Does It Compute?

Training Options for Worldox

Most firms, when they install Worldox (or any other major program) do some initial training. After that, refresher/update/new hire training tends to be a crapshoot.

No matter how you analyze it, the ROI of training is very significant. When I do refresher training, I frequently get repeated “gee, I didn’t know you could do that” responses. If training takes one hour, and a user saves 3-5 minutes a day through increased productivity, then their time savings over a year is 10-15 hours a year. Not to mention lower levels of frustration. Click here to a more detailed consideration I posted a couple of years ago. For an extended analysis of refresher training, click here.

What sort of training is best/available? There is little doubt that the best training comes from an in-house classroom setup. But even before COVID, hardly anybody did that any more. There are two other main options.

First, “in person” Zoom/Webex type setup. In this setup, the trainer and students are live and there is the critical ability for users to ask questions. One critical differentiator here is whether to Worldox configuration used for training is a “canned” demo data set or whether the training uses the firm’s actual data. The latter is much more effective, because users can relate to their actual clients.

The second form of training comes in self-paced modules. Frequently these are little 3-5 snippets each dealing with a particular function, sometimes up to 20 minutes or so. Again, these are canned demo data with no chance for feedback. Worldox has a set of these available under https://www.worldox.com/support/how-to-videos/.

Other major vendors of Worldox training include Dox Advisors’ Worldox Academy (https://www.doxadvisors.com/worldoxtraining). Affinity Consulting’s “Affinity University” also offers a large selection of Worldox courses https://affinityuniversity.com/course/worldox/

Lastly, there are two schools of thought regarding content. Traditionally, training has been a half day or full day and has tried to cover every feature, frequently with a detailed manual/training book. In my view, this tends to overwhelm users and is, I think, counter-productive. On a good day, with a very good instructor, users may recall 70% of the material - and that percentage drops off sharply as the day/session goes on.

I prefer a shorter training session with a followup 3-4 weeks later, after users have gotten used to the program. This allows for reinforcement and lets users ask specific questions based on their workflow. I try also to have a third “admin” session for administrators to cover some advanced and administrative features that not everyone will have rights to use.

I use a “Cheat Sheet” documentation rather than a step-by-step training manual because users can then refer to it later. This, together with a “Frequently Asked Questions” document, are available on my web site at www.heckmanco.com.

Worldox integration with Microsoft Teams

More and more firms are using some sort of portal or file sharing application to communicate with clients working from home. The workflow for file sharing varies widely from firm to firm. I did an extensive post about this back in July. Click here to see it.

Worldox has recently released an integration with Microsoft Teams. Obviously this means that the people the firm is collaborating also have to have Teams/Office 365, but this is increasingly the case with law firms.

The integration creates a Team named with the client/matter number for the given matter. This may seem rigid, but is essential to prevent users from going wild and creating random, duplicative Teams. Within each team, users can create “Channels” to specify what exactly they are sharing with clients and define who has rights to see and manage the contents.

From within Worldox, you can then share one or more files with the defined Team/Channel (and if necessary create a new Channel for that team). Files can either be just copied from Worldox or checked out (which would mean they can no longer be edited from within Worldox). After the client has worked on them (or whatever), they can be checked back in, as a Version of the original file if necessary. Unfortunately, it is not currently possible to add a comment when creating a version, but hopefully that is in the works.

Once a file is in Teams, the Teams functionality takes over in terms of editing and collaborating on the document: Worldox no longer has anything else to do with it.

The best part of this integration, especially compared with some other offerings, is that it is free. There is no charge from Worldox, and many firms have Teams as part of Office 365.

New Worldox Features

For most firms, Worldox is “set it and forget it.” Users are trained on features that exist when the program is installed but then never revisit available functionality until it comes time to update the entire program. This has two drawbacks. First, it leads to a slow degeneration of skills and Worldox use becomes less efficient over time. Equally important, it ignores any new features that may have been added to the program. Recently Worldox has been rolling out substantial new features without calling it a “new version.” What are some of these features?

Web 3.1. Worldox released Web 3.0/3.1 almost a year ago. This is a pure browser based link to the Worldox document store that makes it practical to access Worldox without having to log in to an office PC remotely or set up a Citrix/Terminal Server configuration. When a Word document is opened or saved, the browser pops up and opens or saves directly from your network server. Outlook can now also be integrated with Web 3.1. This can be a life-saver for Mac/iPad users since it now lets them access Worldox natively.

Email Agent. The email agent provides two very powerful new features. First, it allows users to file emails in Worldox from their smart phone. You used to be able to do that only if your office PC was on and Outlook open. This is no longer necessary. Second, it lets you tag folders in your Outlook inbox so that emails dragged to them are automatically copied/moved (depending on the option you select) to Worldox in a single step with no further intervention.

Teams integration. Worldox is now offering a Teams-based client portal. You can send files to Teams, edit them collaboratively through Teams and then re-import them back to Worldox, as a version of the original file if desired. Teams does not provide the same email security that many other portals do, but it is free if you have current versions of Microsoft Office.

Clio link. Worldox is now offering a third-party link with Clio. This lets you look up Worldox documents from within Clio. It does not, however, let you export Worldox documents to the Clio client portal. Thus it provides an extremely useful link to Worldox, but short of full-fledged portal functionality. After the initial setup, it is inexpensive at $5/user/mo for every Clio license.

For all of these options, make sure you are upgraded to the latest Worldox build.

Searching for Numbers in Worldox

By default Worldox does not index numbers as they are generally not probative. Dates of the month for example.

However, what if you need to search for the section or paragraph number of tax or other governmental regulations? If you try to search, for example, for IRM section 5.8.5.7, the search will fail.

There are two things that let you work around this problem. First, Worldox treats the periods as word separators (like the end of a sentence). If you replace the periods with spaces, e.g. “5 8 5 7" instead of “5.8.5.7." the search will work. However, it will be extremely slow, since it is doing a brute force search and not using the index.

If you can use a part of the designation that is indexed, it will be faster: “IRM 5 8 5 7". Also, the fewer numbers you use, the faster the search will be and may give you the same results. Chances are that “IRM 5 8 5" will give the same results as “IRM 5 8 5 7" and will be much faster.

A little experimentation with the various options should let you work around the issue.

Pushing the Envelope with Worldox

Many databases are structured to process large numbers of operations at once. Define what you want to do and the program repeats the operation until all items are processed, documents or emails created. Could be several hundred. Document Management Systems, in contrast, are set up to deal with one document at a time. So how do you create an equivalent to batch processing? Some operations are built in - moving or copying hundreds of documents at a time (assuming the system allows it, since this could be construed as a security risk).

This has come up several times recently with various clients, and here’s an outline of a process that could be modified as needed.

Step one. The firm receives hundreds of emails in connection with debt collection, real estate or other transactional operations. Worldox cannot scan the subject line or content of an email to identify particular client/matter numbers. However, these emails belong to one general operation, so you can create a specific “matter” to deal with them. Set up a rule in Outlook to move all such incoming emails (which typically come from or have a CC to a specific mailbox) to a particular Outlook folder. For a variety of reasons having to do with Outlook they frequently cannot be moved directly to Worldox.

Step Two. Using the enhanced Worldox email capacities introduced late last year, configure that sub-folder to move emails to a particular Worldox matter. You may have to create multiple matters by date depending on the volume. Worldox starts to have difficulty if you have more than 15,000 or so documents in a single folder.

You can then search that repository by matter number or client name depending on how your system is structured and if desired move specific emails to the main matter for a given client.

Worldox and IT Providers

As a consultant who does only Worldox, I rely on a firm’s IT provider to deal with server setup, general IT infrastructure, etc. Unfortunately many IT firms have some fundamental misconceptions as to how Worldox works, and this can lead to some nasty issues.

The main reason for this is that IT people are looking for an SQL or other server-based database. The key thing about Worldox is that it is NOT a SQL application. Nothing ever runs from the server. This has the advantage that it is extensively and quickly configurable and not very resource intensive.

The Worldox program sits on the same file server that contains your data. Client computers access it; they check for any updates or changes when the program opens, and save any user changes when the Worldox client closes. This means that once the program is installed locally, IT never has to touch end user computers for any updates or upgrades. The client install is run by a command line (something like w:\apps\worldox\wdmirror.exe /I). Worldox clients are NEVER (and in fact cannot be) installed from an *.msi file.

The piece that leads to the most confusion is the Worldox Indexer. Every time Worldox opens or saves a file it also puts metadata information (client, matter, etc.) into stub files in a location on the Worldox program directory. The indexer sits on a separate indexer work station (more about that later) and checks for any stub files every 10 or 15 seconds. When it finds any information it adds it to the main metadata index on the server. Every night the indexer rebuilds the indexes locally (for performance reasons) and then uploads them to the main index on the file server. Indexes are re-initialized weekly so that they are always “clean.”

While many IT firms set up the indexer to run a server OS, functionally it is NOT a server. What defines a server? Information or programs on a server are accessed by multiple users – thus Microsoft sells server licenses that allow 10, 50, 100 people to log into a server simultaneously. Administrators frequently use the indexer to troubleshoot potential Worldox issues, but no end users ever access the Worldox indexer. The indexer is a specialized workstation that logs in to the server (like other users) to perform certain tasks. While it may run server software, in fact it is just a tricked out workstation. So when IT starts talking about the “Worldox server” it is confusing because there is no such animal.

Understanding this structure will save a lot of headaches when setting up and configuring Worldox.

Are All Your Documents Searchable?

The goal of a document management system such as Worldox is to provide the firm with a single electronic repository of all its documents, emails, scanned documents (PDFs) that is completely searchable and indexed.

While such a system is known to break down in a number of ways – non-compliance by users, failure to store emails, etc., there is a “hidden” hole that is potentially much more serious. And that is the failure to OCR PDF documents that have been scanned or received from clients or other firms. When you scan a document, the resulting PDF is an “electronic xerox” – a picture of the original. Unlike a Word document, you cannot search for anything it in, it is just an image. The process of Optical Character Recognition (“OCR”) “reads” the document and creates a text overlay that enables the document to be searched and indexed. Many scanners are set not to OCR documents because vendors levy an additional per-page charge for that function. Studies have shown that for most firms, 20% to 30% of their PDFs are not OCR’d and hence not searchable. I recently ran diagnostics on some clients, and that number seems to be accurate. In some cases the number is dramatically higher.

Not only will users not be able to locate information they need, but in terms of reviewing your document store relating to discovery, records requests, subpoena responses, issues during corporate transactions, etc., the firm could face serious liability if it fails to locate and produce required documents or information. Sanctions due to incomplete/improper document production are every attorney’s nightmare.

There are a number of solutions to this issue, apart from paying your copier company extra money. Some PDF programs (such as Nuance) let you set up a “watch” directory. Scan documents to the watch directory and they are OCR’d.

The solution I prefer is a program called Symphony, from Trumpet, Inc. Symphony sits on your Worldox indexer and OCRs all documents stored in Worldox. It will also OCR your backlog – all those documents that already exist but were not previously text searchable. At $50/user/year (tied to the number of Worldox users) with no page count, the program is extremely affordable. There are also more advanced, somewhat more expensive, options that will greatly enhance your productivity when scanning documents. Check it out at www.trumpetinc.com.

One way or another, all firms need a solution to this issue.

Worldox and Office Administrators

It may be subjective but I seem to be encountering an increasing number of office administrators who tell me “I hardly use Worldox any more because I don’t deal with client matters.” This is based on a misconception.

For most of my clients I set up an “Admin” cabinet to deal with just this issue. The Admin cabinet contains firm and personnel information. Thus the “clients” could be physical plant, insurance, 401k, banking, CLE, personnel records, management committee, partners, vendors, etc. The “matters” might various years for financial information, specific employees for HR information, different vendors, etc.

This is more secure and more efficient than saving that kind of data on a network drive or a local computer. Local computers are the worst because people that should have access may not, and there is also the question of data loss when a computer fails.

The Admin cabinet can be locked down so that access is available only to certain people (partners, accounting, etc.). However, on top of that, specific areas or even files can be restricted further to only certain individuals within the Admin group. This is more efficient that a network drive where further security is not readily available.

Also, the Admin cabinet offers all of Worldox’s other advantages in terms of searchability and locating documents (“find me all the CLE sessions that Attorney X attended last year”).

In short, there is no good reason to keep administrative/management information outside Worldox if it is configured properly.

Worldox, File Sharing and Portals

Exchanging and sharing files are a critical part of your interaction with clients. What functionality do you need and what are your options? Email just doesn’t cut it any more. There is a proliferation of copies of documents and a lack of security that makes email a bad choice as your go-to option.

Then there are basic file sharing apps such as Dropbox and Box. These are very popular due to their ease of use for a single user. But ease of use frequently correlates to lack of security, especially with Dropbox. And despite recent advances of “business” versions of these programs, these don’t really meet your needs for business communications.

That leaves higher-end “portal” options that offer secure file exchange, version control and in some cases other calendaring and “deal room” options.

As with selecting and configuring any software the main thing to decide is what functionality you need.

• Do you simply need to securely exchange files?
• Do you need to exchange large numbers of files?
• Do you need a portal where clients can review and edit a selected subset of their documents?
• Do you need real-time simultaneous collaboration on files, with multiple people contributing edits?
• Do you just need to upload and download files from your document management system, or do you also need to maintain version control with respect to your main document repository?
• Do you need to control what sort of access clients have to their documents (edit, read only, blocking the ability to print, etc.)?
• What short of tracking/auditing of your document history do you need?

In short, what you put in to a system depends on what you want to get out of it.

In addition to simple file sharing mentioned above, Google Docs and Microsoft Teams offer collaboration features, although at present not linked to document management system. Worldox is developing an integration with Teams that will let you manage documents from Worldox, import edited documents back into Worldox as versions, etc. I am currently working with a beta copy, but no release date has been set as yet.

Among higher-end applications, there are three main legal-oriented portals that work with Worldox: Legal Anywhere, Sharefile, and Hubshare. Aside from similar baseline functionality, each one offers slightly different functionality, so you need to consider closely what functions you need and match them with the respective programs.

Legal Anywhere is generally the most full-featured and flexible of the portal options. It is aimed at larger and longer-lasting deals, and features things like deal rooms, great flexibility in locking down and limiting access to documents. Granular rights can be assigned to specific users and even specific files. It is based on an upload/download functionality and within Legal Anywhere is based on a directory structure that mirrors the Worldox structure. Like other portals, it can scrub metadata from documents copied to the extranet.

Sharefile, as its name implies, is primarily a secure file sharing application. Instead of attaching a file to an email, it puts the file in a secure location in the cloud and sends an email prompting the recipient to download the file. This offers very good security and also enables you to transfer much larger files than would be possible with standard email. It also offers meta-data scrubbing and a companion product, RightSignature, that gives you electronic document signing. Sharefile has an add-on integration module that integrates it more seamlessly with Worldox.

Hubshare also offers basic one-way integration with Worldox. You can upload files from Worldox to Hubshare, but you have to get them back manually. Full integration is lacking and the program requires an SQL installation to work.

One of these products may be right for your firm.

Worldox Training

Many if not most firms skimp on training, not just for Worldox but for most software. This is always a mistake since the cost of training will be more than offset by the losses due to low productivity and inefficient work habits caused by inadequate training.

Historically the most efficient means of training is in-person, on-site classes. People pay more attention in a classroom setting and trainers can make adjustments when they see people looking confused or not paying attention. Students don’t have the opportunity to check their email or make phone calls when they are supposed to be paying attention. But hardly anybody does that any more.

That leaves “live” online training using the firm’s own data and an instructor who can answer questions, and tailor the class as needed. When that is not possible or inefficient (only one or two people need training), there are a number of “canned” online training options.

A number of consulting firms have posted training videos on YouTube, but this is hit or miss. Worldox itself has about 50 short (2-5 minute) videos on its web site (www.worldox.com/howtovideos).

One of the most useful options is DoxAdvisors’ “Worldox Academy,” which has 18 videos totaling about 50 minutes that mimic how an organized training session would present Worldox. This is available for $99 from https://www.doxadvisors.com/worldoxtraining. Other more extensive options are also available.

When doing more organized training an excellent followup is “tip of the week”. After the original training, if a firm sends out a “tip” (provided by their consultant) once or twice a week it can significantly reinforce the original training. I have a series of about 18 “tips” that I have used in the past. If a firm sends out a “tip” twice a week, this will last about 2 months and can substantially reinforce/improve the effectiveness of the training.