ToolKit Companion – Collaboration from the Road

REDI Analysis is excited to announce that it has added synchronization to The Litigation ToolKit product line up. The ToolKit is a great tool for bringing your team together and collaboration to your litigation support strategies. The ToolKit has a number of networking options that provides the litigation team with shared access to case information and knowledge. This ability to share can be extended outside of the office using remote access options and/or the ToolKit Web Application Server. With the ToolKit Companion you also now have the option of hitting the road, working off line and then dialing in to synchronize both the server and the traveler’s version.

There will be times when access the network is just not practical or feasible. You may want to take the ToolKit and work off line whether while conducting interviews/examinations, appearing in court, flying across the country or sitting on the dock at the cottage! You need to be able to have your own stand-alone version and the image collections so you can get on with preparing your case. We have provided easy to use tools that make this stand-alone access simple to achieve.

However, in a team setting this stand-alone operation presents show challenges. Let's take a closer look at the situation. While off the network you need to spend time working on the file. This may include by way of example:

• Reviewing documents for privilege,
• Extracting key portions and commenting on documents or testimony,
• Adding subjective coding,
• Creating new witness outlines.

When you are done you want this work to be passed back to the team and the network. Additional challenges can occur as, hopefully, while you were away your team has continued to work with the ToolKit getting your case ready. Further yet, what if one of your colleagues is also off on the road at the same time you want to be able to add their work to the file and get our ToolKit updated.

Synchronization is the term popularized to describe this need. In short we need to be able to take a copy of the ToolKit off the network and then be able to update the network with any changes, additions, deletions that have been made at both sources. Usually this ends up with one source being the winner, which means that the data from one source overwrites the data from the other source. In designing the ToolKit we have focused on the specific needs for synchronization so that this overwriting will not result in lost data.