Openlaw Concepts and Terminology

Openlaw has some concepts that are used throughout:

Items - usually documents - but can include other things - about which you want to store information such as date, description, sender, recipient.

Item Numbers - Openlaw gives each Item a unique, arbitrary number, which can be used to refer to or find the Item.

Images - used to mean an electronic file representing an Item. Thus a piece of paper can be scanned into a TIF or PDF file which when displayed shows a representation of the scanned image. The 'image' for a Word document might be the .DOC file.

Bundles (of Items) - a collection of Items in a particular order, such as Date order. Openlaw allows you to save any number of different Bundles.

Names - Openlaw stores names that are entered for Senders or Recipients in a detailed way allowing list of organisations and individuals to be build automatically.

What do the words mean?

Some terminology may be helpful.

A Document is one or more sheets of physical paper. All the information about a single document is an Item and is displayed on screen in the form of a tabbed Item Card or in a Grid.

Each Item has a unique Item Number, a sequential number usually starting from 1. All the Items in a database make a Case.

The List is the Selection comprising the formal List of Documents as served. It is usually marked with a tick in a field called In List so that a search for Items where In list = 'Yes' produces your draft or final Disclosure List. Items in the List may be given a new number (in addition to the Item Number) called the List Number. Different Lists can have different List Number sequences

Any Item can be linked to another by a user-definable Item Link. An Attachment is a special kind of Item Link between two documents. Any Item can be linked to a Name by a Name Link Type such as "Copied to" or "Mentions"

The set of Items with which you are currently working is a Selection (which may be all of the Items). A Selection is usually made by a Query in the Query Wizard or one of the other Query tools and may be in a particular Index Order. A Selection may be saved as a Bundle and then recalled.

An electronic copy of the Document can be stored as an Image (one file per item with an image page for each page of the paper document). An Image can be displayed beside the Item and printed. Although .tiff images are the most common and most fully supported type of electronic file used with Openlaw, almost any type of electronic file (.PDF, .DOC, .XLS, .MSG) can be linked to a Item Card.

A Report is the output of a Selection which may be to the screen, to a printer, to a Microsoft Word file or to another database format for export.

Image Printing is sending the images attached to a Bundle to the printer, with or without page numbers. A Paginated Bundle is a Bundle which records details of page numbers to allow you to jump to any page in any Bundle, and to print Bundles of images with user-defined pagination schemes.

Export covers a range of functions, all concerned with getting data out of Openlaw and into another data format, usually for exchange with other parties.