Modify in place - docx
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I suspect this is a long shot, but it would be amazing if there was an ability to modify a docx in Appcoll's interface without going through the download/upload process. For example, I would love to click on one of my attorney's draft responses to an office action to enter an 'edit mode' in an Appcoll interface, review and make changes to the text of the response, and then exit out of the 'edit mode.' By contrast, what I have to do now is download the file, open the file in Word, edit the file, save updated file (making absolutely certain the naming is the same so when I upload, I take advantage of the versioning capabilities in AC), then upload. That little part about the same name is really the most annoying part of the whole thing. We require our attorneys to have a single working copy of a document in a task so that anybody in our firm knows precisely where the 'current' copy of a particular document is. If I go through several rounds of revisions on a particular draft, I might download the same file multiple times to my downloads folder - and each time it gets renumbered. When uploading the most current version back to the task, I have to be 100% sure the name is the same as the one stored in AC otherwise, I will have 2 different documents displayed which is not ideal.
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@BrandonK6644 I agree. Other docket management systems (ex., Clio, I believe) have nice implementations of this. You click on a document in the docket management system web page, and the document downloads to your computer (ex., to the Downloads folder), and your preferred application automatically launches to open the document. When you close the document, the document is automatically uploaded back to the the docket management system. It is all transparent.
In some implementations, a program runs in the background to make this magic happen. The docket management system communicates with the background program telling it what the user clicked on, and the background program launches the application program, pointing the application to the downloaded file. The background program monitors the downloaded file, and after the application closes the file, the background program automatically sends the edited file back to the docket management system.
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Thank you Brandon for the suggestion.
The speed with which we implement new features depends on several factors:
- The number of customers requesting the feature. Obviously more requests elevates the priority.
- The complexity of the feature, particularly if it requires a user interface change. We strive to keep AppColl easy-to-use - keeping the UI simple and uncluttered is a big part of that.
- The generality of the request. Is this something all AppColl users would find useful or just a few?
We've recorded your suggestion and we will let you know if and when we have a schedule for implementation.
We very much appreciate you taking the time to send us thoughts about how to improve AppColl. Keep the ideas coming!