Variants and Customisation

This section summarises the various ways in which the same core product has different levels of functionality depending on the licence type and on settings which administrators and users can make for themselves.

Openlaw Versions

Openlaw contains all the functions needed to add, edit, classify, sort documents or other Items, to make Bundles of them, and to print lists of documents and the images of those documents. There are also a number of Openlaw Add-Ons which are free-standing applications designed to be used to provide extra functionality. Some of the Add-Ons are bundled with every copy of Openlaw; others are paid-for additions.

In this manual, the iconis used to identify the more sophisticated functions which are for purposes beyond the bare production of lists of documents and which may be best left to Administrators or more advanced users.

Users are entitled to distribute Read-Only copies of Openlaw to other people on the same side in a dispute such as barristers, experts or clients. These versions have cut-down functionality. They can be upgraded to full versions on payment of the prevailing rate (£300 per user as at January 2007).

Licence Control

Each Case has a Licence file (a small file with the same name as the Case and the file extension .lic). The licence file contains information about the Case and the user, including the number of Items which may be added. A Read-Only Case can be converted to a fully-functional Case by replacing the licence file.

Set Licence Options

Within each of these major variants an Administrator can Set Licence Options - defaults which apply to all users. As an example, the Administrator can determine that no user is to be allowed to add Item Links such as Attachments. Such a restriction may be for reasons of data integrity, but may be merely to simplify the options available to a user.

These Licence Options are set in Case Setup, a free-standing application which is supplied with each Case. Case Setup also includes Version Verifier, whose function is to check that the components of the Case have matching version numbers and data structures. Case Setup is also the jumping-off point for the optional Openlaw Add-Ons.

User-Changeable Settings

At the most detailed level of customisation, there are User-Changeable Settings accessed from within Openlaw. As their name implies, these are personal to each user.