Add-Ons - Exporter 1 - Export Options

Introduction

Exporter is an Openlaw Add-On containing several functions, some of which are freely licenced with any copy of Openlaw and some of which require their own licences. As its name implies, Exporter is designed to get data out of Openlaw either into new Cases or into different formats.

This section tells you how to run Exporter and what the options are. The Manual section Exporter - 2 - How to Export as a New Case covers the detailed mechanics of effecting an Export.

Location and Licensing

See Add-Ons - Introduction for instructions about the default location of Add-Ons.

Any Exporter function which requires its own licence will not start without permission in the Case's own licence. Export functions which are bundled free with Openlaw create by default a read-only copy of the Case or sub-set of the Case.

Required Components

In the same folder as Exporter must be a copy of Case Setup and the current release of the Openlaw executable file with the name Openlaw.EXE. If either of these is missing, the system will tell you so and you will not be able to proceed. You may want to contact Oxford Law and Computing.

Bundle Number becomes Item Number

For Exports made from a Bundle, the Bundle Numbers in the main Case will become the Item numbers in the Exported Case. It is therefore required that every Item to be exported will have a unique Bundle Number. Read about Bundle Numbers.

The process will fail if any entry in the Bundle does not have a Bundle Number or if two or more entries have the same Bundle number.

The recipients of the Case, such as your opponents, will not be able to draw any conclusions from these numbers as to how many Items you have omitted - if your Bundle was the one from which you made your Disclosure List with Bundle Numbers derived from the relevant List Numbers, all they will see are the numbers which they know anyway from the Disclosure List as served.

The Main Exporter Screen

Run Exporter.exe from Case Setup or by double-clicking it. Take <Select Case> and navigate to the licence file (ending in .lic) of the Case from which a Bundle is to be exported.

The top half of the screen shows information about the Case you have picked - its name and location, and a picker for the available Bundles.

Select a Bundle from the picker and you see the Description, Item Count and Image Set (if any) used by the selected Bundle.

The rest of the screen shows the Export options available to you. The greyed-out options in the picture are either licence-specific or are not yet available.

The Export Options

From a Bundle:

Public Disclosure information for each Item

Creates a new Openlaw Case using the Items in the selected Bundle but containing only the information which appears in a Standard Report i.e. the information conventionally disclosed in a List of Documents in litigation. The resulting Case is for viewing only - the recipients (usually opponents in a dispute) cannot alter the Item information.

All information for each Item

Creates a new Openlaw Case using the Items in the selected Bundle. It differs from the first option in that it includes all the Item information, not merely the Disclosure information.

Selected information for each Item (you make the selection)

Creates a new Openlaw Case using the Items in the selected Bundle. The principles are as above but the user can decide which information (i.e. the contents of which fields) is exported.

A pre-configured custom selection of each Item

We can provide pre-set custom exports of particular selections of information to meet your requirements – e.g. where Openlaw is used as a master database and selected sub-sets of the information are published as new Cases to others. This can be licensed in a variety of ways and the new Case can be Read-only, or a normal licence

The right to use all the above is provided free with Openlaw although the fourth option obviously requires paid-for customisation. All by default create read-only Cases. These Cases can be converted into fully-functional Openlaw Cases on payment of the price-list charge applicable to the size and type of Case.

Other Export Options

Create a new read-only copy of the entire Case

The result is identical to the source copy except for the read-only restriction contained in the sub-licence.

Create a new Case with one Item card per image page (not yet available)

During Disclosure and trial preparation, the most convenient unit is the document. For the hearing itself, it may be more convenient to handle document entries page by page. This export option (which is under development) creates a new Openlaw Case with one Item Card per document page (a .tiff or a .pdf), displaying only one page at a time (not the whole document) beside the Item Card.

Use a specially customised export format

This provides a sophisticated and customisable set of functions which must be specified and written for you by Oxford Law and Computing. It allows you to generate automatically an export file dedicated to a particular purpose, most usually the specific import requirements of another system

The mechanics of exporting are explained in the Manual section Export a Bundle as a New Case.

Read-Only

Licences

A Read-Only licence means that you can see data and images, but cannot edit either, can print individual images, but not bundles of images, cannot export or import data, can make searches but cannot save them as Bundles and can run the standard Openlaw reports but not the additional Openlaw Additional Report.

If you need to switch on particular extra licence features for an export then please call us to discuss exactly what you would like.