog

Happy New Year!  We’ve been busy adding updates of the summer break, and have a great set of further updates in the works. Highlights of this update include:

New features

• Auto-split scanned documents using a scan separator page (a page containing a QR code that LawFlow recognises and uses to automatically split the PDF). This provides a new option for bulk-loading scanned documents into the system, together with the existing method of splitting using an Excel spreadsheet.
• Date range support. Previously, documents could be given only a single date (either specific or “partial”). The discovery tab now allows you to enter a date range where applicable, and then use the date range in date-based searches.
• PDF cropping tool, for trimming excess white-space from PDF page(s)

Improvements

• Performance improvements with large projects.
• Numerous improvements to electronic casebook module.
• More options for inserting electronic casebook hyperlinks.
• More options for stamping list documents.
• Split PDF tool now handles PDFs with “PDF/A” encoding.

This update includes a number of customer-requested features and improvements. Thank you to our great users for your suggestions and feedback, and ongoing support!

New features

• Specific function for hiding non-discoverable documents.
• Ability to import and store external document IDs (i.e. where a document has been exported from another system, and you wish to retain the previous system’s assigned ID).
• Zoom large images by double-click.
• Ability to cross-reference list numbers/pages between two lists.
• Page borders for list documents.
• Option to search non-redacted documents.
• Two-factor SMS authentication option.

Improvements

• Updated PDF viewer, with better performance and ‘find in document’ function.
• Link email address to author/recipient shows auto-suggest names.
• Documents page returns to current category upon refresh.
• Browse documents in list context.
• Option to include additional columns in Excel version of a custom list (i.e. same as available for discovery lists).
• Improved searching of email addresses and domain names.
• Option to disable whether a tag is shown as a ‘badge’ when browsing documents.
• Option to specify alternative badge text for tags.
• Separate fields for actual date and custom date in Excel reports (useful when both fields are being used).
• Improved creation of PDF hyperlinks to work on Mac OS systems (avoiding invalid characters).
• Better detection of imported production numbers.

New features

• Option to set watermark colours (instead of just grey)
• Index templates for electronic casebooks
• Option for inserting placeholder references in hyperlinked casebook documents
• Ability to create casebook hyperlinks with “continuous” list numbering
• Ability to import custom date and privilege fields in mapping files

Improvements

• Improved detection of email duplicates
• Ability to bulk-download hidden documents
• Improved handling of non-standard mapping file column names
• Improved word-wrapping of hyperlinks in casebook documents

New features

• Live rendering of list & casebook documents
• When viewing an unknown file type, there is now an option for viewing the file in plain text.
• New search option to include or exclude tray documents

Improvements

• Faster splitting & page deletion on very large PDFs
• Improved detection of duplicate text on emails with minor time differences
• Improved handling of emails from different timezones
• Improved tidying of extracted email names and addresses
• Better handling of non-standard recipient fields in Outlook MSG files
• Ability to set a party code when creating a new party via the “link email addresses” tool
• Completed review tasks show the user who set the task as completed
• More information provided on mapping (import document information) errors
• Better handling of Word tables with irregular columns in mapping files
• Casebook hyperlinks should now work in most standard desktop PDF viewers (tested in Acrobat, Foxit and NitroPDF)
• Improved text conversion of HTML table data
• Better performance for tagging large numbers of documents
• Support for playing M4A audio files directly in the browser

New features

• Option to apply stamps on alternating sides of a page, which is useful for double-sided printing.
• Inclusion of ‘sort date’ in exported document lists.
• Option to limit search by documents in the tray.

Improvements

• Project can be re-indexed while continuing to use existing index to search.
• Improved interface for junk text tool.

Performance

• Better performance for bulk operations on large numbers of documents, such as hiding, deleting and moving documents, setting discovery information, and merging folders.
• Further improvements to PST extraction performance.
• Faster browsing on Documents page for large projects.

This update has focused on improving performance. We’ve made a number of performance improvements to how email threads, possible threads and similar documents are queried and displayed, resulting in a more responsive user experience, particularly with large volumes of documents (100,000+).

We’ve also significantly boosted performance for importing documents, in particular large email archives (PST and MBOX files), and processing large complex Excel spreadsheets.

Other changes include:

• Smarter detection of deemed duplicates in email threads and possible/detected email threads;
• More accurate scoring of similar documents (i.e. the ‘score’ that indicates the similarity of two documents);
• Added an option to allow documents to be exported named by their production numbers (instead of internal ID);
• Added an option to allow documents to be exported within subfolders mirroring those in the project.

New features

• Multi-document compare process for easier comparison of similar documents.
• New process for matching and linking deemed duplicate documents.
• Addition of “associated documents” category, for linking associated documents (not associated on other grounds, such as part of the same email thread) together.

Improvements

• Significantly improved interface for reviewing email threads (and detected possible email threads), and setting discovery information and hiding documents on a group basis.
• Discovery review checklist now includes checks for inconsistent discoverability of similar, text-duplicate and deemed duplicate documents, redundant duplicates, and documents with failed attachment extraction.
• More information about related documents added to Discovery tab.
• PDF text extraction now includes form data (this remains dependent on the structure and settings of the PDF form, but standard form text should now be extracted).
• Move Documents and Hide Documents pages now show the locations of documents to be moved or hidden;
• PST extraction now shows the total number of items to extract.
• Improved layout of document lists on Related tab.
• Tag documents option added to tray pop-up menu.

New features

• First release of the Casebook Module – a major new feature designed to support the creation of electronic casebooks in accordance with the Senior Courts Civil Electronic Document Protocol. We will post more about this soon.
• Addition of document “alias” property, allowing documents to be assigned a unique alternative identifier (an alias) which can be used to find and reference documents.

Improvements

• Significantly improved import document information process.
• Cleaner layout of table columns in main documents page and list views.
• When browsing documents in a repository in details view, the folder is now shown in the browse menu.
• Improved detection of dates in scanned documents.
• Document information can now be imported for documents in all repository types, not just client discovery documents.
• Better handling of very long Excel spreadsheets.
• Better progress reporting during bundle generation.
• Longer search query input (up to 500 characters).
• Back-end changes for better handling of very long documents.

An interim update include some new features, improvements and fixes:

New features

• The built-in redaction tool now provides an option to increase the size of text on a redaction.
• Various custom list columns are now optional, and can be configured via List Settings.
• Option to clear production numbers when unlocking a discovery list.

Improvements

• Easier way to re-order a custom list using manual ordering.
• Hiding of duplicates in various categories in main Documents page – for example, if a group of 10 duplicates is set as “key document”, only one duplicate will now be shown in the Key Documents category.
• Improved notifications for when documents could not be added to a bundle.
• Deleting a party automatically unlinks any linked email addresses.
• Various bug-fixes.

An interim update include some new features, improvements and fixes:

New features

• Initial support for custom fields (allowing custom field data to be imported and displayed).
• Option to ‘scale up’ small pages to A4 size in list bundles (useful when a document is smaller than A4, but you want it to appear as A4 for the purposes of stamping and compiling it in a list bundle).
• Added extra columns to Export to Excel function.

Improvements

• Better performance when moving, hiding or deleting large numbers of documents (tens of thousands).
• Better performance when importing discovery information.
• Better performance for merging/splitting folders.
• Various bug-fixes.