The Nextpoint Lab blog now at nextpoint.com/blog

Great news! We’ve consolidated our blogs to make it easier for our readers.

You can still keep up to date with vital Nextpoint releases, eDiscovery and litigation best practice tips, and hot industry news at our longstanding Nextpoint blog found at www.nextpoint.com/blog.

We have kept the content here at nextpointlab.com available for everyone, however. It’s just the kind of nice guys we are.

Please update your bookmarks.

Team Nextpoint.

Do You Know What Your Data is Doing? Introducing Nextpoint’s New Account Dashboard

Your data is busy. We know that most of you are not just uploading a set amount of data to the Nextpoint platform and letting it sit there month after month. You’re collecting it, reviewing it, adding new data, and moving it around to different databases. The amount of data you start with each month is rarely the same figure you have at the end of the month. For that reason, we have added even more information and ways to track your usage, so that you and your clients will understand exactly what your charges are.

As you can see in the screenshot above, you now have detailed columns breaking out all of your ongoing data storage into useful categories. We’re not changing the way your data is tracked, but making it more transparent and easy to follow. In addition, you can now view all of your data usage by the month. That means you and your clients now have a snapshot of how much data is in their account and how it has been used during any month. You see all of the same numbers, but it is now organized to make it even easier for clients to understand all of the work you have done with their data each month.

The Names Change, the Data Stays the Same

In addition, we have changed the names for each category of data usage. In the past, Cloud Preservation, Discovery Cloud, or Trial Cloud users could look up data in use under a different tab for each application. Now, data is tracked under the tabs  Collect, Review, and Prepare. We think these tabs are much more descriptive and accurately describe the actions our users are performing. This way you can easily track your data as it is being used in a particular phase of litigation.

For example in the Collection view below you can see your social media and website collections activity, identifying how much data has been collected. Under the Review tab, you will see the usage of your data under eDiscovery review, and for Prepare, the movement of data being prepped for trial.

 

We hope these changes make managing litigation even simpler than before. We made most of these changes in direct response to requests and comments from users about their data usage. Look for even more changes in the months to come.

 

Nextpoint Grid View: Even More Customizable

At Nextpoint, we understand that it is crucial for eDiscovery and litigation tools to be as fast and cost-effective as possible. To that end, we periodically introduce a major enhancements, like our review metrics designed to help you track and monitor the progress of your review. But we are also continually tweaking our interface in response to customer requests to make sure it works the way they do.

Today, we’re proud to introduce a new and improved Grid View, our streamlined interface for browsing your documents. We have already introduced a number of new features in Gridview making it more customizable. Now we have even more resizing options, including a new feature to save the custom views for individual reviewers.

In the past, a reviewer might resize their grid view to allow them to quickly scan the information most important to them. Now, those changes are automatically saved, so that each reviewer can preserve their custom column widths and other choices as they move through their review. It’s just one small way we’re trying to help reviewers quickly scan and precess information they need for a case.

For example, in the Grid View layout above, users can choose to change, resize and manipulate any of the columns, a process which is now smoother than ever. In addition, all of our Nextpoint applications will remember those choices and display the same column widths and layout on every page of search results that reviewer looks at. As always, comments and feedback are highly welcomed and encouraged.  Feel free to email us at  thelab atsymbol nextpoint dot com.

Custom Field of Type “Paragraph”

Sometimes long bits of text are annoying – you want them stored but you don’t want them taking up valuable screen space… but sometimes those long bits of text are important and justify expanding the view to make them always viewable in their entirety. For the second scenario, we’ve recently introduced the “paragraph” custom field type.

With “Paragraph” the input blank expands as you type, exposing any text that you’re entering automatically.

The text will display, in it’s entirety, when other users/reviewers visit as well, providing a way to share notes or longer values that justify the real estate without the need to scroll +/- copy/paste.

It’s a great new feature and we hope you get some mileage out of it!

Madison Ruby Conference

Madison Ruby Conference (and the encompassing Forward Technology Festival) are wonderful showcases for Madison and our tech scene, offering folks from in and out of town alike a chance to learn, network, and just appreciate all that the area has to offer.  We’re excited this year to be leveling up from “enthusiastic attendees” to “enthusiastic attendees, that also sponsor“.

So, why sponsor?  The desire to put a little back into the community is a big reason.  We love Madison and we want to play a part in raising the talent level in the area by helping to grow it organically and by helping attract folks to the area.  If the talent pool becomes a bit more diverse as part of the process (a clear goal of Madison Ruby organizers) what a huge bonus that’d be (!).

Of course, it ain’t all philanthropy.  We want our name out there in the list of exciting local shops. We’re hiring and we want you to know it!  We want you to know that we’re conquering real issues with a lot of meat on the bone; developing solutions that not only tackle issues in an intelligent way, but in a way that our clients actually want to use and benefit from.  We’ve been bringing new technologies to a legal space that has been *coughcough* behind.  We’ve brought the small-team mentality to the space and have been leading the charge into cloud hosted & delivered solutions since before AWS got out of beta. So, come find us at the event!  We’ll have a booth setup and will, of course, also be hanging out around the conference and at the various events.

Adjustable Columns in Gridview

Since the launching of “Gridview”, it has quickly become the most popular format for viewing documents in Trial Cloud and Discover Cloud.  Shortly thereafter, we started offering some customization which also became quite popular and is leveraged in almost every Trial Cloud and Discovery Cloud instance.

Another enhancement has now been introduced, allowing you to view values that are a bit too long for the standard column widths.  Here a portion of the “Author” field is not viewable by default:

Dragging to extend the column, we can now see the full value:

A simple change to make things a bit easier when sorting through the list of values brought back from a search.  Enjoy!

LinkedIn Authentication

LinkedIn has recently made modifications to their authentication system requiring users to re-authenticate every 60 days.  Expiring access in this way is generally done to circumvent situations where a 3rd party was granted permission long ago and you haven’t gotten around to barring them access to your data.

To re-authenticate, click “Settings” on your LinkedIn feed, then select your authentication method as pictured here.  (the email option is typically intended be used only for getting a link to someone who does not have access to CloudPreservation)

As the feed’s owner, you will be notified again when the authorization period is expiring.  Failure to (re)grant that permission will result in CloudPreservation no longer being able to obtain/capture your data from LinkedIn. As always, the actual authentication involves CloudPreservation sending you to a LinkedIn server to provide your credentials and grant the permission.  CloudPreservation will never obtain or store your personal LinkedIn password.

New Email Notifications

As an instance admin for CP, keeping track of your user’s crawl authorization statuses can be tricky.  Notifications are sent to the user to let them know the social media site requires them to provide re-authorization, but if they don’t take action… you need to know to get on their case!  In order to alleviate this issue we have added a new field to CP cases:

A look at the new changes in the CP tab under account management

This field is available under the CP tab in “Manage account”. The list takes a group of comma separated emails of whom you want to be notified whenever authorizations or reauthorizations are needed. This makes the process more visible and you won’t have to mentally remember to remind Bob down the hall he needs to reauthorize his twitter crawl. The field can be either set at the same time the instance is made or later modified at any time from the CP tab using the “Modify Repository” utility.

The BCC field can be changed at any time from the Modify Repository tool.

The other new CC function is small, but helpful. When either uploading a new file or a new version of a file in TC you can now CC yourself alongside the users you want to notify. This will help you better keep up on TC file changes.  The recipient list will be included in the message delivered to each user, allowing an easier audit of who received the notification.

New CC function available for TC file uploads

Redaction Auditing

Electronic redaction in DiscoveryCloud is not only more failsafe than it’s “magic marker” counterpart – it saves time in the process.  It’s that same “failsafe” requirement that makes proper auditing a bit tricky — make the redaction permanent… except when it’s necessary to see what was under there in the first place.  Newly available to DiscoveryCloud is a feature that does just that — making auditing available users who themselves have the authority to redact.

Documents that have redactions made in DiscoveryCloud will have an additional icon in their “Viewer Tools” section.

A view of the document pre-redaction will be temporarily displayed.  The version of the document available for (normal) export / production is not effected by using this audit mode.  Navigating away from the document will not leave the setting on.  Likewise, any other users viewing the document at the same time would see the redacted copy.

Checks & balances are in place to prevent production of unredacted images remain in place, ensuring that those copies are provided only when explicitly requested.  We hope this feature comes in handy and makes the process of auditing redactions simple and straightforward.

Placeholder Images

Transmitting images utilizing Privilege Protect (or exporting) is a common use case, but some filetypes just don’t have a logical image:  What does a pst “look like”?  To account for this issue, a “placeholder” image can be employed to fill a spot – providing the ability to have something indicating that there is a native file that does not have images available.

Placeholders may be assigned as part of a Bulk Action:

In DiscoveryCloud, placeholders may also be assigned as part of Bates number assignment/stamping:

This functionality will make bates application – and more importantly: production itself – a more consistent process.  The functionality is available immediately in Discovery Cloud and Trial Cloud.