FAQ
Quick tips for new users.
Below are answers to some commonly asked question regarding the operation, hosting, and use of the AMS Legal Collaborator™. If you have a question that is not addressed, pelase contact us at support@ams-legal.com
- How and where is the Collaborator™ hosted?
- How secure is my data?
- What do the designations “Internal” and “;External” mean?
- What are Roles and Groups, and how do they differ?
- What are Site Layouts and how do I use them?
- What options do I have for displaying custom content on the extranet?
- Can I search my PDF documents?
- How do email notifications work?
- How do I view documents on the extranet?
Q. How and where is the Collaborator™ hosted?:
Many of the ActiveX Components used by AMS Legal Collaborator™ have a dependency on one or more of the following Microsoft Components. If you are experiencing trouble with any ActiveX Component, try downloading and installing the following:
Some general hosting and security-oriented information is also available in the following documentation:
Q. How and where is the Collaborator™ hosted?:
AMS has chosen SunGard as its hosting partner for the express purpose of providing the highest quality hosting service to its clients. Visit http://www.SunGard.com for specific information. Some of the features provided by this service include:
- Redundant Internet Connectivity. Inflow provides duel connectivity to each of three different backbone service providers. If any provider goes down for any reason, two back-up connections exist to provide 100% uptime.
- Daily Backup. Data is backed up on a daily basis to provide the most recent recovery options in the event of a catastrophic data loss (e.g. server failure).
- 24x7 on-site Network Operation Center (NOC).
- Security against both physical and network intrusion.
- Documented and fully operational emergency response procedures.
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Q. How secure is my data?
We are collocating our servers at SunGard. SunGard is an international hosting company with sites across the United States and in Europe. At Inflow we provide redundancy and stability. The internal network is completely redundant all the way down to our physical servers with two redundant network cables to each server rack). In addition, we have redundant connectivity to three different backbone providers (for a total of 6 unique connections to the Internet backbone). In the event of a power failure, the entire location would be powered by a large diesel engine generator.
We perform off-site data tape backups nightly. (Each server is running RAID 5 disk arrays with hot-spares.) All sites that we host are stored in separate subdirectories, and each site has its own independent database, so data is logically broken down by site.
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Q. What do the designations “Internal” and “External” mean?
These designations apply to both members and areas (cases, matters, projects) in the extranet. “Internal” members are members who belong to the law firm or organization purchasing the extranet–employees, partners, executive officers, etc... “External” members are clients or external affiliates of the purchasing organization (outside users given access to the extranet).
Only members designated as “Internal” can be given administrative permissions to the extranet (the ability to create members and cases, change site settings, or set up site rules). Also, only Internal members can be given access to Internal cases or projects.
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Q. What are Roles and Groups, and how do they differ?
Roles determine what a member is allowed to do in a particular area (case, matter, project) of the extranet. Groups are used to permit access to particular items within an area.
For example, the administrator wants to create a case with users who can create and modify items; users who can modify but not create; and users who can only view item. For this, three different roles would be used to define these permissions.
The administrator may also want to simplify item sharing. Items can either be shared with individual members of the case or with case groups. While groups may correspond to roles generally, they also are more inclusive. For example, you may create a group called “Creators” that consists of the same users in the role with create and modify permissions, however, the group that consists of general members would probably also contain the members of the “Creators” group. Since a role determines what a user is permitted to do, a user cannot be a member of more than one role, however, since a group is only used for assigning access to items, a user is allowed to be a member of more than one group.
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Q. What are Site Layouts and how do I use them?
Site Layouts control the fonts, colors, and general layout of the site. Most sites have a single site layout used by all members. However, it may be necessary to create additional layouts to provide a different color scheme, logos or layouts for different types of users.
For example, ABC Law Firm starts a major case with XYZ Corporation. It is a large profile case with many users from XYZ Corporation, and ABC Law Firm would like the users from XYZ Corporation to see a co-branded extranet with logos from both ABC Law Firm and XYZ Corporation displayed. For this purpose, an additional layout using a custom logo can be created and assigned to the users from XYZ Corporation.
Users from ABC Law Firm as well as other clients would continue to use the standard layout with the ABC Law Firm logo and color scheme, but any users assigned the new layout (users from XYZ Corporation) would see the new scheme co-branded with both the ABC Law Firm logo and the XYZ Corporation logo.
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Q. What options do I have for displaying custom content on the extranet?
Besides the different features for items (e.g. Documents, Notes, Discussions, etc…) the administrator of the site has a large collection of options that can be used to customize what visitors to the site will see. The options include a Login Page Document, Site Home Page Documents (can be differentiated for Internal and External Members), and area (case, matter, project) Home Page Documents (set up for each case independently). Each of these documents must be a Microsoft Word document and can contain formatted text, graphics, hyperlinks and tables. The document must be uploaded using the appropriate administration tool and the site will convert the file to HTML for rendering in any client browser. Microsoft Word is not required on the client computer to view the file content.
A document can also be set up as a site EULA (End User License Agreement) that all users must accept before accessing the site (after accepting the EULA, the user will not be asked to do so again).
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Q. Can I search my PDF documents?
Adobe PDF (Portable Document Files) fall into two general categories: 1) documents created by scanning and storing a file as an image, and 2) documents containing text. Only the text portion of a PDF can be searched. If you create PDF documents by scanning, use OCR (Optical Character Recognition) software (usually provided with the scanner) to convert the resulting scanned image to text.
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Q. How do email notifications work?
Email notifications from the extranet fall into two broad categories:
- Administrative alerts such as member account modifications or case assignments.
- Item notifications such as a new document added to the system.
In order to receive a notification, several options must be enabled. First, the user must have specified in their user account to receive notifications for each case. For item notifications, two types are available:
- Per-item notification—each item will generate a separate immediate email notification
- Daily Digest notification—all notifications for the day will be collected and sent in a single email at the end of the day.
Second, when an item is added to the system, the user adding the item must check the Email Notify option. Only participants for the item with a valid email address will receive the notification.
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Q. How do I view documents on the extranet?
The extranet can contain many file types. Microsoft Word files, or files that are Word compatible can be converted to HTML on the extranet so that users working on a computer that does not have Microsoft Word can still read the files using their browser (e.g. a public computer or a non-Windows computer). Excel files can also be converted to HTML in AMS Collaborator™. All other files will either be opened in their native application (if supported) or will download.
The behavior of the file can be affected by two extranet settings. 1) Users can specify the default download behavior of files. The options available are “Render as HTML” (if the file meets the appropriate criteria), “Open in native application” (supported by IE only), or download. Any files unrecognized by the extranet for rendering or unrecognized by the browser for opening in its native application will always download. 2) HTML rendering is limited on a site-wide basis to a maximum file size (set in Site Rules by the site administrator). Any files exceeding the size limit will either open in their native application or download. (The file size limitation is set to reduce or prevent the wait that would accompany converting a large file to HTML.)
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