In an announcement today, World Software Corporation — makers of the Worldox document management system — shared the news that their latest release now supports Office 2010.   According to my notes here, this makes them the first DMS vendor in the legal space to officially support integration with Office 2010.

There are a few caveats.  At this point, only 32-bit Office 2010 is supported.  No word yet on 64-bit support, but they say it’s coming.   You also need to be running the latest version, Worldox GX2, and you should contact Worldox support to download the updated integration files.

After running into a couple issues with the iManage IDOL 8.5 SP1 release in our production environment, I was able to complete the index build using the 8.5 SP1 P1 release that was released last week.   Our initial errors were found in our Content Engine logs referring to a lack of free disk space, even though we had successfully had our IDOL 8.5 (pre-SP1) index on the same volume earlier.  In any case, I added some space and then recrawled using 8.5 SP1 P1.  I’ve read some similar reports on user forums, so if you have a smaller volume for your IDOL indexer, just keep this in mind.

Using the 8.5 SP1 (and above) Deploy Tool, you can now choose whether to include the Active Content Engine (ACE) in your deployment.  Nice improvement over the first iteration where the entire ACE implementation was a manual process.   There’s also an option to perform an Initial Indexing procedure.  From the Indexer Administrator’s Guide:

Initial Indexing- Select this option to build a pre-configured deployment package for the initial build of the index. With this setting enabled, the WorkSite Indexer is optimized to index a large dataset quickly; the Active Content engine is not used with this option enabled. This option is strongly recommended to decrease the time it takes for WorkSite Indexer to complete the initial index build. After the initial index has been created, deselect this option, regenerate the configuration files and apply them to run WorkSite Indexer in normal mode.

The thing to be aware of with this option is that documents weren’t committed until the entire crawl was complete.  So users were unable to get full text results during the initial build –  much like the first release of the 8.3 Indexer (driven by the Vivisimo engine).  If you are building this index in parallel with a production indexer, then users aren’t affected.

The other thing for you to keep in mind is that even though 8.5 SP1 P1 was released after the 8.5 SP1 Incremental Update, you still need to apply the Incremental Update to your environment.  Autonomy has informed me that the Incremental Update will be included in a P2.   No word on when that is to be expected, however.

In summary, the 8.5 SP1 P1 install and deployment is much slicker and automated than the previous 8.5 IDOL indexer releases.  The integration of the ACE into the Deploy Tool is a nice feature.  The Initial Index feature is nice, as long as you know the potential user impact during the crawl.

Clients complain about the multiplicity of law firm extranets, all different but not better, and the nuisance of maintaining passwords for each one. Can a group of firms collaborate to steer development of a tool useful to all, to build the “extranet as FedEx”— a common facility that many firms and their clients can use, in the interests of both economy and convenience? Is it true that firms compete on the quality of content, not the shape of envelopes?

How do law firms and clients communicate and collaborate? How do they manage the cycle of documents and tasks as deals move from inception to closing?

From Counsel Connect through the dot-com wave of deal room services to Legal OnRamp and home-grown SharePoint extranets, there have been many efforts to improve the profession’s ways of working. Yet fifteen years after Internet Explorer 1.0, the answer is still mostly e-mail, FedEx and yellow pads.

Why? And is there an opportunity now to do something better?

Do law firms reap any competitive advantage from the specific features of their individual extranets? Extranets are, after all, the 21st century functional successor to mail, messengers and FedEx as collaboration mechanisms. Yet in the 20th century no firm thought it necessary to develop its own bicycle messenger or air freight service.

Are firms today wasting money and effort on idiosyncratic software? Would they—and most importantly their clients—not be better served by collaborating around a common collaboration platform, as leading UK firms and banks have done on a common publishing platform?

At Kraft Kennedy’s invitation, a group of law firms will be discussing these questions and hearing about some new answers on June 17. (For information, write to events@kraftkennedy.com.)

We will be talking about SitePoint 2.0, a matter management and collaboration platform that has been used on more than 2,000 matters in the UK. SitePoint is launching in the US after success with several UK law firms, including Allen & Overy, Freshfields and Herbert Smith. Kraft Kennedy is assisting the developers, HighQ Solutions, creators of the UK Banking Portal, with the US launch.

SitePoint Key Features

• An end-to-end solution—from pre-transaction due diligence and data rooms through deal execution to post-closing events and permanent online closing binders.
• Single Sign On enabling a client or lawyer working with several law firms to use a single set of credentials for separate instances of SitePoint controlled by each of the law firms.
• Robust, fine-grained security for sites, folders, documents and modules. Audit trail and reporting of every action.
• Document management with versioning, bulk upload, digital rights management, customizable metadata and optional integration with Autonomy iManage.
• Comprehensive project management and group collaboration tools, including wikis, blogs, tasks and events.
• Dynamic social layer including email, RSS feeds, activity streams, favorites, filters, comments, tags and people profiles.
• Customizable online databases/spreadsheets and forms with custom columns, fields and data types.
• Can be integrated with a firm’s Recommind search system, so closing binders can be included in search results without replicating them back to firm systems.

We will also be talking about Basecamp, a very widely used collaboration and project management service in the US.  Among the many tools of its kind, Basecamp is noteworthy for ease of use, low cost and Single Sign On, so that one’s credentials can be used across all sites in the service. Some firms are focusing on Basecamp for technology, office construction, graphic design and other administrative projects with vendors.

For information about the June 17 event or about SitePoint and BaseCamp, write to events@kraftkennedy.com.

In SharePoint 2007, menus in some master pages opened behind page content and Flash animations.  However, there was an easy fix which was to just locate the css style for the dynamic menus, and change the “z-index” property to a high number.  This same fix does not work in 2010 however, and to make matters worse, the menus on the default master page in 2010 always open behind Flash videos.  (The built-in Silverlight web part in 2010 does not have this problem, but I suspect there are still many people who will have home pages with Flash content.)

Here’s an example of how the menus open by default, behind the Flash content.

After much digging around, I was able to find a way to correctly display the menus in front of Flash content.  You have to add the following parameters to your actual object html code for the Flash object, to make it transparent.

Add the following parameter to the OBJECT tag:

   <param name=”wmode” value=”transparent”>

Add the following parameter to the EMBED tag:

   wmode=”transparent”

After that the page menus should load correctly, as shown below.

When upgrading from SharePoint 2007 to 2010, you’ll need to upgrade your master pages (if they’re customized) to take advantage of the new features in 2010, such as the ribbon.  The first question is to decide if you want to keep the current master page and add all the new controls in, or to start with a new 2010 master page and customize that.  We decided to start with a new master page based on the 2010 master page, v4.master, and customize that.  Here’s some resources I found useful when creating the new custom master page for our site.

If you choose to keep the 2007 master page and add the new controls into it, this post lists all of the steps:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee539981(office.14).aspx

If you plan to start with a new 2010 master page, a starter minimal master page can be found here:

http://startermasterpages.codeplex.com/

I also found the following pages invaluable.  This blog post lists all of the base css classes in the SharePoint master page.

http://erikswenson.blogspot.com/2010/01/sharepoint-2010-base-css-classes.html

This blog lists the styles you’ll need to modify to change the look and feel of the menus:

http://blog.drisgill.com/2009/11/sp2010-branding-tip-7-using-simple.html

As many of you may have heard, Autonomy officially released iManage 8.5 SP1 on Monday.   This has been an eagerly awaited release for months now, and firms are looking to implement this pretty quickly.    Here are the modules that have 8.5 SP1 releases thus far:

• WorkSite Server (with and without Caching)
• WorkSite Clustering Service
• WorkSite IDOL Indexer
• WorkSite Communication Server for Exchange
• FileSite, OffSite, DeskSite, Email Management for Outlook clients

Our initial review is under the fold.

Some of the good news:

• There are lots and lots of fixes in SP1 across the board.   Be sure to download the Release Notes for the iManage 8.5 SP1 Desktop clients, as that includes all the new fixes that are included in the release.
• There’s a search ranking column now available in the client.  This may not be hugely important, but it is something that iManage’s competitors have had for a while.
• Overall, the IDOL search should be more relevant and with fewer syntax confusion than previous releases
• All server modules now support Server 2008 R2 (however only the IDOL Indexer will actually run in 64-bit mode)
• For administrators, for the first time since Verity, we can now control the WorkSite Indexer services from the WorkSite Service Manager!   The WorkSite Indexer Service is designed to gracefully stop and start all the IDOL services cleanly.   We’ll have to test this one out to make sure…

And the (perhaps) not so good news:

• The Email Filing toolbar in Outlook 2007 has been updated, and (in my opinion) may cause some confusion and perhaps some eye-popping blunders.  The updated toolbar has a Delete button, which actually performs a ‘File and Delete’ operation.   I can picture it now:  an attorney gets a personal email from a client (perhaps with something embarrassing), and accidentally files it to a suggested WorkSpace because he hit the ‘Delete’ button at his Outlook toolbar.  Oops.   See below for a preview, and let me know if you agree:

• A complete IDOL Index recrawl is required to upgrade to SP1.  This will either require possibly significant index downtime, or the purchase of new hardware to build a parallel 8.5 SP1 index.

Overall, after looking through all the documentation, it looks like the benefits will outweigh all of the potential concerns. I am sure updated builds will be released, so it is important again to keep an eye on the WorkSite Technical Support page and look for updated builds and documentation.

We are testing the final release of these products in our research environment and soon production.    Just as with any other iManage release, 8.5 SP1 should be tested on non-production servers with copies of the production databases.   One of our best practice is to take a subset of the production documents and copy them to a test file share, and update the DEFSERVER key to point to your test file share location.  This way you are assured of not touching any production documents when testing your updated server.  As we learn more, we will be sure to share.

With Office 2010 being unleashed on the world, many customers are asking when their DMS products will support it.   No need to ask around, because we’ve gathered the official stances for some of the major vendors.

• WorkSite iManage 8.5: “We will look to certify/support Office 2010 within 90 days with the current 8.5 Worksite clients and later”
• Open Text eDOCS DM 5.3:  “We will release v5.3 beta this summer and the final release is scheduled to be launched in late September”
• Worldox GX2:  “Office 2010 integration files should ship within 30 – 45 days of the official general release of Microsoft Office 2010″
• Microsoft SharePoint 2010:  “Come on, we’re Microsoft.  It’ll work day one!” (Disclaimer: NOT a real quote)

So as of right now, it looks like Worldox may win the horserace to support Office 2010.  As soon as official release announcements are made, we will be sure to test functionality in our research lab.  Of course, simply supporting integration with the application doesn’t mean that the DMS product will be able to leverage any of the extra features of Office 2010, such as the Backstage view or simultaneous editing (which requires the document live on SharePoint 2010).

A common situation in organizations is to make calendars public, so that employees can see other employee’s availability, and collaborate better.  Users may also delegate rights to other users to view their messages, tasks, and contacts.  In these situations, people may rely on marking sensitive items private to hide them from other users.  In Outlook or OWA, other users will see a placeholder for the private items, but won’t be able to view any of the details.  However, you should keep in mind that this privacy is only a feature of the client application–Outlook or OWA–and is not inherent to Exchange.  Exchange itself does not support any kind of item-level security or privacy, and only has a field called “sensitivity” which is used by Outlook and OWA.  The client applications look at that field to determine whether to display the item.

This architecture is common to all versions of Outlook and Exchange, through 2010, and is not really a bug, so much as an architectural decision by Microsoft to keep item-level permissions in the client-tier.  The end result is that people should realize that just because they mark an appointment or other item private in Outlook, it doesn’t mean that no one else will be able to see it.  Items that are extrememly sensitive should probably not be stored in Exchange in the first place, or you should take off all delegate / view rights to your mailbox.  People who you give delegate rights to should also be people who you trust.

Developers should note that when writing custom applications with WebDAV, Exchange Web Services, or any other method, all items will be returned including private items.  The custom application should look at the sensitivity setting of each message before displaying it.  If the sensitivity is private, then the mesage should not be displayed.  We, at Kraft Kennedy, have run into this issue several times when creating custom applications with WebDAV that pull back appointments from the Exchange calendar.

Microsoft has details about allowing other users to manage your mail and calendar here: 

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/HA100750811033.aspx?pid=CH100788801033

Note, the last paragraph of the article:

When designing the layout and branding for new SharePoint 2010 sites, some people may wish to hide the left-hand navigation and only use top navigation.  Hiding the left-hand navigation allows for more space for content and a possible cleaner looking interface.  In SharePoint’s Site Settings, you can turn off the quick launch and tree view, however that still leaves the navigation bar on the page with only a recycling bin.  In order to entirely remove the bar, you would need to either modify the master page or CSS linked to the master page.

In SharePoint 2010, this can be done pretty easily in the CSS file by modifying the following two styles.

#s4-leftpanel
{
 display:none;
}

That style controls the left navigation panel, and setting the display to none effectively hides the entire section.  Hiding this section is not enough though, since the body area uses a left margin to specify where to start the body section.  So you would also need to modify the following style, to tell the body area to start at 5 pixels from the left, or wherever you want to start the main area.

.s4-ca
{
 margin-left: 5px;
 background: transparent;
}

For those of you interested in running the iManage 8.5 IDOL Indexer, Autonomy recently released a new revision of the WorkSite Indexer Administrator’s Guide (8.5).   It is available on the iManage support site, and includes an updated Chapter 6 on “WorkSite Indexer Maintenance.”    The document goes into explicit detail on how to properly back up and restore an 8.5 IDOL index.    (Note: you must exclude the entire WorkSite Index folder structure from normal backup agents, as this could corrupt the indices).

In summary, there are 3 types of items that need to be backed up, and then restored:

1. All WorkSite Indexer configuration files (*.cfg)
2. All WorkSite Connector files (*.db)
3. All WorkSite Content index backups (the actual indices themselves)

The first two can be configured as simple robocopies of the production *.cfg and *.db files into a similar backup folder structure.    The third can be scheduled by updating each WorkSite Content *.cfg file to include particular options in the [Schedule] section.  The key thing to remember about the WorkSite Content is that the backup will be just about as large as your production WorkSite Content, so you would want to either make sure there is enough local hard drive space or available space on an accessible SAN LUN to store the backup copy as it is put onto tape.  This is something that needs to be considered when estimating the storage requirements of the system.

To restore the index from the backup, you need to ensure that the *.cfg files are in place.  If they are not, then copy these from your backup location into the appropriate production folders.  The next step is to restore the appropriate WorkSite Connector *.db files.     These aren’t really database files, but rather a timestamp to tell IDOL from which document modification date to start rebuilding the index.  For example, indexing all documents that were modified after 5pm last Tuesday.   Unfortunately, the timestamp looks like gibberish to the human eye, if you ever have to modify it.   From the Administrator’s Guide:

If no db file back up exists from the same time as the index data back up, the timestamp of the Connector db file can be manually modified to coincide with the time of the index data to be restored.

The WorkSite Connector db time should always be set to a time immediately before the index data back up in order to ensure that the WorkSite Connector begins indexing from a time that is synchronized with the index data. Setting the date time too early can result in unnecessary re-indexing and therefore impact disk space as well as performance; setting the date time too late can result in a gap of new content and edits that is not indexed.

For reference, the timestamp value stored in the WorkSite Connector db file is in EPOCH format (time since 12:00 a.m. January 1, 1970 in milliseconds). For example, a timestamp of “1256942003000″ in the file translates to “22:33 UTC October 30th, 2009″ in a standard date notation.

Figuring out how many milliseconds after midnight on January 1, 1970?  That sounds pretty daunting.  But there are conversion tools available online to help with this.     After each *.db file is in place, each WorkSite Content engine would need to be restored using the /DREINITIAL command pointing to the backed up Index.  

Further details are available in the documentation, but the key takeaway is to avoid using Backup Exec or a SAN snapshot and expect a healthy restored index.  There are special steps that need to be taken to ensure a reliable backup.