This is a guest post by John Heckman, a Worldox Inner Circle Partner, and founder of Heckman Consulting.
When Worldox is first implemented at a firm, many users treat it as a sort of Windows Folder Tree on steroids. They want to “work the way they’re used to” and scroll up and down a directory structure even from within Worldox. Sure, you can do this, but why? If you think of your document store as a huge book, and you want to find something, you can scroll through the table of contents (the directory structure) or you can use the index at the back of the book (a Worldox search). Obviously the latter is faster and more reliable in terms of not missing anything. If you scroll through the directory structure you are making the assumption that no documents have ever been misfiled, dragged to the wrong directory etc. Yeah, right.
But let’s say somebody is comfortable seeing all the subdirectories at once under a matter and doesn’t want to “start a new search” every time they switch back and forth. Simple. Once you have found all the matter files (there could be several hundred, many too many to review easily), simply click on the “Filter” button on the bottom button bar in the Worldox screen. This not only shows you all the DocTypes (correspondence, email, etc.) but all the types of documents (*.pdf, *.xlsx). The bigger the type the more documents there are in that category. Simply click on a doc type or type of document or any other element of your profile and those types of documents will appear. You can see all the types at once, how many of each type there are and switch back and forth with a simple click. Much easier.
Worldox features a bookmark feature, in the same way you can create bookmarks in your browser. Simply do whatever search you want. Then right-click on a blank space in the bookmark bar and select “add this list.” Give it a name. That’s it. You can rotate bookmarks (there is a limited amount of real estate, after all) by deleting one when the case is no longer active and adding new ones as needed.
Now lets take some other cases. Let’s say there are a number files - forms, timesheets, boilerplate documents - that you use all the time. Worldox GX4 automatically creates a list of your “favorite files,” which is everything you’ve used in the last 30 days. But this can get pretty big. However you can mark the dozen or two of those files you use all the time by clicking on the pink heart to the left of the document listing. It will turn red. Then if you click on Favorite Files - Added, everything you have marked will show up. Create a bookmark for this search and you have an immediate, permanent listing of files you need all the time.
Favorite Matters, Worldox GX4 automatically creates a “Favorite Matters” list of everything you have worked on in the last 30 days. The list is rotating so it is always up to date and does not expand indefinitely. Favorite Matters also populates to your Outlook, so you can easily drag and drop emails to specific matters. Favorite Matters provides an “instant search” to give matters or document types (depending on your configuration).
There is also a little-known way of repeating recent searches. If you click on the down-arrow to the right of the Search field at the top right of the display screen, it will list all your recent searches. You need to figure out how to read the screen, since it lists the searches descriptively and not graphically, but it can be very useful.
In short, in addition to normal searches, by document name, text in file or specific client/matter/doc types, and the ability to combine search terms and use standard boolean operators, Worldox GX4 offers a number of “ease of use” features that can greatly simplify your life.
