Does It Compute?

Upgrading to Worldox GX4?

If upgrading to Worldox GX4 is on your firm’s “To Do” list (and it should be), there are some decisions to be made and some things to watch out for. Some of the items on the following list have been learned from hard experience!

By default, Worldox GX4 prominently features a “Save Outside Worldox” button every time you save document. Does the firm wish to leave this enabled (thereby encouraging users to not use Worldox and impacting the integrity of its document store)?

Many firms were on Office 2010 when they installed GX3. However, in the interim you may have had users upgrade to later versions, Office 2016, etc. You MUST upgrade the version of Outlook on the indexer to the latest version of Office that anyone in the office has used, even on a “test” basis. If you do not do this, your Worldox text indexes will crash and fail to build.

If the firm has used Outlook Meeting function extensively and attaches documents to a meeting, be aware that this function no longer works the same way in GX4. There are two choices: (a) drag and drop a document to a meeting file (there have been some reports that this option is problematic) or (b) have your consultant reset Worldox so that this feature is re-enabled.

Similarly, if you have stored Word templates (i.e. actual templates with a *.dotx extension) in Worldox, the ability to edit them is disabled in GX4 by default. You will have to re-enable this option.

If the firm has extensively used Quick Profiles, you may encounter some flaky behavior. This does not seem to be systematic, but is something you should watch out for.

If you do use the “Save Outside Worldox” feature, you may find that it pops up twice when saving Acrobat files. This is due to changes in the Acrobat integration over differing versions and is relatively easily fixed.

Locating Frequently Used Files in Worldox

A request I often get from users is the ability to see specific files that they work on all the time. This is typically the case with administrators who maintain a number of spreadsheets, or users who need standard forms as a basis for new documents. There are three easy ways to accomplish this.

My traditional “quick and dirty” solution was to put some code into the description of the file that will not occur in nature, such as “JHxxx”. Then create a bookmark for the files with that designation.  This will be dynamic, you can add or remove files from your list by adding or removing the “JHxxx” from the description.

With Worldox GX4 there are two new options.

First, you can use the new category feature to assign a category (such as JH Files) to the desired files. You can then search by category and create a bookmark for that category.

Second, you can manually mark a given file as a “Favorite” (there will then be a red heart at the left of the file listing). You can search under “Favorite Files” for Personal | Added for those files. Creating a dynamic bookmark will let you instantly access your Favorite Files.

Nine Years of Does It Compute? 900 Posts

I started writing “Does It Compute?” in the spring of 2007, 9 years ago. I was particularly pleased by the Question Mark in the title. This is my 900th post.

In the first five years or so, I blogged several times a week about all the software I supported: TimeMatters, PCLaw, Amicus Attorney, Worldox, as well as general computer subjects.

In the last few years, as I have restricted my practice to focus almost exclusively on Worldox, my blog level has dropped to about one a week.

My book, Worldox in One Hour for Lawyers, published by the ABA, codified and systematized many of my posts.

That’s a lot of posts. I hope people have found it useful.

New Features in Worldox update

A number of updates since Worldox GX4 was released last summer have not only provided the usual bug fixes, but also have been adding new features. I already commented on some of these a  month ago in my blog of 11/30.

Since then, there have been a couple other substantial new features added in the 12/17 release.

Users have frequently requested the ability to save a given document to multiple matters, doc types, etc. A common example would be an email that references multiple matters. Worldox has never been able to do that.  Now, however, with GX4, an equivalent capacity exists with the new ability to create a link file that links a specific document to multiple matters (within the same Cabinet). Note that this functionality exists only after a document has first been saved, you still cannot save or link a document to multiple matters when you first save it.

Once it is set up, this feature allows you to use the “Send To” command to “send” a file to a Worldox Link File WDL. When you click on that option and click on the “Add” button (the green “+” at the top), you get a menu option. The menu only displays fields that are folders in the Worldox structure. So if your DocType field is not a folder, it will not display. Select the matter you want to link to. Links are created as *.wdl files in the respective folder with the doc id as the original.

When you do a search for the master document, all the links will also appear.

In order to use this function, you will have to create a “send to” option for the link. Ask your consultant. Or, if you have my “Worldox in One Hour for Lawyers”, instructions are on p. 72 of the first edition, or p. 88 of the second edition. The run command is %wddllpath%/wdstwd.exe and the parameters are /PF=%1 /AsWDL.

For firms with an administrator who has been trained to use some of the features of the Worldox Admin program, there are now Admin reports, so that you can print out various settings. This will be a huge advantage in documenting your settings and the rights of various users, ethical walls, etc. Within WD Admin, you simply choose the “print” function from the relevant file menu option.

And, as a reminder: you can now drag & drop files directly from the Worldox interface to your desktop or an open window in Windows Explorer, as well as import files to Worldox from the Windows Explorer interface.