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.

First up, we’ll highlight how we’ve improved the import of delimited text files. One of most requested changes by our users was to allow new records to be created by this process. Previously, you had to link the delimited text import with an existing record (i.e. native and/or image based document). The benefit here was we could tell you which documents were “un-linked” or not found. Now you can add the record as a new document if it can’t be linked. If you don’t need to add these as new records, the option to generate a warning is still there.

We’ve also implemented an update-mode if the record already exists. You can choose to replace an existing field value or append the new value to the existing record. For example, if you had a field named PRODRANGES with the value “ABC001-ABC002” and a delimited text file with a PRODRANGES field having the value of “DEF001-DEF002”, the append mode would combine the values to be “ABC001-ABC002 DEF001-DEF002”.

Additionally, you can now choose to repeat the value of a field during the import delimited text process. If a field is marked to have its values repeated, any empty values will be replaced with the previous non-empty value. If you’re importing a FOLDER field whose value is only entered for the first document inside that folder, but you need it repeated for each document inside that folder, then mark the field to be repeated. The folder information will be re-used for each document until a new folder is encountered.

Moving on to exporting delimited text files, we’ve added the ability to export page records. When setting up the delimited text export, you can simply check a box to export all the pages or images in a document. Page level fields, such as filename, page number, folder and color status will be available. Document level fields will simply be repeated for each page in the document.

Group fields are now available to the delimited text export in addition to the EDRM and DII exports. This feature allows you to specify two or more fields to be “merged” on export in the event that one field does not have a value. This is useful if you have three fields called Author, From, and Creator but you only need one export field called Author. Based on the order you add the fields to the new group field, the first non-empty item will be used in the export field.

For those users who want to merge two or more fields together regardless of any existing data, we’ve added that ability to the Batch Update dialog. For example, if you want to merge BEGPROD1, BEGPROD2, and BEGPROD3 into a BEGPRODS field, you would use the following syntax:

${META:BEGPROD1}; ${META: BEGPROD2}; ${META: BEGPROD3}

Don’t worry if the above is confusing: we have an easy-to-use field picker to help in the process.

The changes highlighted in this post are also being provided to our ReadyConvert users, among other bug fixes, free of charge. ReadyConvert is our free load file verification and conversion tool used by many litigation professionals.

Our next blog post will focus on overall stability improvements and important changes to the document grid.

In page-level numbering, we divide the numbering scheme into three parts: prefix, separator, and counter. Typically the prefix value is static in content; however, we allow you to use one or more custom fields when building the prefix. For example, if each document being numbered has a field called “ExhNo”, you can use the document’s exhibit number in the prefix of each document. The separator lets you specify a character to put in between the prefix and counter. If no separator is desired, leave it blank.

The counter field allows you to indicate the starting number to use and the amount of leading zeros to pad. Entering “001483” in the counter field will yield 6 digits for each document, starting at 1483 and incrementing by 1 for each page until the end. Additionally, we allow you to reset the counter back to its original starting value for each document. Utilizing this feature lets you number each page in a document separate from the previous document.

In the above illustration, you can see we’ve defined two documents each with a unique exhibit number. Using the exhibit number field in the prefix, with 0001 as our counter and allowing the counter to reset after each document, would yield the above starting and ending exhibit numbers.

Generating cross reference reports is just as easy. At the time of numbering, we let you specify or create new fields to indicate the previous starting and ending document numbers. For example, if you are re-numbering your review set to create a production set, you can save the starting and ending review numbers in fields ReviewStart and ReviewEnd respectively.

As we inch closer towards releasing ReadySuite, we’re looking for a few additional beta testers. Contact Justin Blessing if you’re interested in joining our test team.

First up is conversion among image formats. You can use ReadySuite to convert single-page images to multi-page images and multi-page images to single-page images. Images can be saved in TIFF, PDF, PDF/A or a combination of TIFF and JPEG/LZW formats. For example, you can import multi-page TIFF images with LZW compression and export to PDF with color intact. Do you have a need to save color PDF files to a combination of single-page TIFF and JPEG files? All these options are handled by the export wizard. A key feature for ReadySuite was to allow flexibility with image formats, for both imports and exports.

Once the destination image format has been decided, we provide several options for the folder and file naming structure. For example, you can adjust the primary image folder to “IMAGES”, “IMG”, or leave it blank. ReadySuite gives full control on the naming convention. Image files can then be placed under an incremental folder scheme, allowing specified number of files per directory. For example, if you’re exporting 1,000 single-page images with 250 files per folder, folders “001” thru “004” will be automatically created. This is a very basic feature – but on the advanced side, we allow you to merge several fields together to create a directory structure of your choice. If you want image files to be placed under the custodians name and then under the original file extension, so be it. We extend this functionality to file naming. File names can be the original bates number or a combination of any custom fields.

Do your delivery specifications require you to deliver multi-page images with the original Excel spreadsheets? We provide the capability to accomplish this task without manually deleting files and removing entries from load files. Our loose native export functionality allows you to specify document types to exclude or include from the export process. The same advanced folder and file naming options for exporting images can be applied to exporting loose native files.

Other export options allow you to specify the volume name, load file formats, and if the new documents should be added to the grid once complete. Next up, we’ll be discussing new features aimed at document and page level numbering.

There are two ways to batch-redact documents using ReadySuite. The first method allows you to trim an entire portion of a page. The second method allows you to redact a region on a page and fill it with a white or black background.

For an example of the first method, you can remove 0.5” inches from the bottom portion of a page while maintaining the original page size. You can perform this operation on the top, bottom, left, or right sides. The amount to trim can be adjusted, allowing you to batch-remove 0.223” inches from the bottom of a page.

The second method to batch-redact documents is to select a region on a page and designate a fill color. We make this process easy for you with our preview control. To use it, enable selection mode, draw a region on the image, and we’ll translate those bounds into coordinates. Using this method also allows you to see where the redaction will occur on each page across all documents. For the advanced user, we offer options to manually input the start and end positions of the redaction area.

All pages are not created equally, therefore, applying document- and page-level filters allows precise control over which documents will be redacted. For example, if you have a field named “Production” with values of “Y” or “N”, you can filter for all documents with a production designation (“Y”). The page-level filters allow you to redact based on even or odd page numbers, being the first page only, or portrait and landscape orientation.

In part 4 of our series, we’ll go over new functionality allowing you to export images and native files.

Have you ever endorsed a set of images only to realize after the fact your settings don’t seem quite right? You may not have added the legend stamp in the right location or the formatting isn’t what the client is expecting. Whatever the issue might be, you’ll be able to preview your settings before you start the endorsement process.

Shown above, we’ve added “DRAFT” to the center of the image in red. Using the preview window, we’re able to see how this would be applied to the image. You can preview any page or document using the provided navigation controls. Additionally, you can zoom in or out on parts of the image.

As illustrated in the preview window, endorsements can be angled. We provide options for horizontal, vertical, clockwise and counter-clockwise orientations. Each endorsements orientation is unique to its quadrant, allowing for different variations.

Other functionality included will allow you to apply endorsements to the first page of each document, or only even pages or odd pages. You’ll also be able to apply the endorsements to only portrait or landscape pages. These options are shown below.

In part 3 of our series, we’ll be discussing the batch redacting and cropping options. In addition, if you’re interested in joining our test team, contact Justin Blessing and provide a little background on your firm and your computer environment.