Working with Bundles

Many Openlaw functions can only be run from Bundles. This section gives an overview of these functions and has links, where relevant, to the Manual sections which relate to the functions.

The available functions fall under the following headings:

Managing the Bundles collection

Managing Bundles Items

Bundle Image functions

Attachments in Bundles

See Also:

Press <Bundles> from the Control Panel.

The picture shows some saved Bundles with some information about them, such as who owns them, the creation date, what the index order is (if known) and how many Items there are. Highlight the one you want and press <Load> to restore the Bundle, that is, to make it your current Selection.

Note: once you are on the Bundles screen, any operation relates to the highlighted Bundle and not to the current Selection.

Managing the Bundles collection

The drop-down lists in the middle of the screen allow you to Sort the Bundles by any of the data stored about them (creation date, owner etc) and to filter the list of Bundles to show only those belonging to a particular Owner. The default Owner is the user who created the Bundle.

You can edit the Description and Owner information by pressing the appropriate buttons to the right of the Description, subject to the restriction that only the actual owner or a user with Administrator rights can edit the Owner. See the section Setup Users as to Administrator rights.

You can delete a Bundle if you are the Owner or have Administrator rights. The name of the last-used Bundle of each user is stored, and any such Bundle can only be deleted by someone who has Administrator rights and who has Exclusive Use. This prevents the deletion of a Bundle which is or may be in use by another.

You must have Administrator rights to delete a Paginated Bundle or a Bundle for which Bundle List Numbers have been set.

Managing Bundle Items

You can Re-Run a Query underlying a Bundle. There is a separate section on the facility to Re-Run Queries - if the Bundle was the product of a Query, that Query can be run again on the current data.

If you wish to re-index a Bundle (that is, keep the same Items but put them in a different sort order) go to the Query Wizard. There the <More> button allows you to select the Bundle (i.e. limit your Query to Items in the Bundle). Press <All> to select every Item in the Bundle, and use the Index picker to select a new sort order for the Selection. See the section on sorting Query results.

Each Bundle may have its own set of Bundle Numbers. This can be set by pressing <Set Bundle Numbers>. Bundle Numbers may be stored in Item Cards when you have loaded the numbered Bundle. See the Manual sections called Setting List Numbers and Setting Bundle Numbers.

Delete Items allows you to delete all the Items in a Bundle. There is a separate section called Delete Items in a Bundle. This is the irreversible deletion of Items and is a much more drastic option than merely deleting a Bundle.

The Merge button expands the bottom of the screen to allow you to pick a second Bundle and a merge option. There are five variants of the facility to Merge Bundles which is described separately. The product of any merge is a new Bundle.

Bundle Image Functions

You can print Images in bulk from a Bundle - select Printing and Other Outputs. The sections Print Images and Bundle Output Options explain how the images belonging to Items in the Bundle are printed in sequence, with page numbers if required.

To Assign an Image Set to a Bundle is to specify that the Items when loaded as Bundle are to use a particular Image Set, over-riding any other image pointers in the Item Card itself. To make a Bundle Image Set is to go one stage further and copy out the images belonging to a Bundle to make a new Image Set. These two related subjects are introduced in a section called Bundle Image Sets.

You can Paginate a Bundle, that is, to give a series of page numbers to Items in a Bundle to tie in with, replace, or be the source of, physical Bundles for trial.

Attachments in Bundles

Decisions made about Attachments at the time that the Bundle was saved are critical

to the contents of Bundles and to the circumstances in which they can be used.

These are described in the Manual section called Attachments in Bundles and in the sections called from that section.. The key things to note are that:

	if the Bundle included Attachments which resulted in duplicate Items (because an Item appeared both in its own right and as an Attachment to something else) then the Bundle is a PrintBundle and can be used only for printing Image Bundles or printing Paginated Bundles
	if the Bundle included Attachments which did not create duplicate Items (i.e. no Attachment appeared twice) then the Attachments would have been added to the Items in the Bundle. A Selection of 10 Items, two of which had Attachments would have been saved as a Bundle with 12 Items in it. There are messages about this both at the time of saving the Bundle and when it is loaded from the Bundles Screen.
	a Bundle which was originally saved without Attachments can be loaded and re-saved with Attachments (use the <More> button on the Query Wizard to sub-search the Bundle, take <All> Items and save the resulting Selection as a Bundle which includes Attachments).
	As mentioned above, there is an Add-On called Exporter which allows you to make new Cases from Bundles.