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Configuring ScanSnap for use with a DMS

We support NetDocuments and the Time Matters internal Document Management Systems (DMS). Both systems let you save Acrobat files using buttons or links in Acrobat to pop up a document profile form.

Fujitsu’s ScanSnap desktop scanners are by far the most used scanner in the legal space. We often have to address the problem that when the ScanSnap software gets installed the default settings are not friendly to the DMS we support. The default settings bring up the ScanSnap management tool, adding a layer of complexity not needed. What you want to happen is for a scanned document to be automatically named (the DMS will ultimately name it, so you don’t care what that name is) and then pop it up in Acrobat. You can then use the DMS buttons and links to save it into NetDocuments or Time Matters.

To configure your ScanSnap for this use case do the following:

Right click on the ScanSnap button in the Task Tray, and select Scan Button Settings…

When you the settings dialog first comes up, Use Quick Menu will be checked. Uncheck this checkbox.

Press the Detail button to see the rest of the settings that you couldn’t see on the Quick Menu.

Under Application, select Adobe Acrobat:

Under the Save tab, select the folder where you want the documents to be scanned to. This is a temporary holding folder as the documents will be saved in the cloud in your NetDocuments repository, or saved and moved to your shared folders in Time Matters.

When you press Apply and then scan, your scans will come up directly in Adobe Acrobat.

 

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Downloaded a PDF and can’t locate the Time Matters DMS controls

The Problem

My clients call me all the time with this problem:

I download PDF files from the court/ECF/whatever source and when I go to use the Time Matters DMS controls (TM Save), they are not there. Why can’t I save the PDF’s into Time Matters?

The problem is that newer versions of Internet Explorer and Chrome serve as a PDF viewer. When you download PDFs they are downloaded and opened in the browser instead of in Acrobat. While this is a very nice feature, it causes a problem when you don’t have access to the full features of Acrobat including the document management system (DMS) controls that Time Matters installed.

How to Resolve

To resolve this problem, you have to turn the browser PDF viewer feature off.

How to turn it off in Chrome and Firefox.

Here is how you do it in Internet Explorer:  Step 1 in Acrobat, and then Step 2 in Internet Explorer.

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Saving Non-Standard Files in the Time Matters DMS – Email Yourself

The Time Matters DMS has integrations with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, WordPerfect, Outlook, and Acrobat. Basically, when you have one of these types of documents open you press a TM Save (or TM Connect) button and you are provided a Document Form to complete. Once completed, the document/email is saved to the appropriate place in your document store. It’s really simple and easy to use, and keeps you from having to drill down into a hierarchical folder structure to save documents.

But, what do you do when you get a non-standard document like a WAV, AVI, JPG, TXT, HTM, XML, or other document for which there isn’t a Time Matters integration? Per LexisNexis help, you should place it a shared folder and then right click on it and select “Send to” and then “Time Matters.” When you do this for one or more documents, you get the “Create Document Profile Records” dialog that let’s you specify how you want the Time Matters Document record to be completed.

LN_help

The main problem with this method is that you have drill into the hierarchical folder structure to put the document in the correct place, or just have a folder into which you drop these types of files. When you use the TM Save functionality, Time Matters saves a copy of the document you want to save in the exact location where it belongs.

A better way for Time Matters and Outlook users – presumably a large percentage of Time Matters users – is to drag and drop the document(s) into an Outlook email and send it you yourself. This is easily done, and easier than the LN recommended way. Once you get the email – in a second or two at most – you have all the TM Save/Connect tools within the TM-Outlook integration to save the documents as you normally do. Once saved, simply delete the email.

A final point – most of these types on non-standard documents will probably get emailed to you anyway. Better to save from the email than save it to a shared folder and then “Send to Time Matters.”

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Law Firm Reporting is More Than Financial Reporting

Client AquisitionOver the past few months, I have seen a number of tweets in my Twitter feed that link to articles that discuss law firm reporting. Invariably, the articles discuss what financial reports the firm should be looking at.

As an example, Frank Strong of LexisNexis, whose Business of Law Blog is one of the best legal blogs around, recently posted 5 Essential Practice Management Reports for Small Law Firms. Of the 5 reports listed, they are all billing reports. This represents a tendency that I have seen with attorneys and law firms who only look at the financial reports to evaluate how their business is doing. When you come across an article about law firm reporting, it is almost always about the finances … how many hours did I bill, what was my realization rate, what is our AR, etc. In a recent post on the Time Matters forum hosted by my good friend and Elder Law Attorney extraordinaire, Robert Fleming, a poster said, “I use only the standard financial reports – Aged A/R and Detailed WIP.  But I would like to do more.”

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Backing up your SQL Data – SQLBackupAndFTP

SqlBakLogo_400x400While this post may be helpful to any user of software that stores its data in a Microsoft SQL Server (MS SQL), it will be most applicable to OTB’s Time Matters users.

When you store your data in MS SQL, you obviously have to make sure it gets backed up. For many years, Time Matters did a fairly poor job at providing a robust backup solution. Most Time Matters consultants looked for alternatives outside the program, and many of us were pleased to find SQLBackupAndFTP. Even as the internal backup capabilities improved in recent versions of Time Matters, it doesn’t come close to what you can do with SQLBackupAndFTP and there is still no reason to use the internal backup solution when such a robust solution exists and is free.

There are a number of reasons this is a great piece of software, but toward the top of the list is that they provide a free version that will likely be sufficient for most time Matters users. At OTB we use their paid-for version as we need to backup more than 2 databases, want the expanded online storage alternatives, and want to encrypt our backups. But, if all you need to is to backup Time Matters, and perhaps one other database, it is free of charge.

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