Getting to Know a Matter's Documents Page

In this article:

• Document Menu Options
• Document Page Options
• Document Editing Capabilities
• Document Storage Options
• Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

You can use Actionstep's built-in document management system. You can upload all the documents that are associated with a matter and use tools to interact with them.

Document Menu Options

• To access the document menu, view the matter and click the Documents menu icon.
  

A. Browse: Click this to view the main Documents page for the matter. If you have multiple folders set up for your documents, you can click a subfolder name in the list.

B. Search: Click this option to search for specific documents in the matter. You can search title and (if the document has OCR (Optical Character Recognition) body text. Searching is useful if you have multiple folders and can't remember where you saved certain documents.

C. List: Choose this option to view all of your documents in a list view, which includes columns for the document ID, name, status, location, keywords, summary, size and various dates associated with the document. You can then sort each column to further refine your search. 

D. Upload: Use this option to upload any type of document to the matter. 

E. Generate: Use this option to generate documents from any templates associated with the matter. 

Document Page Options

• To access the Document page, view the matter, click the Documents menu icon, and choose Browse or Matter Documents.

A. Download, Open, Share, and More (These options are available when you select documents in the list): Click these options to view, save, or share the document with others. The More menu includes additional options like Copy, Move, Replace, Rename, etc. 

B. Properties: View or change the properties of the selected item. For example, if you've selected a folder, you can rename the folder. If you've selected a document, you can change the document name and add/change the document date, summary, keywords, or tags. 

C. Search, Info, and Display: Use the Search option to search for a specific document. Click the Info icon to view the information panel. (See item G below.) Click the Grid icon to display the Documents page using a grid. 

D. Upload, Generate, and Add Folder: Use Upload to add a document to the list. If the selected document is a template, use Generate to create a custom document for the client or matter. Click the Add Folder icon to add a folder to the document list.

E. Folder List: This shows the folders associated with the document. Click a folder to view the associated documents. Or, click Email Attachments to see a list of all attachments contained in the emails. Use Documents Trash to remove any documents you no longer want to access. 

F. Documents list: The main part of the page shows the folders and documents associated with the matter along with some of the document details, like who last modified it and when and the file size. You can sort the list by clicking the column headings. You can also right-click on any file and view a shortcut list of options for interacting with the document. 

G. Info Panel: Select an item in the list to view more information about it, including, tags, keywords, type, folder, file size, created date, modified date, document date, and versioning history. 

H. Preferences and Expand/Collapse folders: Click the Preferences button to choose document preferences such as extract ZIP on upload, Convert to PDF (when emailing), keep originals (when converting to PDF), show templates in their folders, file check out (when editing), Actionstep plug-in, and Sorting. Clicking the Expand/Collapse icons opens or closes all folders in the list at once. 

Document Editing Capabilities

You can link Microsoft Office and Google Docs to Actionstep so you can edit documents in this list directly in those applications. To learn more, see the following articles:

• Using Microsoft OneDrive with Actionstep
• Opening Microsoft Office Documents Using Office for the Web
• Using the Microsoft Office Plug-in to Edit Word, Excel, PowerPoint Files (not a recommended solution)
• Opening Documents Using Google Docs

Document Storage Options

If you use Dropbox, Box, or Google Drive to save your documents, you can connect them to the document folders within matters in Actionstep. When you connect an external drive, Actionstep will create folders within the Actionstep and Organization folders.

When you access the drive from a matter, Actionstep will create a folder in your drive with the name of the matter ID under a directory tree structure Actionstep > (organization key) > Actions. To learn more, see the following articles:

• Working with the Google Drive Integration
• Using Actionstep with Dropbox

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Q: Can I sort the documents by date or other attributes?

Yes. Hover over the Documents menu icon and choose List from the list of options. This displays the documents in list format, and you can then sort by column or use the Filter options to refine the list to exactly what you're looking for. 

Q: How much storage space am I allowed?

Actionstep doesn't impose limits on the amount of data you can store in your Actionstep system. It is expected, though, that your data storage be reasonable. This expectation is reflected in our Terms of Use.

Q: Can I search inside documents, including PDFs?
Yes. Actionstep includes a powerful search engine that allows you to search all documents. This search only returns results that you have permission to see. Regular PDFs are searchable but scanned PDFs are not unless you run these through an OCR (Optical Character Recognition) process before uploading. For more information searching, see Using the Advanced Search.

Q: How do I download all the documents on a matter at once?
You can download more than one document at a time. Just select the documents you need, then click Download. Actionstep will compress all of the selected files into a zip file, which will be downloaded to your browser's default Downloads folder. You can also select entire folders to download. If you want to zip all documents, folders, and subfolders from a matter it may be easier to move them all to a folder first, then download that folder.

Q: Do you have precedent/template libraries available?
A: Yes, some templates are available via our Marketplace, and more are being developed each month. Contact Actionstep Sales ([email protected]) for more information.

Q: Do you offer OCR?
A: Actionstep does not support OCR when a document is uploaded to Actionstep. If you have a scanner that supports OCR, you can upload the scanned documents to Actionstep and they will become searchable. There are also several third-party utilities or tools that allow you to OCR documents prior to uploading them to Actionstep

Q: Is there an option to back up the document database to my local server in case of an internet outage?
A: You can download the individual documents from Actionstep and save copies locally or request a backup of your entire system from time to time. However, there is no automated sync to local storage.

Related Articles:

• Document Templates
• Matter Documents