Does It Compute?

Scanning and Worldox

Scanning documents to a document management system (“DMS”) such as Worldox has traditionally been a two-step process: first the user scans the document either to a network directory or as an email attachment to themselves. Then they move the document to the DMS. Most major scanner makers offer modules that integrate with Worldox and other DMS’s but they tend to be on the expensive side.

A second major issue with scanning is the time it takes to OCR PDFs so that they are text-searchable. Without this, they are just “electronic xeroxes” and much less useful. This is the most time-consuming part of scanning: figure 2-3 seconds per page for Optical Character Recognition, so that a hundred-page document will take 3-4 minutes to OCR (during which time the computer or scanner cannot do anything else). 

I have recently increasingly been recommending a program by Trumpet Inc. called Symphony which works directly with Worldox. The OCR part, Symphony OCR, works in the background (usually on the Worldox Indexer) to identify and OCR documents that have already been scanned but not OCR’d. The program runs faster or slower depending on how hard the indexer is otherwise working.

A second part of Symphony, called Profiler, is best used by firms that have a dedicated file-room type person who does scanning. This lets the end user (who knows the files and clients) make a Worldox “reservation.” They put the reservation cover sheet on top of the documents to be scanned and the file-room person simply runs them through the scanner. You can also batch documents so that several jobs are run through at the same time. Symphony separates out the scans, and based on the information in the reservation, puts them directly into Worldox. One stop, no time wasted on a second step or on OCRing.

A major test of this system was provided recently by a client who wanted to scan all their old files and to do so by sending the files to a service bureau. The client’s staff made the Worldox reservations and then sent the boxes (totaling on the order of 50,000 pages) to the service bureau. When the CDs came back, they simply copied the files to the appropriate Symphony directory and the program started churning away. Over a weekend (when firm activity was otherwise light), the program OCR’d and catalogued in Worldox over 30,000 pages. Pretty slick. And the amount of time saved adds up rapidly. For OCR’ing 100,000 pages, the firm would save on the order of 65 hours of time otherwise spent on waiting for OCRs to complete. For firms that want to do a lot of scanning, this is becoming a no-brainer.

Worldox GX3 Is Shipping

Worldox GX3 (Professional) is now officially shipping. New orders will be filled with GX3. The “Professional” version is a simple upgrade from Worldox GX2. The price went up a couple of months ago and is now $425/user and $84/user/year annual maintenance, which gives you unlimited free tech support (which is different from “how do I....” support).

Upgrade orders will be available in 6 weeks or so. If you have an existing maintenance contrace, upgrades are free (except for paying someone to do it for you).

Look for the SaaS Cloud version and the Enterprise version (a combination of the standard network-based and SasS version running in a private cloud) in 6 months or so.

TimeMatters vs. Worldox for Document Management

Every once in a while somebody asks me about the relative merits of TimeMatters vs. Worldox as far as document management is concerned. As a leading practice management system, TimeMatters obviously does many more things than Worldox. But what about the document management feature?

To my mind, the following are the primary differentiators between the two.

1.  Enforced use.  Worldox obliges end-users to use the system. This means that a firm can assert with some confidence that all documents generated by firm employees are in the system. TimeMatters is optional. For every document, a TM user can choose whether or not to save it to the "document management" system. So there is no system integrity. True, most firms that use the TimeMatters document management function implement firm “guidelines,” but users are notorious for not following them when they are rushed, tired, feeling frustrated, etc.

2.  Email integration.  This is probably the single biggest source of aggravation to TM users. TM email integration with Outlook is extremely poor. In particular, the way it deals with attachments is very cumbersome, although there are third-party add-ons that partly remedy the issue.

Further, TM can only see the Outlook InBox, not any sub-folders you may have. So if you have organized client sub-folders, in order to move an email from Outlook to TM, you first have to move it into the main InBox and from there to TM. By moving the emails back to the InBox, you lose the organization by client and have to search through what can be a very long list to find them. Obviously a very cumbersome process.

Worldox sees your entire Outlook navigation pane, all sub-folders, etc. and can batch move or drag-and-drop multiple emails from Outlook to Worldox. I once watched with some trepidation as an enthusiastic user marked 3,000 emails and moved them to Worldox in one pass. No problem. Any attached files are automatically also moved to Worldox with the email. No separate steps. All emails in Worldox are full-text indexed (including attachments), so searching is a breeze. You can instantly find all emails to or from a given individual (including if they relate to different matters).

3.  Searching. While TM indexes documents (it uses dtSearch), the search is either or. You can do a full-text search, OR you can search for, say, a particular type of document. You cannot combine the two. You cannot do a search for, e.g., all briefs done in the last 6 months containing certain words. 

4.  Integration with other Programs. TM is very limited with what it can integrate with -- MS Office, Acrobat and WordPerfect, Internet Explorer,  and that's about it. It does not integrate with (for example) document comparison programs such as Workshare, CompareDocs, DiffDocs, etc. Worldox integrates with over 50 programs out of the box and tech support will usually be able to write “hooks” to provide integration if you are using a program that is not only the list. Worldox can integrate with alternative PDF generators or programs like Roxio, so files can easily be exported to a CD. This is difficult if not impossible with TimeMatters and frequently has to be done outside the system.

5.  General Customization. Worldox is extremely flexible and customizable and generally provides a document management feature set that TimeMatters cannot match. 

6.  Ease of Use.  While this is of course somewhat subjective, it is a factor nevertheless. For example, TM cannot match the Worldox “viewer” technology which lets you rapidly scroll through documents without having to open them; print from the viewer, and copy text from the viewer into the document you are working on without having to open the other document. Worldox conveniently lets you see the last 20 documents you worked on, all your documents for the last week, etc. If you want to attach four files to an email, you select the four files and attach them. With TimeMatters you have to attach one file at a time four times.

7.  Speed. If you have matters with an extremely large number of documents (over about 200 or so), TM can be very slow in displaying them. Worldox is lightning fast.

TimeMatters consultants frequently pitch the TimeMatters document management on the basis that it is (1) “good enough” and (2) “free” (i.e., included in the high cost of TM itself). A firm needs to examine this proposition carefully. For all but the smallest firms, the savings and convenience derived from implementing Worldox can rapidly pay for it.

Finally, I would note that the document management features of most practice management programs (Amicus, Practice Master) have similar, although not identical shortcomings in comparison with Worldox. The item at the top of the list is always that these programs do not “lock down” your system – you are not obliged to use them.

New Worldox GX3 Cheat Sheet Available

With Worldox GX3 to be released any day now, I have posted my new Worldox GX3 Cheat Sheet on my web site. The new Cheat Sheet is revised and expanded (from 12 to 14 pages) to include new Worldox features, such as the Navigation Pane and the customizable toolbar. It also includes some new pointers and best practices, such as using Worldox to archive old Outlook emails and using the “Keywords” table in the Comments field.

Click here to download.

Using Worldox to Archive Email

Many attorneys have Outlook email In Boxes that can contain 10,000 emails or even more. More often than not, these are completely unsorted, and not even a rudimentary client structure of folders is available. In essence, these attorneys are using email as a substitute for a document management system: at least they know that everything is there, even if they can never find anything (ever try using Outlook search?).

Worldox offers a relatively easy solution. Create a “client” called “email” and then a “matter” for each attorney. Then create “doc types” called, e.g., 2008email, 2009email, 2010email, etc. You can go back as far as necessary.

Then sort the email inbox by date and batch move all the emails for a given year to the “doc type” for that year. Leave only, for example the last year or two of emails in the Outlook In Box.

Since the emails are all full text indexed, the emails for a given attorney, and/or a given year can be searched for any text in them, who they are addressed to, who they are from, etc.  For example: all the emails for Atty Smith in the year 2008 addressed to Jones and containing the word “spoliation.”

As an additional benefit, this will make your IT people happy.

Word 2010 Settings in Worldox

Some time ago, Worldox GX2 introduced a significant number of extra configuration settings for Word 2007 and 2010. I have to admit that I blithly continued pretty much as before. But it is worth taking a look at the extra options that are available and reviewing your settings to see if you want to take advantage of them.

• Clear file stamp before creating a PDF. This is off by default. However, many firms do want to clear the footer before sending a PDF to a client or filing it to court. This is worth revisiting to see if it would be a good option.

• Stamp first page only. This has actually be available for a while, but again, it is worth thinking about. And no, stamp only last page is still not available.

• Show recent files. By default, this is eliminated from Word, since an equivalent is available using Worldox. However, especially for firms that are new to the program, users may feel more comfortable re-enabling them for Word or Excel.

• Default to PDF/A format when converting a document. Now that courts are increasingly requiring PDF/A format, this might be worth enabling. Note, however, that you may lose functionality in the PDF file if this is implemented.

• Hide Curly Braces. Many firms find the curly braces around the file stamp in the footer annoying (they are there to help in searching and updating the file stamp). They can be hidden if you prefer.

Worldox GX3 -- SaaS and Enterprise versions

The SaaS and Enterprise versions of Worldox GX3 will be out later this summer. The interface will be identical to the standard networked version of GX3.

The SaaS (Cloud) version will be a hosted version of Worldox GX3 using the Microsoft Published App Technology, with a monthly per user charge. As such, it will compete with NetDocuments. What is unique about this version, however, is the way it will integrate with your desktop. Your desktop version of Word, Outlook, etc. will integrate directly with your documents in the cloud using a method that World Software is in the process of patenting.

The Enterprise version will be a combination of the two. It will be hosted on the firm’s servers and have both network and SaaS capability. Thus, when you are plugged in to the firm’s network, you will be using the standard version of Worldox. If you take your laptop on the road, the Worldox client will sense that the network is not available and will connect to the SaaS version, which will be run as a private cloud on the firm’s servers. Since the interfaces are identical, the transition between one and the other will be seamless to the end user. If you have a laptop and the internet is not available (on a plane for example), the local client will load and documents will be uploaded when you reconnect to the network, as they are now.

Thus the Enterprise version will be ideal for larger firms and firms with multiple offices.

Worldox GX3 Officially Announced

World Software is officially announcing Worldox GX3 today at LegalTech NY. The really big news will be about Worldox GX3 Cloud (an SaaS product) and Worldox GX3 Enterprise, both coming later this summer.

But let’s look at the traditional version of Worldox, now GX3. As usual, there are a number of “under the hood” improvements, including a new set of viewers and significantly greater speed (in an already fast program). But what are the things that affect the end user more immediately?

The new set of viewers means that Worldox can now view PDF Portfolios and Binders, which wasn’t possible previously. With more firms using these functions, this is important. For example, I have a series of PDFs I compiled out of jpeg images that GX2 viewers could not display. Now they do. Some Word 2010 tables also display more accurately in the new viewers.

The new Legal Hold function could be a very big deal for certain firms, especially those involved in litigation. You mark documents as “Legal Hold” and they are moved to a separate area where they can be searched for and viewed but not changed in any way. This can be done en masse (by people with appropriate rights). When the Hold is released, the documents can be returned to the main document store.

The toolbar at the top of the Worldox screen can now be edited by users. You can change the icon, the description, move them around, etc. So you can get rid of things you never use and make the toolbar more functional.

The entire left side, formerly the “Folder Tree,” has been reorganized along the lines of the Outlook Navigation Pane, with buttons at the bottom selecting various functions. A new function is “Favorite Matters” (which reflects a “My Matters” function available in other programs). This lists the matters you have most recently accessed. No need to open up a search screen, they pop right up. It does involve a certain amount of scrolling up and down, but many people will find this extremely useful. Various functions in the Navigation Pane can be sorted and reorganized depending on how you work.

Projects, a very powerful but somewhat clumsy and underused feature of GX2 has been placed here and made much easier to use. People already using projects will really like this.

Finally, there are the usual number of small but very nice improvements. In general, the messages on pop up windows are improved and more obvious. One of my favorite improvements is the “Same Profile As” button on the save screen. This is very useful when you email someone a document and they send it back with revisions. You want to save this as a version, but how?  It was always possible, although a couple of screens deep. Now that function is right there staring you in the face.

Similarly, the “8th field” has been make more obvious. There was always a button in the comments field called “table.” This was a drop-down list that allowed users to select comments from a list, such as keywords in documents involved in litigation. Since comments are searchable as part of the profile, this was powerful, but again, under-used. Now it is much more obvious and should be very useful to litigation firms in particular.

All in all, a nice upgrade – and as Worldox users know, with the very inexpensive Worldox maintenance, upgrades are free.

Technical Considerations for Worldox

I don’t usually do posts on technical issues that are of interest mainly to IT people. However, firms interested in Worldox seem to be saying increasingly “my IT guy has some questions.”  The following is intended to answer basic technical questions about Worldox.

Many firms are accustomed to defining hardware requirements on the assumption of SQL-based software. Worldox is a totally different animal and does not use SQL. The bottom line is that Worldox is not very hardware intensive and will probably run on an existing file server assuming it is reasonably up to date. See the Worldox site for a more detailed description of technical requirements. If you are running MS Server 2008R2, you must disable SMB2 (known to corrupt databases) and re-enable 8.3 support prior to installing Worldox.

Worldox can be integrated with Active Directory to meet security requirements. Security settings in Worldox are ported to Active Directory and vice-versa.

Worldox uses what is known as a “distributed database.” It creates stub files containing profile information in every directory it touches. The indexer (based on the ISYS indexing program) parses those files and creates an index. It also full-text indexes all possible documents (passworded documents and non-OCR’d PDF’s are not indexed for obvious reasons). Emails and email attachments are also indexed. Searches are based on the ISYS indexes.  The indexes by default are rebuilt from scratch once a week so that they are always “clean.”

In operation, the indexer checks for change records every 10 seconds. So in terms of activity, ask yourself: how many files can be opened, saved, created, etc. by X users in 10 seconds? The Worldox client intercepts all file I/O commands for supported programs and pops up the Worldox interface (instead of using Windows Explorer). Again, not very CPU-intensive.

Worldox recommends that the indexer run on a stand-alone PC. The indexer does NOT run as a service. The indexer includes a number of options (such as limited records management options; deleting files from the Salvage Bin after a given period; deleting empty directories, etc.).  For a more detailed description of requirements and optimal settings see the “Indexer” section of the “Installing and Configuring Worldox” document on my web site.

In short, of all the software programs I have ever supported over the years, Worldox is by far the most rock-solid.

Worldox Enhances Productivity Suite

When Worldox first released its Productivity Suite, the core feature was the Workflow module.  This worked great, was very flexible and easy to use. But it did have a major limitation, namely that you could not create workflow templates for reuse.  So if someone had to routinely route documents or notifications to a specific set of people, you had to recreate this every time you used it.

The Workflow module has now been enhanced so that it is now possible to create a workflow template and reuse it over and over.