Posts made by ChristianS9906

If AppColl is set up to process e-Office Actions, it will automatically create a "USPTO e-Office Action: XXXX" Event task type for each different e-Office Action document code XXXX that it processes. It will also create a corresponding Hard External Deadline "Review USPTO e-Office Action XXXX" task type for that newly created Event task type.

It would be nice if there was a way to let the account admin have more control over how this system works. In particular, it would be nice if a) the admin could make it so that newly generated "USPTO e-Office Action: XXXX" Event tasks are instead created as Transient Events by default and b) the admin could instruct AppColl to not make "Review USPTO e-Office Action XXXX" task types at all.

At present, 25% of our 760 different task types are e-Office Action-related task types (split evenly between the Event task types and the Review USPTO e-Office Action task types). We never use the Review USPTO e-Office Action tasks, and immediately disable auto-generation as soon as we detect a new version of such a task. It would be great if we could simply tell AppColl not to bother making such task types going forward.

For the USPTO e-Office Action Event tasks, we want them to trigger since they may be needed to trigger follow-on tasks, but we don't want them hanging around since they are just extra clutter--the event date, if important, is always reflected in the RefDate of a task triggered by such an event, so there is zero benefit to keeping the USPTO e-Office Action Event tasks around. In view of that, we always change them to Transient Event types. But when a new one gets created by AppColl, we have to go track it down and change it. It would be nice if we could have AppColl default to defining these as Transient Events instead of as Events.

We don't currently use the Billing module, but I am listening to the webinar on it right now. The ability to specify, on a client-by-client basis, what UTBMS billing codes are available for use, and to specify custom descriptions (with field code capability) that are used by default each time such a UTBMS code is selected, would be very useful.

We have multiple, large clients that use UTBMS codes in different ways (e.g., some use 430 for all office actions, while others use it only for non-final OAs and then use 435 for final OAs). We also have clients that expect specific language in the billing entry description for particular task codes, e.g., "{Matter.CountryCode} Request Examination Recommendation." They do not want us to deviate from this language. Our current billing system auto-fills it for us based on the UTBMS code selected.

It would also be ideal to have multiple entries for a given UTBMS code for a client--for example, the client might have different budgeting frameworks for the same UTBMS task code depending on complexity of the task. Ideally, each of these task codes could have an alias that the customer can specify to allow them to easily differentiate between each of several options for a given UTBMS code for a client.

There is the ability to export an AppColl Inventors (CSV) file for matters. The output file includes Matter, Inventor, AsFiled, and Rank as the fields.

I would like to request that it also include ContactID for the inventors listed. "Inventor" is not a unique record identifier, as different inventors can have the same names.

@gregg_appcoll Ah, thanks for clarifying. Might be worth including some parenthetical text below the "Empty Trash" button to indicate that it has this capability.

Looking forward to using it!

Best,
Christian

@ChristianS9906 How do you get to this interface? Our Trash doesn't have it--although I did just delete a bunch of records and it was noticeably faster--on the order of seconds instead of minutes.

If we can access the age-based drop-down that you show, that would pretty much do the trick for us, I think.

@support_appcoll Has there been any progress on this front? Trash has been piling up for another year, and it does not look like the Trash interface has changed at all--still no ability to filter trash items so that you can easily delete only items that were put in the trash prior to a specified date....

It would be helpful to have the inventor status listed or indicated in some way on the Matter Details interface. For example, when sending a draft application to inventors, it would be helpful to be able to see which inventors are active/inactive so that we can easily decide which inventors to include on distribution.

Right now, you can only see the inventor status information if you click on each individual inventor to inspect their additional details.

It would be great if users could have the ability to specify alternate column headings to be displayed in reports, i.e., aliases that, if present, would be displayed as the column header for a given field.

For example, clients often request that we send them reports of their docket data, but with column headers labeled in a certain way (for example, they want to see "XYZ Docket Number" instead of "ClientRef" or "OC Reference Number" instead of "AttorneyRef" or "Responsible Manager" instead of "ClientContact").

Ideally, we'd just create a report for this information and then set up an autoschedule to send it to the client on a specified timeframe...except that we can't because we need to first send it to someone in our firm who manually replaces the column headers with the desired column headers.

If this was implemented, I think it would be fine if those aliases are only shown in "Print" view, when the report is inserted into an email/form letter, and when the report is exported to PDF or CSV/Excel format. I don't see a strong need to see the aliases in the interactive GUI itself (although it might be nice).

Can this be implemented? It would really make reports much more useful for communicating information to clients.

Best,
Christian

I'd like to suggest a new deadline type: "Workflow." Workflow deadlines would be similar to "internal," but would have the ability to be caused to not be displayed in the Matter Details interface if completed (while still displaying other completed deadline types). Tasks with Workflow DeadlineTypes could also be turned on/off wholesale in the Matter Details interface, similar to "Internal" and "USPTO" tasks.

Tasks with Workflow DeadlineType would also be able to be edited by anyone regardless of their permission level.

The idea would be that users could use tasks with this DeadlineType to track various workflow stages, e.g., reported out to client, recommendation sent, response drafted, etc., and then close them out, thereby allowing workflow to be tracked internally. However, external deadlines and events would not be able to be edited except by users with Tasks edit permissions. This allows customers to tightly control access to mission-critical data, e.g., docket and bibliographic data, to their docketing departments while also allowing them to track workflow progress without needing to involve/burden their docketing departments.

Having the ability to screen out completed workflow tasks would allow fairly granular workflows without cluttering the Matter Details task interface with lots of completed workflow tasks....

Adding columns to a report is relatively easy--you get an interface with two listboxes--the left one lists all the fields that are not in the report, and the right one lists all the fields that are (in the order that those fields will appear from left to right). There are buttons to move a field from the left listbox to the right, and vice-versa.

HOWEVER, when you add a field to the listbox that lists the fields that are in the report, the newly added field is inserted ABOVE the currently selected field, and then the newly added field becomes the currently selected field. It should be inserted BELOW the currently selected field and then become the currently selected field.

In the current system, if you are going through a list of columns that you need to add to a report (and doing so in the order you want them to be in in the report), you need to, after adding each column, go back to the righthand listbox and click on the listbox entry one row down from the currently selected entry, and then go back to the lefthand listbox and select the next field to add. Or just add them all and then click a bunch more times to reorder the fields in the order you want them in.

The interface should be configured so that users can simply select the fields they want to add from the left side and add them in sequence, without needing to click in the righthand listbox at all.

@support_appcoll Has there been any movement on implementing this idea? It would be hugely useful to have the ability to define some custom fields for tasks.

For example, a field for "In IDS Database" to record whether an Office Action and its cited references have been added to the IDS database. Or "recommendation sent" to indicate that the client has been provided with a recommendation.

Christian

The Email button in the Matter Details screen is great. However, the way in which emails are created could use a little improvement. This would all be fairly straightforward to implement and would be a timesaver for users:

a) There are often situations where the email being generated lists the email address of the person who is generating the email. While having that email address in the email address fields is harmless, it is also completely unnecessary and needlessly consumes space in the mailto link that could be used for other purposes. This would be very simple to strip out.

b) There are also often situations where an email address may get double-included. For example, a client may have standing instructions to always CC a particular attorney in addition to the ClientContact on correspondence for all their matters (thus leading to that particular attorney's email address being hard-coded into a client-specific email template for that client), but that particular attorney is also the ClientContact for some matters. In the matters where that particular attorney is the ClientContact, their email address will appear twice. At the very least, it would be nice if AppColl could cleanse each of the TO and CC fields for dupes and remove them. If an email address appears in both the TO and CC fields, they could be either a) left in both fields or b) removed from one field, e.g., the CC field.

Christian

AppColl offers the ability for users who have Report creation permissions to make a report "Private", which is great. It would be really nice, however, if the Permissions manager in AppColl could have a setting that could give add/delete/modify Report privileges to a user but only for private reports. In other words, that user could add/delete/modify reports that they make, but not modify/delete reports that others have made. Moreover, any report made by such a user would automatically be a "private" report so that others cannot see it. Ideally, those permissions would extend through to the Manage Report Schedules as well, e.g., those users could manage schedules for their private reports, but NOT add/delete/modify schedules for other reports.

For example, we want our practitioners and secretaries to be able to make their own reports and schedule them to be sent to themselves (if desired), but we do not want them to be able to modify other reports, e.g., ones that sys admins have set up for general use by anyone in the firm. Right now, there isn't a happy middle ground that will let us do that. We have to give full report permissions to our users and just trust that they will not accidentally modify a report that they have no ownership of.

It would also be great if the "Reports" combo box in each module could have a toggle that lets the user flip between listing all reports, only private reports, and (possibly) public reports.

Cheers,
Christian

It would be nice if there was a way to easily pull or display more detailed info on all matter inventors from the Matter Details interface. For example, right now, it just shows you the name of each inventor. However, it would be really great if the interface could be updated to show (or optionally show) further info for each inventor, e.g., City/State/Country of residence, citizenship, assignee, and possibly other data (for example, a field that might show if they are ex-employees or active employees).

Most/all of the above info is actually very useful info to have on-hand when looking at a matter. For example, if any inventor is a resident of India, you would want to be able to easily figure that out so you can make sure to docket requesting an Indian foreign filing license. Similarly, if any inventor is a Greek citizen, you'd want to be able to easily detect that as well so you can make sure you file the first application in Greece. And if there are inventors that work for different entities/would assign to different entities, you'd want to know that up-front as well so that the proper assignments get generated.

Right now, the only ways to get all this info for the inventors in a matter are to:

a) Drill down inventor-by-inventor from the Matter Details screen. You have to click on each inventor's "View Contact" button, review the pop-up, and then close it. This technique does not let you see all of this info at once for all of the inventors. It also does not show all info for each inventor (although, to be fair, it does show most/all of the info I flagged above).

b) Create a form letter or email that has fields to show all this data, and then generate it. This is clunky/cumbersome.

c) Create a database query in Contacts module? I'm not even sure if you can do this. But even if you can, it would require leaving the Matter Details module for the Contacts module and then crafting a query. It should not require such steps to get easy access to this info.

I would propose that the Matter Details interface be updated to include a button below the "Add" button called "Summary" that, when clicked, would bring up a pop-up window that listed, in table form, all of the inventors, their as-filed names (if applicable), their citizenship, assignee/employer, city of residence, etc. Ideally, the listed data can be copied in table form and pasted in table form into other documents, e.g., Excel, Word, or Outlook. It would, in effect, act somewhat like the "View Contact" link, but for all inventors at once and showing the data in a table format.

And if you really wanted to gold-plate it, you could add the ability for any individual user to add/remove any column from the Contacts module to the table view and to change the column order as they see fit, similar to how users can modify the columns in the Contacts module itself. That would let users potentially add other fields to the display that might be relevant to them, e.g., a field like "Tags" that they maybe use to store indications of whether or not the inventor is an ex-employee or not, or perhaps "Private Notes" or "Nicknames" to provide more info on how to communicate with that inventor.

@ChristianS9906 After posting this, I noticed that task types now include a "deleted" task status that can be selected for the auto-close behavior. I initially thought that maybe AppColl would cause tasks with such status to automatically delete themselves when they auto-close (which would pretty much reach a similar end result to the above). But then I tested it, and it seems like all it does is close the task out as "deleted." The task sticks around, however.

AppColl includes a "Transient Event" DeadlineType that was created responsive to input I provided several years ago. A transient event is just like a normal event except that it comes into existence and then immediately deletes itself--however, it triggers any follow-on tasks that might be needed and sends out notifications associated with it prior to disappearing.

It would be very nice if the Tasks framework were to be updated so that any TaskType could be made to be "transient," i.e., made to self-delete once no longer "Open." For example, every TaskType definition could have a "Transient" (or "Delete Once Closed" if a more descriptive name is desired) setting, e.g., a checkbox, that can be checked for a TaskType if that TaskType is to self-destruct once closed out.

This would be a little different than how the existing Transient Event DeadlineType works in that non-Event TaskTypes with this setting enabled would not immediately self-delete, but would stay visible on the docket until closed out. However, the existing Transient Event DeadlineType should be implementable under this new framework as well, e.g., as a normal Event DeadlineType that has the "Transient" setting enabled--since Events are tasks that instantly complete themselves, the "transient"-enabled Event should work like the current Transient Event DeadlineType.

The benefit to having this setting is that it would allow for intermediate deadlines, e.g., reminder deadlines, to be auto-closed and then disappear from the docket, as opposed to cluttering it up in a "completed" state. We like to have our docket be relatively streamlined, e.g., free of low-value entries. An advance reminder of an upcoming foreign deadline, for example, is useful to have on the docket, but once that reminder is in the past, it really isn't something we need to keep seeing.... Being able to have it automatically clean itself off the docket would be a nice capability to have (and would save our docketing department time and effort).

@SadiqA2304 Sort of...but this requires a) two browser windows running at the same time (more windows!) and b) still requires the user to have to navigate to each matter in each interface.

AppColl allows you to have logins to multiple AppColl accounts, allowing a law firm user to access the law firm's AppColl account and also client AppColl accounts (if given login rights). It's a neat feature.

Right now, to switch accounts you have to go to the account icon in the upper right corner, hover over it, hover over the Switch Accounts menu flyout, and then select the account you want to switch to. You then need to navigate to the matter you want to view in the switched-to account.

In many cases, a user will actually be wanting to switch between accounts to look at the same matter. For example, there may be tasks that need to be completed in two separate accounts for the same matter. It would be a really neat feature if AppColl could, for users having login rights to multiple accounts, identify those matters that exist in two different accounts and then, in the Matter Details view, provide a button that, when clicked, switches between the record for that matter in one AppColl account to the record for that same matter in the other AppColl account. This would let the user flip back and forth between two accounts while still viewing the same matter. This saves the user the hassle of navigating back to that matter in either account after an account switch (and avoids the need to use the Account Switch flyout menu.

Just curious if this feature/fix is in the works. The inability for users to edit/delete their own discussion posts hobbles the Discussion feature significantly. For example, we would like our staff to be able to just put all their comments into a single discussion entry (to avoid lengthy chains of entries), but they can only do that for Task Discussions (not Matter or, presumably, Contacts Discussions). They also cannot delete a Discussion comment they made, which would be desirable from a docket cleanup perspective.

Can you please let me know if this is something that will be addressed soon?

Thank you.

The ability to see how frequently a given report has been viewed is a nice feature add; thanks for including it. However, I have some suggestions for making it more useful:

a) The look-back window is only 90 days; it would be nice if it also looked back 180 days and 365 days. Some reports might get accessed only on a quarterly basis, and the 90-day lookback might miss that.

b) The usage stats only seem to include "views"--it would be nice if it also included other types of report access. For example, a report that is synced every night or emailed/FTP'd every night might never be "viewed" after it is created, but it is nonetheless in heavy use.

c) It would be great if a report could be made that listed all reports and the various usage stats that are currently only viewable report-by-report by hovering over each report. If we want to do a report "cull," step one would be to try and get a sense for which reports are rarely used. Right now, we'd have to hover over every report to get that info, which is not at all efficient.

Please do keep the improvements coming!

Thanks,
Christian

Each Task Type definition has a "Description" field that can be used to store internal notes regarding that Task Type. As far as I can tell, this field is only visible in the Task Types module and in the Task Type editor. It would be very useful if that field could also be accessible as a field in emails/form letters/reports (just like DeadlineType is available).

For example, it would be helpful to be able to store instructions for how to handle a particular task type/deadline in the task type definition and then display that information to users in association with each instance of that task type. This would be particularly helpful for more esoteric deadlines that people may not be as familiar with.

Ideally, there would actually be a separate "Instructions" field for each Task Type that could be used for this purpose (allowing "Description" to be used to describe what the task is, what purpose it serves, etc., while "Instructions" is used to store instructions to the task owner of what they need to do), but this would be icing on the cake. You might even consider having two separate Instructions fields, one for short instructions and one for more detailed ones.

Thus, two suggestions:

a) Make the Task Type "Description" field accessible via emails/form letters/reports, and

b) Add an "Instructions" text field (similar to "Description") to Task Types (or "Instructions1" and "Instructions2" fields) and have them be similarly ssible via emails/form letters/reports.

Hopefully at least (a) can be done relatively quickly.

It would be nice to be able to filter records by the Discussion field; can this feature be added?

@mike_appcoll Just curious--any ETA on item (c) above?

The Contact merge interface does not show first/middle/last names as separate columns. When you have multiple contacts that only differ in that one of their names is actually a double name, e.g., John David as first name instead of John as first name and David as middle name, the two contacts appear identical in the Merge interface, so you don't know which one you are picking as the primary contact....

Can this be fixed?

AppColl allows you to create form-filled USPTO forms for a matter; you can also create form-filled copies of such forms for multiple matters relatively easily from the Matters module. It would, however, be great if one could (for at least certain forms), give the user the option to specify how fields in that form that are NOT fillable from AppColl data are to be filled in.

For example, the AIA/122, AIA/123, AIA/83, and SB/123 forms (and there may be others) all relate to changing the address for a patent or application. Take the AIA/123 form, which is used to switch the correspondence/maintenance fee notice address--you need to provide either (a) a customer number that has the new address or (b) separately specify the name/address/telephone/email of the new addressee. It would be really great if AppColl gave you the chance to enter data for the fields in (b) prior to generating the PDFs, and then populated those fields in the generated PDF with that data.

For example, we recently had to transfer files back to a client (with no successor counsel arranged) and file change of correspondence address forms for 30 different patents. All of them had the information in (b) specified to be the same, and we had to copy-paste that info (which involved copying the data for 8 fields into all 30 forms--240 copy-pastes!) to finish the forms. It would have been a huge time-saver if we could have supplied that info up-front and had AppColl populate it when it populated the matter-specific data.

It would be a pretty nice feature to be able to assign permissions to groups and assign users to those groups; the idea would be that each user would be a member of one or more groups and would have the permissions associated with each group.

Moreover, it would be nice to have the ability to specify, for each group, what data they are allowed to edit, especially with respect to TaskTypes. For example, we have a fairly strict policy as to who has "add/modify/delete" permissions in our system--we do this to limit the potential for errors. However, there are some tasks that are of lower importance--we'd like to be able to delegate the ability to modify those tasks to people that do not otherwise have global "add/modify/delete" permission.

This would let us docket/dedocket those tasks without taking up the resources of our docketing department while still protecting the integrity of our overall docketing system.

Probably not an easy thing to implement, but it would be very useful.

Cheers,
Christian

@SadiqA2304 I thought of that but was concerned that it might muck with triggering conditions if the task name was later changed to remove the "under development" text.

It would also mean that normal users would still see it and the under development tasks would still clutter up the interface.

It would be helpful if Task Types had a setting allowing them to be specified as being "under development." Under-development tasks would only be visible to Admins in the GUI and reports and invisible to all other users. This would prevent such task types from inadvertently being used by users before they are finalized, potentially resulting in mis-docketed tasks.

Once under-development task types are finalized and tested, the "under development" setting could be removed and the task types made available for general use.

AppColl has a "Trash" that deleted items get sent to; items in the Trash can be selectively undeleted if desired. The trash can also be emptied to permanently delete items.

However, there are some aspects of trash that could be vastly improved:

a) For the love of God, make deleting trash items a background task. Right now, if you delete items, you can expect to wait ~3+ minutes/1000 items, and the poor schmuck doing it can't really do anything else in AppColl while the deleting is occurring.

b) The trash should be able to be filtered. For example, I'd like to be able to delete all items in the trash that are more than a month old, but the only way to do that is to go through every page of trash items more than a month old, select all items, and then delete them. At 120 pages of trash items, I'm looking at a minimum of six hours spent doing this, with me having to interact with the system every 3 minutes.

c) Add a setting that lets admins specify a default "permanently delete" age where AppColl automatically permanently deletes items in the trash that are over X days old.

And a minor quibble:

d) There are two buttons: "Permanently Delete" and "Empty Trash." They do the same thing, except that the former only deletes the items that are selected and the latter deletes ALL items in the trash. Maybe they should be relabeled "Permanently Delete Selected Items" and "Permanently Delete ALL Items."

Just upvoted your original idea, Sadiq.