Actionstep has its own internal document management system.
Main Matter - Document Menu
| Menu | Explanation |
| 1. Document - Matter Menu | You can access the documents on the matter by clicking on the folder icon in the Matter Menu. |
| 2. Browse | Takes you to the home screen of the document screen - so you can navigate and see the documents and access the folders from the menu. |
| 3. Search | Ability to search through the documents on the matter. Text search that will search the title and body of all documents as long as the document has OCR (Optical Character Recognition). This is useful if you have multiple folders and can't remember where you saved a certain document. |
| 4. List | Gives you a list view of all your documents showing ID, Document Name, Status, Path, Keywords, Summary, Size, Created Date, Last Modified, and Document Date - you have the ability to sort by each column. |
| 5. Upload | Gives you the ability to upload directly from your computer to a folder within your matter. |
| 6. Generate | Takes you directly to the generate document screen where you can generate a template within your matter type or within any other matter type. |
Document Screen Overview - Within the Matter
| Menu | Explanation |
| 1. Upload | Gives you the ability to upload directly from your computer to a folder within your matter. |
| 2. Generate | Takes you directly to the generate document screen where you can generate a template within your matter type or within any other matter type. |
| 3. Create Document Folder | Give you the ability to create new document folders |
| 4. Matter Document Folders | Shows you your folder structure, and you can click on a folder on the left, and the document within this folder will appear in the Matter Documents section. |
| 5. Email Attachments | For every email that is assigned to a matter, Actionstep automatically saves the email attachments to this folder (please note that this includes all attachments, for example, logos and images) and therefore becomes very large and messy. We advise you to always save the email attachments to the matter documents folder so you can easily find them. |
| 6. Documents Trash | When you delete a document from Actionstep it will go into the documents trash folder until a user empties it. |
| 7. Matter Documents | A visual of your folders/documents including Modified by/modified date/ and file size - you can sort by the columns by clicking on them. |
| 8. Search | Ability to search through the documents on the matter. Text search that will search the title and body of all documents as long as the document has OCR (Optical Character Recognition). This is useful if you have multiple folders and can't remember where you saved a certain document. |
| 9. Information | The information box gives you the ability to view more information about a certain document including, tags, keywords, type, folder, file size, created date, modified date, document date, and versioning history. |
| 10. Change View | Allows you to view your documents as tiles (icons) or as a list. |
| 11. Document Preferences | The document preferences button allows you 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 plugin, Sorting. |
| 12. Expand All Folders | Expands all document folders at once |
| 13. Collapse All Folders | Collapses all documents folders at once |
Document Editing - Integrations
There are integrations you can use for example the Word Plug-in, office online, and google docs to improve how you open/edit/save your documents. These will be explained in separate articles.
Storage Plug-ins
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 Organisation folders.
When you access the drive under a matter it will create a folder in your drive with the name of the matter ID under a directory tree structure Actionstep > (organization key) > Actions.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Q: Can I sort the documents by date or other attributes?
A: Yes. Hover over the 'Documents' icon within the 'Matter Navigation Bar', then click on the 'List' button. You will then be able to 'Filter' by any of the available columns.
Q: How much storage space am I allowed?
A: Actionstep does not have any limits on the amount of data you can store in your Actionstep system. We do expect a reasonable use of data storage for users and this is reflected in our Terms of Use.
Q: Can I search inside documents, including PDFs?
A: Yes you can. Actionstep has a powerful search engine that allows you to search all documents and will only return 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 on this feature, please see Advanced Search.
Q: How do I download all the documents on a matter at once?
A: You can download more than one document at a time. Just select the documents you need, then use the 'Download' option. Actionstep will compile all of the selected files into a zip file, which will be downloaded through your browser. 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 (sales@actionstep.com) 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 then you can upload the scanned documents to Actionstep and they will become searchable. There are also several PC utilities 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.
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