Grid view

Grid View is going to be great, as it lets you get an overview of your documents in a more compact, easy to scan package — similar to how you can easily scan for information contained in a spreadsheet. Lining your documents’ data up like this makes it much easier to intuitively sort and browse too, so you can find just the data you need more effectively.

Don’t worry if you’ve grown attached to the older interface either, when Grid View launches you’ll find a link to “Classic View” prominently displayed at the top of any listing of documents in the application. If you do decide to use Classic View, we’ll remember and keep giving you your documents in the older style, no configuration necessary.

Look for Grid View to be released to all Trial Cloud and Discovery Cloud customers in the very near future soon.

Rails Upgrade

Nextpoint relies on multiple frameworks and technologies but at the heart of our user facing site is Ruby on Rails.  One of the most major behind-the-scenes changes in this release is our upgrade to Rails 2.1.

Partial Updates

One of the features we were most looking forward to in the newest version of Rails unfortunately fell completely flat for us: Partial Updates (and to some extent “Dirty Objects”).  First reading about this functionality, it really sounded appealing: don’t spend (even minuscule amounts of) time saving data that hasn’t actually been changed.  In practice though, the implementation seems pretty impractical for most non-trivial applications and for existing applications: I can’t imagine trying to retrofit (and maintain!).  Unfortunately, we quickly came to the conclusion that we just need to “turn this stuff off”.

XML Handling

XML handling took a couple steps in the right direction for Rails 2.  The change to start flagging null values, instead of just leaving them “blank”, caused a couple hiccups but will come in handy in the long run.  And a bug fix to a pesky regular expression error in the framework (that we had fixed ourselves previously) will make for one less monkeypatch in our codebase.  (Bad regular expressions can really add up when you deal in the volume that we do!)

Eager Loading

Changes to eager loading gave us a bit of trouble as statements that used to result in :include items being joined right into a single large query now (may) result in several smaller statements.

Does it make queries more efficient?  Probably.

Does it increase db traffic?  Probably.

Is it a bad thing?  Probably Not (overall).

Is it a bad thing that stuff that worked before doesn’t?  Yeah, that’s annoying.

Our specific problem is on an association defined with a :select => “distinct labels.*”.  We played around a bit with potential changes down in the AR guts but in the end (unfortunately), ended up basically tricking it into running it as a single statement.  It’s not at all difficult to make it happen but it’s also not straightforward – and it stinks when the framework makes you write a big comment.

Search Changes

Search is at the core of our product and we want (almost) every release to make that experience better.  We’ve added designation labels and issues to our transcripts and depositions search indexes, providing users with the ability to search those sections of the applications for them.  We love to see our users submitting really detailed search queries – getting straight to the data that they need to get their job done instead of forcing them down the road of an endless stream of links that never quite get the job done.

Ajaxy Goodness

We’re big believers in the “right tool for the right job” mantra.  We actively try to avoid throwing in flashy javascript features just for their own sake, but sometimes it just plain makes the process much more useful.  To that end, we have a couple new/reworked ajax features that we really like.

The most obvious is the new version of our “case selector”.  Instead of waiting for a new page containing all your cases in alpha order – we’ve made changes to get people to their cases faster.  The list now drops down with most recent cases accessed first.  If you need to get something you haven’t been to in a while, those are there in the select box but for the most part: you’re really only working in a couple cases at once (at most).

In this initial implementation the dropdown is actually populated post-rendering of the requested page to avoid slowing down the “real” request.  In future releases we might find ourselves not actually rending the drop until you request it.  This would mean a (quite short) wait when you want to switch cases, but it would eliminate the extra work we’re doing on each request.

The most useful ajax implementation in this release is probably in our designation editor.  We’ve always had the ability to designate by clicking on a preview window (click the line of text for the beginning – click the line for the end, etc).  This release improves on that by tying the “edit box” to the “preview” window more directly and reworking the way that ajax is being used in the background.  Page elements will only be re-rendered when absolutely necessary (this page carries ~6 individual components).  This allows for smaller requests/responses and relieves the burden of constantly re-rendering elements “to their previous state”.

User Experience

Nextpoint prides itself on providing an application that is easy to use.  We have a great UX process and each release brings big improvements.  This release includes the changes mentioned in the section above, new images and branding, cleaner interfaces and cleared up real estate issues.  We’ve also provided more cross-product integration, making it easier (for example) to find something via the primary Search product and quickly be editing in the Transcripts section.

Refactoring

As with any major production system, we always have a list of places that we’d like to cleanup and consolidate when we get the chance.  This release gave us the chance to remove some deprecated code and rename some elements that have been re-tasked.  This improves our development environment, making future releases more straightforward for our software engineers and thus making new feature delivery more efficient.

Case Selector

We’ve streamlined the process of getting into your case in a couple ways that really improve the experience.

• When you get to work you normally want to continue where you left off last night, so why make you choose a case when you login?  From now on: we’ll send you to where you left off and make it easier to change should you need to.
• Our handy new case selector allows you to see all the cases you have available and switch between them quickly and easily.

Search

As you know, we consider searching to be at the core of our product.  Even when we set out to do a release that has nothing to do with searching, we can’t help ourselves:  There’s always got to be some improvements.  We’re introducing a couple new features to improve the experience.

• Search by issue or designation label/objection.  This functionality had available in documents but will now be available for transcripts and depositions as well.  We’ve updated Advanced Search accordingly, moving the “Search by label” option out of the documents-only section and up into the general options.
• Related Results.  In addition to finding related files, blog posts, and events our “Related Results” section will now also return matching issues and/or designation labels/objections.

Finding Depositions and Transcripts

Links have been added to quickly search alphabetically or by designation label/issue.

Designating Depositions and Transcripts

We’ve dramatically cleaned up our designations interface.  The (potentially quite long) list of all designation labels and issues has been replaced by the ability to select a particular item to view the current designations.  Items marked with asterisk are already applied to the current deposition/transcript.

The designation add/edit/import tool has been tied more directly to the viewer window itself and now sits directly above it.  This should streamline the process and make it a bit more intuitive.

Our new Advanced Search tool will guide you through the process of building more powerful queries while simultaneously providing you with the know-how to build the queries in the “standard” search box.

We’ve further enhanced search capabilities inside specific sections (Documents, Depositions, Transcripts). Section-specific Advanced Search will be available as well as the ability to transfer results between ‘Search’ and the specific sections.

Of course, as with any enhancements to your Nextpoint software there’s no waiting for your IT department to install patches and upgrade components. Just check back early next week and the functionality will be there waiting for you to try it out!

from vimeo.com posted with vodpod

The most important step in your preparation is gathering up all the pertinent data in one place. It’s Search. Find what I want. A simple idea with a very tough implementation, but it just so happens to be our specialty. Nextpoint has always had search at it’s core: The tool was built from our belief that your evidence should never be more than a couple keywords away.

Look for our ever-present behind-the-scenes focus on search to be brought forward and granted some key real estate in the coming months. We will make searches easier to conduct while also improving the way that you work with results.

SDK is a software development kit. In this kit, Apple has released the same tools they use to build software. Apple has also released a simulator that will allow developers to test the applications developed for the iPhone.

The success of BlackBerries within the legal community has been validation for mobile computing by lawyers — and that’s just the beginning. It is clear that the iPhone is going to change the way businesses manage mobile applications. I’m sure there will be a competitive response from RIM, and there has been a lot of chatter about Google potentially entering the smartphone market. The innovations are coming to the marketplace rapidly.

It feels like the dawn of a new time. Our guess is that the success or failure of new legal technologies is correlated to how mobile the technology is. Network and server bound models are quickly losing their relevance.

How do you know? Watch the presentation, Apple is not talking about what the future looks like, they are releasing the mobile platform. They have released an SDK for the iPhone. They are releasing the APIs used to build mobile applications. iPhones now work with Exchange — and they will be more secure. Apple has laid out a road map.

Is the day of obsolescence for locally installed software today? No, but reinvesting in the old model seems like investing in a better VHS player. This is not future speak, or predicting what the new big thing is, this is happening now.

1. Everyone has it

2. Reader/Acrobat can print really well

So in thinking about the workflows our customers are going to use, PDF is without question the best format for jobs that a reasonable person would actually sit down and print, let’s say that limit is a 5000 pages. Once the print job is larger than a 5000 pages it makes sense to send it to a dedicated print shop, who can handle that job more efficiently.

Upload speed: Many of our current and prospective clients are interested in putting a ton of documents into Nextpoint. In anticipation of that, the Lab is gearing up to increase our server capacity. The new system will have the capacity to process 500 fully searchable pages per minute—that’s 5x the speed of our previous servers!

Hosting native files: The Lab is working to give Nextpoint the ability to host files in their original format, rather than as scanned images. Right now, law firms have to pay through the nose to have native file formats like emails, Word and Excel files converted into images. We’re planning to short circuit that process by enabling them to upload native files into Nextpoint directly. In addition to saving time and money, native files are much smaller than images, upload much faster, and return perfect search results.

“Work Product” Section: Nextpoint will be adding a “Work Product” section where attorneys can share documents they have created themselves in the daily trial process, opening the doors for better inter-office communication. As in the other tabs, the documents will be fully searchable.

Nextpoint Reorganization: In the coming months, the brand names of the features within Nextpoint—Command Center, Scout, and Theater—will be dropped in an effort to make the user experience more intuitive. The sections will have more intuitive names like “Extranet,” “Documents,” “Depositions,” etc.

Cross-linking Evidence: The Lab will be adding a feature to Nextpoint that will allow users to cross-reference exhibits in a deposition with the click of a button. Users will also have click access to a complete list of all exhibits mentioned in each deposition.

Deposition video: The Lab plans to build in a video function so that attorneys can review deposition clips on Nextpoint.

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