Additionally, each column has a more advanced ‘Custom Filter’ dialog which allows filter criteria such as less than, greater than, regular expressions and more. Given this, we wanted to make it even easier to filter on a particular column (and any value) by just right-clicking a cell.

In the above screenshot, you’ll see the new grid context-menu. Clicking ‘Filter by Selection’, you can add a filter to the column for that cell’s value. ‘Filter Excluding Selection’ will filter out that cell’s value from the column. ‘Remove Last Filter’ acts as an undo – so you can quickly get rid of the last applied filter. And then you can remove all the filters from the grid with ‘Remove All Filters’.

This feature (along with many others) will be a part of ReadySuite v4.1 – which will be available in February.

Using this feature, you can summarize all the values in a particular field – and the result will be a tally of each unique value. The results can then be saved to a CSV file or alternatively, just copy the values from the table and paste them into a spreadsheet.

Opening the ‘Document Tally’ dialog is as easy as right-clicking on a column’s header, which will present you with the below context menu.

You can also get to this dialog from the main menu. We hope you’ll find this useful – and if you have any feedback or feature suggestions, feel free to contact us.

Supporting the Ringtail load file is a bit trickier than the other formats already supported in ReadySuite, primarily because it relies on an Access database (MDB). But this won’t necessarily make things more complicated for you, as you’ll be able to import and export to this format without having Access installed.

Creating a Ringtail load file with ReadySuite is as easy as any other load file – just specify its output filename and you’re all set. Of course, if you need some more fine tined output options, we made sure to make those easily available as well.

Specifically, we added full control for setting the field values for all columns in Ringtail’s main ‘export’ table. Levels can be populated based on a file path of your choosing, or if you prefer – they can be set individually. We added full customization of the ‘parties’ table, allowing you to choose the values for Persons and/or Organisations from the available Correspondence Types.

When it comes to reading the Ringtail format, we support it all. And it’s really simple – just drag/drop the load file into ReadySuite, choose your validation options, and you’re ready to import.

We should be wrapping up our testing phase on 4.1 shortly – and then hope to get that release out to you as soon as we can. As always, if you have an idea for ReadySuite, feel free to e-mail Justin Blessing at justin@compiledservices.com.

New Features:
Added ‘OCR Wizard’ utilizing RecoStar and Tesseract OCR engines
Added ‘Create PDFs Wizard’ for creating searchable PDFs using OCR engine
Added ability to create and save projects
Added ability to auto-save projects on a time based interval
Added ability to set field data types (text, memo, date, number, etc) during import process
Added ‘Manage Fields’ wizard for modifying fields and setting export masks
Added preference to parse Summation field data types or import only as ‘Text’
Added option to specify the ‘DOCID’ field when exporting load files
Added page level information: TIFF Compression, Width (in.), Height (in.), DPI
Added wizard for ‘Import Text Files’ to associate image sets with text files
Added ability to overlay images, text, and/or natives to documents already imported
Added record number output (;Record 1) for Summation load file export
Added ‘Open Output Folder’ links to wizards generating output
Added ‘Path Editor’ for globally editing existing document paths
Added advanced numbering to import wizards with identifier preview
Added preference to disable Page Rows in grid to improve performance/memory usage
Added ‘Memo’ as field data type to improve performance/memory usage
Added ‘Output bad records’ when importing delimited text files
Added check resources option when importing delimited text files
Added ability to parse multi-page and single-page files from a Summation briefcase
Added prompt to save project file when closing application
Added ability to create and delete custom fields using ‘Modify Fields’ dialog
Added ability to set the internal ‘DOCID’ field to a custom field
Added export mask to Number, Date and Boolean fields to change output format
Added page timeout to config settings for RecoStar OCR engine
Added project name and save status to title bar
Added ‘Link In Place’ option when exporting delimited text file
Created 64-bit version – available for download by request
Wizard for ‘Import Delimited Text’ can now populate new fields (useful for importing a “tag list”)
Wizard for ‘Number Documents’ can now track counters by their unique prefix
Wizards for importing Images, Text, Native and Load Files are more streamlined

Important Changes:
Changed folder browser in Wizards to sort alphabetically
Improved warning messages generated by various wizards
Improved error handling in ‘Import Delimited Text’ wizard
Improved remembering last folder paths for folder and file chooser dialogs
Improved drag/drop functionality to remove lock in Windows Explorer
Improved support for creating output with JPEG2000 and JBIG2 options
Improved display of various document and page count numbers
Improved document and page counts in status bar for grid when document set is filtered
Improved ability to sort by field data type in grid
Improved editing fields in grid and metadata panel by data type
Improved ‘Batch Update’ dialog, can search/replace during update and propagate to family
Improved validation of documents during and post import
Improved ability to check for duplicate pages across all imported documents
Improved ability to hash image, text and native files separately
Improved license check with new folder config setting and silent fail option
Improved reading ‘@D @V’ when improperly formatted for Summation DII load files
Improved memory usage and stability throughout application
Improved numbering by prefix
Improved ability to auto-detect file encoding
Improved ability to auto-detect field data types when importing delimited text
Fixed status bar display when document count 6 digits or more
Fixed sensitivity in Find/Replace dialog
Fixed issue where grid disappears under certain circumstances
Fixed crash with toolbar when application left idle for long duration
Fixed numbering documents when value is only in prefix field
Fixed crash with ‘Trim Documents’ wizard when modifying bounds
Fixed project 0kb by saving to temp file first under certain circumstances where saving fails
Fixed rare crash caused by splash screen
Fixed display of installed licenses, added reminder expiration reminder dialog
Fixed grid filter if count is zero after deleting records
Fixed various tab orders in dialogs and wizards

Note that the above list is not a comprehensive list, but includes more of the important changes we’ve made since the last release in October.

Upon opening the ‘OCR Documents’ wizard, which handles the output of OCR into text files, users will be presented with several export options. For starters, OCR can be saved inline (that is, in the same folder) with its image file counterpart or exported to a new folder. If files are being saved in a new folder, customization options of both the folder and filename structure is available. OCR can be generated on a per-document or per-page basis. And we’ve included an option to only run the OCR process on documents that do not already have it.

When it comes to producing highly accurate results and factoring in the performance of the OCR translation process, we’ve added several options to tweak the output. For starters, if you know the target language, you can choose from over 30 supported languages. Cleanup and pre-processing options consist of: Auto-Invert, Auto-Rotate, Auto-Border Crop, Conversion to Binary (B&W), Deskew, Despeckle, and Halftone Removal.

The output encoding is adjustable, allowing for ASCII, UTF-7, UTF-8 and Unicode. If you need to add specific page markers to the bottom of each page, such as the bates number and/or page number, we’ve provided that as an option.

On the searchable-PDF creation side, we built the ‘Create Searchable PDFs’ wizard to handle this task. Once you have your data imported – which can be any combinations of existing PDFs, single-page or multi-page TIFF files, and other bitmap files such as JPGs – you’ll just need to specify an output folder.

As outlined above, the same cleanup and pre-processing options are available when generating searchable PDFs. Further, you can choose to export PDF/A compliant files if necessary.

We’re hopeful to have a release ready including this functionality in the next couple of weeks.

What we’re learning is more customers want the ability to create and save a project. We’re finding more users of our product include paralegals and attorneys. Further, our litigation and practice support users want an easier way to pass along their instance and session of the application.

So, now, we’re introducing the ability to save a project in ReadySuite. It’s really quite simple. You’ll specify a filename to “Save As” and all the documents in the grid, along with batch settings, and custom fields will be saved to the project file. We get to keep the premise of our product as being simple, easy to use, with no advanced setup.

Because ReadySuite has no database backend – which would allow changes to the project to be saved instantly – we’ve added an auto-save feature. Any changes you make to the project, including field coding edits, can be automatically saved on a time based interval.

Further, projects created with ReadySuite save quickly and are highly compressed. In the image below, we made a project from a DAT file with 40,000 documents. Its original size was almost 13MB. Imported and saved as a ReadySuite project file, it’s less than 4MB.

Note that a project file won’t embed the external resources (e.g. image, text or native files) – these will remain in place. If you need to adjust the paths or reference to these files, you can use the ‘Batch Manager’ to do so.

First up, we’ve added the ability for you to specify data types for custom fields (aka metadata). An immediate benefit of this feature is how we allow you to sort and filter on columns in the grid. See illustration below – you can now filter on a date column by year, month and day.

In addition, date columns will be correctly sorted by oldest to newest or vice versa. Initially, we’re going to support the following data types: Boolean (Yes/No), Number, Decimal, Date, Time, Date/Time, Text and Memo. Other enhancements to the grid will allow you to correctly summarize number/decimal columns, see a checkbox for boolean types, and make coding changes using specialized editors in each cell.

With this change, we’ve added a new ‘Modify Fields’ dialog. Here you’ll be able to add, modify and delete fields. You can set a field to read-only mode by setting its Locked property, preventing accidental changes made to that field.

Fields will also support an export mask. This is particularly useful for Date fields. For example, if you specify an export mask on field ‘DATESENT’ and the date you imported was ‘2011-11-02’, on export you’ll be able to retrieve it as ‘11/02/2011’. You can specify export masks for Boolean, Date, Time, Date/Time, Decimal, and Number fields.

Further to supporting custom fields, we added an option to re-adjust the internal DOCID field. Using the Modify Fields dialog, you can set any field as the internal DOCID field.

In our next post, we’ll discuss how we’re adding support for saving projects.

Going with the recent changes made in v3.5, we’ve further improved the import delimited text wizard. For starters, if you’re importing a rather large file – you’ll no longer have to wait for the preview pane to load. We’ll now show you the first 500 records, and there is an added checkbox for displaying the remainder.

Secondly, we now support importing the parent identifier or group identifier as a field from delimited text files. Utilizing this feature will allow you to generate attachment identifiers, attachment ranges, and other parent/child relationships. We already support importing and exporting family information from Summation DII load files, EDRM XML load files and IPRO LFP load files.

Need to view the family association for a document? Use the Document Family panel, as seen in the screenshot below.

Utilizing the family view, you can see all of document’s family associations. Clicking on any particular document will show the document in the grid view, so you won’t get lost. Further, we’ve added two new internal fields to the grid: PARENTID and GROUPID.

Regarding document browsing, we’re (finally) introducing file icons to the grid display. Icons will be pulled based on image type (i.e. TIF, JPG or PDF) and in the case of native files, icons will be shown for the most common file extensions. We’re pulling this information from your metadata – most commonly, your native file path.

As you hover over file icons in the refreshed grid, you’ll be able to click to open the native file. By doing so, the file will open in their respective application on your computer.

The last feature we’re going to discuss in this blog post – exporting text files. Using the ‘Export Documents’ wizard, we’ve added a new option for outputting text files. The screenshot below identifies the set of available features

You can choose to either export the text files in place with your images (if you’re exporting images) or, alternatively, specify the folder and file name structure. Further, you can force the output encoding to ASCII, UTF-7 or UTF-8. Finally, an option was added to create blank text files for documents without text and to specify a margin allowing you to wrap lines at a specific column.

We’re working hard at the next release – which we will cover here. If you have suggestions or ideas for future releases, drop us a line using our contact page.

The above screenshot shows the new ‘Check Document Resources’ wizard, which allows you to choose one or more options to run against your documents. Warnings will be presented in the warning log – and other details, such as which documents have color or blank pages, will be available in the document grid.

In the event that you’ve imported a large set of documents, comprising of images, native and text files, and you need to adjust your root paths or change drive letters, we’ve added the new ‘Batch Manager’.

As you’ll see, here you can change the properties of any imported batch after the import process.

In prior versions, during the import process, you would specify the field from your CSV/DAT file that would “link on” to the document identifier in the grid. We did not provide a method for you to change the field to link on in the data already imported. In the screenshot below, you can see we added an option to specify the “Link Field” – this is populated from all the fields available in the main grid display.

If you’re familiar with the old wizard interface, you’ll also notice we’ve cleaned up the display quite a bit. At the top, you can determine whether you want the wizard to add “new documents” or error if it is unable to link-to existing documents. You’ll also see the “Queue” – this is populated based on the number of documents already in the grid display. In case there is a filter applied, you can glance at the numbers listed there which indicate the available set of documents being updated.

Appending your import to data already in the grid is also a bit more streamlined – you can specify the separator field now. Further, if the value you’re appending is the same as the current value – that data won’t be added, preventing duplicate information.

Finally, one common request we’ve had is to allow duplicate entries to be processed from the delimited text file. In the past, if a document was listed two or more times in your import CSV/DAT file – only the first instance of that record was updated. This was a conscious decision, allowing the import process to read the data in and update the grid faster. We now allow you to decide if you want the duplicates to be processed. Benefit of doing so, combined with the append feature, allows you to keep multiple entries and different updates from your import file.