Does It Compute?

worldox/web mobile released

World Software has announced the release of worldox/web mobile, which replaces Worldox/Web.

While Worldox/Web has always allowed access to the Worldox document store from a browser (no downloaded program needed, as with some other remote access document management products), its adoption has been limited by the growth of generalized remote access programs such as GoToMyPC and LogMeIn. After all, if you can log in to your desktop and have access to all your programs, what do you need a separate specific access to Worldox for?  Worldox/Web was probably primarily used to provide an extranet for law firm clients.  Thus clients could be granted specific access to a subset of their own documents, which they could access at any time. This was a great feature for major clients.

When accessed from a PC browser, worldox/web mobile has been dramatically improved. The interface is virtually indistinguishable from your desktop, and it even remembers a specific user’s favorites list, bookmarks and search templates. But this is not the main point of worldox/web mobile.

The killer feature of worldox/web mobile is the ability of users to access the Worldox document store using their PDA. Further, this is not device specific: it works with Blackberrys, Palms, and Windows mobile devices. It even works with iPhones. Basically, it should work with any handheld that has Java-enabled web access. I have it set up for my Palm Treo 700p and it works great.

You can search the document store by description, file number, date created, etc. (full profile searching is coming in a later release) and then view or email the document. So from your Blackberry you can find and email a document to a client or yourself. Attorneys I have spoken with who tend to be wedded to their Blackberrys are enthusiastic about this option.

worldox/web mobile will be available by the end of this month.

Hyperlinks Using Worldox

Many firms need a supplemental way to track pleadings or other documents in large cases. Traditionally these were similar to deposition summaries before it became possible to do those electronically.  Building on this sort of tradition, one way to do this is to create a kind of super Table of Contents - a list of all the pleadings in a particular jurisdiction. You can then set list the actual document ID number (assuming you are using a document management system such as Worldox) and up hyperlinks to the documents. Then the attorney can see at a glance all the relevant pleadings, as well as possibly other information, such as when the document was filed.

There are a few tricks to creating these hyperlinks in Worldox, however. If you are using WordPerfect there is no issue - Worldox just opens up, you select the document to hyperlink to, and you are done. However if you are using Word, the traditional Word File Open screen first seems to pop up and lists only the document ID numbers. Not very useful. However, if you click on the “browse” button (at the top of the window and to the right), Worldox opens up and you can select the document desired.

There is an additional trick if you are linking to PDF files. When you go to select the PDF file you get the pop up screen saying that Word may not be able to open a PDF file and do you want to open with the native application. Normally, that would be the proper choice. However, in this instance if you select “open with native application” the document actually opens in Acrobat - a hyperlink is not created. To create the hyperlink, you have to tell it to “open with Word” - and the hyperlink is created properly.

However, rather than going to the trouble of creating an entirely new and separate document, there are several other options that may be more efficient. 

The first, lo-tech one, is to create a code and put it in the description or comment field.  Thus “pld_MA” would be pleadings in Massachusetts; “pld_CA” would be pleadings in California, and so on. If you wanted to include additional information, you could do so in the comments field, e.g., “filed June 17, 2008.” Thus a search for “pld_MA” would find the equivalent of the document described above. The advantage to this is that the documents are much easier to consult and manipulate and the list is dynamic - you don’t have to revise a document, etc. You can scroll through the documents with the viewer much more quickly than you can open separate documents through hyperlinks. The only disadvantage is that you rely on people to enter the codes correctly (on the other hand, you rely on them to create the listing correctly too).

A second option would be to use the “Project” feature of Worldox GX SR1. You could create a “project” that contains all the relevant pleadings for a jurisdiction. The project is searchable and shows you the list of documents. This is also dynamic in that you can add or subtract documents from the project at will.

While the comfort of having a paper listing is reassuring, there may be better ways to accomplish the same thing.  Experiment with it.

Drag & Drop Emails Firm-Wide with Worldox

Most often, users create their own Quick Profile Drag & Drop Worldox folders in Outlook. The reason for this is simple: different attorneys are working on different files, so there is no “one size fits all.”

However, there may be times where creating firm-wide drag & drop folders is appropriate. Either for large clients that everyone works on, or small firms where client work is widely shared.  When a user creates an individual Drag & Drop folder, they put their initials into the “author” field. How does this work on firm-wide items?

If you create a firm-wide drag & drop folder (the system administrator will want to do this through the Admin program), instead of putting a user ID into the “author” field, put *WDUSER. Assuming the author field is linked to the Worldox user list, this field will be populated by the person logged into Worldox when the email is dragged to the Worldox folder.

Attaching an Email to Another Email

Typically in Outlook you cannot attach an email to another email, you have to forward the email you want to “attach.” 

However, if you are using Worldox, you can in fact attach an email stored in Worldox to another email.  If you open the new email, then click the paper clip to attach a file, the Worldox screen will appear. Select the email you wish to attach.  The only difference here is that instead of double-clicking to attach (as you would with a Word document), you right-click and select “Open.” This attaches the email.

It had never occurred to me to do this until a client asked me about it the other day. Live and learn.

Correction:  Tom Mighell wrote me noting that you CAN in fact attach one email to another in Outlook. The Paperclip (which is what most people use) attaches a file. But if you select Insert | Item from the menu bar of an email you are working on, it gives you the opportunity to insert another email. Thanks, Tom.

Saving Documents as Versions in Worldox

A common problem in collaborating on documents is the following: you send a document to someone via email. They return it with revisions. However, in the process, either by storing it in their own document management system or for other reasons, they have renamed the document. Nevertheless, you want to save this document as a version of the one you sent out.

For some time I thought the best (and only) way to do this was to create a new, blank, version of your document and cut and paste the received document into it. But there is a better way.

When you receive the email, click “Save As” on the attachment. Instead of just filling out the profile, click the “Same As” button on the profile screen and select “Same As.” You can then browse Worldox, select the original document and save the returned as a new version of the original document.  Much simpler. Of course, this theoretically would let you save two entirely different documents as “versions,” so some care should be exercised. Still, a much better way to proceed.

"Reverse Lookup" from Outlook to Worldox

People generally know that Worldox GX provides “drag and drop” integration with Outlook. You set up a QuickProfile, which appears in your Outlook Inbox under a “Worldox” heading. You can also have sub-matters for clients with multiple matters.

However, I was not fully aware - until a client asked me whether it was possible - that if you click on the “folder” under Worldox it provides a kind of “reverse lookup” without having to go through a Worldox lookup.  Thus if you have, say “Smith v. Jones” that you can drag and drop to, if you click on the “Smith v. Jones” folder, you will see several options for lookups. They are similar but not identical.

The first button, which will be labeled “Smith v. Jones” will find all the files that you have saved using the client/matter/doctype settings defined in the QuickProfile (regardless of whether they were saved by the drag & drop process).

The second button will find all the email messages under the given matter, regardless of who saved them.

The third button will find all documents categorized as “email” regardless of whether they are email messages (assuming that you have Document Type defined as a sub-directory). For example, I sometimes prepare lengthy substantive emails in a word processor and save them as “email.” This lookup would find those as well.

For attorneys who spend a large part of their time in e-mail, this “reverse lookup” feature can save them significant amounts of time since they do not have to leave Outlook to look up emails for a client.

"Personal" Files in Worldox

One of the questions that always comes up when implementing a document management system is “what do I do with my personal documents - I don’t want to put them into the system.”

In large part the answer to this question depends on the firm culture.  The “hard line” approach is to say that all documents created on firm time and firm computers belong to the firm: strictly speaking there is no such thing as “personal” documents. However, very few firms take this approach.

There are several other approaches. Worldox ships with a “personal” profile group that allows users to store documents on their own C: drive. These documents, however, are not indexed and not backed up, so they are truly “personal” and could easily be lost.  A variant on this scheme is to create a profile group that points to the user’s “home” directory on the network (typically the H: or U: drive). In this case, documents are not indexed but are backed up as part of standard network backup.

The last approach requires more administrative time, but offers the best of both worlds. You create a “users” client, with each user having their own “matter” under that. Then, using the Worldox security options, you deny access to the “users” client to all users. You then let individual users back into having access to their own specific “matter.”  In this case, the personal files are backed up and indexed. In the case of emergency they can also be accessed by the firm administrator.

A variant on this scheme is appropriate for partners who do a significant amount of pro bono and/or personal/rainmaking activity that they do not want to have available to everyone.  The partner has their own “client” with matters defined as they wish. They can then grant access only to themselves, their assistant, etc.

Worldox and the Road Warrior

As more and more attorneys are using laptops as their main PC, I increasingly get asked: “I want to take ALL the files for client X with me for a weekend, a trip, to the client’s office, etc.”  Worldox offers – or can be made to offer – several ways to do this.

If you also use Worldox when you are offline, the simplest way to do this is simply to so a search for all the documents on a given matter, then hit Ctrl-A to select them all, right-click and select “Send To” - “Local Mirror.”  When you are off line these documents are searchable. In addition, if you change or add any documents, you will be prompted to upload them when you plug your computer back into the network.

However, there may be situations where this is not sufficient. You can also configure Worldox to send a given set of files to a USB drive - as I described in a blog last October.

Similarly, if you want to send the files to a specified location on your hard drive, say c:\wdox, you can do that the same way you send to a USB drive or any other location. You should also your IS people how to do this. If you are adventurous, you can copy the settings in Worldox for sending files to the A: drive, change the drive location and give it a new description.

Adding a Signature to Emails Sent from Worldox

MAPI Integration with email systems used by practice management programs such as Time Matters or Amicus does not provide the ability to automatically populate a signature which opening a new email, the way Outlook and other programs do. This is a constant source of irritation, because for every email you have to add the signature manually.

However, Worldox provides a partial workaround to this issue.

To create a Worldox signature, click on the Email tab, then Edit | Signature. A box appears that lets you enter an email signature. You must replicate the signature that appears in Outlook by
entering the desired address in the box below. The address must be in plain text or html format, with a blank line at the top and bottom.

When you right-click on a document in the Worldox file list and select “email,” it will insert your signature in the email program window.

While this function does not apply to the Reply or Forward functions from the email viewer window it is certainly better than nothing.

Sizing the Viewer in Worldox

I’ve often wished I could size the viewer window in Worldox and have it retain its size - this would be especially useful on newer, larger monitors, not to mention 2-monitor displays.

The other day I discovered that there is a setting that lets you do this.  Fist size the window to be the way you want. Then, on the menu bar of the Viewer window, select “Window” and then “Save Size/Position.” 

Learn something new every day. As a friend of mine used to say: "every year I learn 10% more and fall 15% further behind."