The user can access their document content through either the ‘Document preview’ or the ‘Document viewer’. 

Document preview allows users to get a snapshot view of a selected document, whereas document viewer allows for a much more detailed view of the document and further options for interacting with it.


Document preview

When a user highlights a document on the Documents page, the content will be displayed in the panel on the right of the screen under the view tab by default. Users can also find tabs to display details about the document, any related documents, alternative versions of the document, similar documents, as well as any incoming and outgoing links. 

Tab

Description

View

Users can navigate through the different pages of their document through the preview images in the left panel. 

Clicking on the thumbnail image will open the document in the document viewer.

Users can download the document either as the original file (.doc) or as a .pdf file.

Details

Users can view and, in some cases, edit some of the documents metadata.

This can include: Document type, Opus ID, Document name, Collection order, Pages, Format, Collection, Date, Sort date, Parent ID, Tags, Description, File name, Access, Status, Folder, Version, Size, Custodian, Bates Beg, Bates End, Bates Beg Attach, Bates End Attach, Date created, Updated by, Date updated, Created by, All custodian, Opus OCR, Pages with text

Related documents

Provides links to any documents marked as related, also known as ‘document families’.

The only system generated document relationships are email attachments and redactions.

Additional relationships such as translations, duplicate, email thread, source format, and custom relationships can be created by the user.

Users can assign documents as duplicates even if they are not as the system doesn't check at this point (duplicates can be checked for only in the files page).

Versions

Lists any alternate versions of the document if the file has been replaced by the user.

A document in Platform is not tied to the file that has been uploaded to it, therefore a user can replace a file within a document and it will keep the document name and Opus ID even if the content of the uploaded file is completely new.

Similar documents

Provides links to any similar documents.

This is determined by an internal comparison of text within the documents to produce a percentage similarity report.

If document A is compared to document B, then document A would show as 100% similar to document B if all of the text in document A appears in B, regardless of whether or not there is additional text in document B. 

If document B is then compared to document A, then document B may show as only 90% similar to document A as it has additional text which does not appear in document A.

This can help users track the development of thought and stages of various documents.

Incoming links

Links from any other documents to the document being viewed are listed here - selecting the link will take you to the related document.

Outgoing links

Links from the document being viewed to any other documents are listed here - selecting the link will take you to the related document.


Document viewer

The document viewer allows the user to read and work with documents. It includes features to meet a range of needs from simply reading a document to more complex use cases such as creating links, redacting documents, adding annotations and comparing different versions of a document.

There are three main components to the user interface, each of which is controlled by its own toolbar:

  • The Navigation panel provides ways to locate content in the document. It always includes thumbnail previews of each page and a word index of the text in the document. 

  • The Display panel shows pages of the document optionally with annotations, links, redaction markers and differences from a comparison document overlaid.

  • The Overlay panel shows the details of content that has been overlaid on the document including links and annotations. Clicking an overlay in the display panel highlights the corresponding item in the overlay panel. Conversely, clicking an item in the overlay panel scrolls the display panel to show the corresponding page and text in the document. 

The panels can be resized by dragging the vertical dividers.


Navigation panel

The toolbar at the top of the navigation panel contains controls for switching between the different navigation views. Depending on the available space these appear either as toggle buttons or a drop down menu.

IconDescription
Return to Documents page.
The thumbnails view shows a small image of each page of the document.

If there are annotations on the document then these are indicated with dots or a number on the corresponding page.

This provides a quick way to identify the most densely annotated parts of a document.

The word index view shows a list of all the words that appear in the document (For list of excluded words: see below)

To the right of each word, the user will see numbers and a thee-dot button.

The numbers here correlate to the page numbers where instances of the word appear.

If the user clicks the three-dot button to the right of the word, they will be given the option to redact every instance of that word or clear the redactions of that word.

Expanding the word list with the dropdown button to its left will display every instance that the word is used.

Clicking on an instance within the list will move the display view to the corresponding page and highlight the word in context.

There is also a ‘Find’ bar at the top of the panel so the user can search for specific terms more easily.

Words excluded from the index: 

‘--', ‘a’, 'about', 'act', 'all', 'am', 'an', 'and’, 'any', 'are', 'as',  'at', 'be', 'because', 'been', 'but', 'by', 'can', 'case', 'certainly', 'claim', 'could', 'court', 'defence', 'did', 'do', 'each', 'fact', 'facts', 'for', 'friend', 'from', 'go', 'got', 'had', 'has', 'have', 'he', 'her', 'him', 'his', 'hot', 'how', 'I', 'i', 'id’, 'if', ‘im’, 'i'm', 'in', 'indeed', 'is', 'issue', 'it', 'just', 'justice', 'law', 'laws', 'lord', 'made', 'make', 'may', 'me', ‘mr’, 'mrs', ‘ms’, 'my', 'new', 'no', 'not', 'now', 'of’, 'off', 'on', 'one', 'only', 'or', ‘our’, 'out', 'other', 'page', 'point', 'put', 'q', 'right', 'rule', 'said', 'say', 'says', 'she', 'simply', 'so', 'some', 'sorry', 'state', 'submission', 'submissions', 'such', 'take', 'tell', 'than', 'that', ’the’, 'their', 'them', 'then', 'there', 'these', 'they', 'things', 'think', 'this', 'those', ‘to’, 'top', 'tort', 'two', 'under', 'unlawful', 'up', 'us', 'use', 'very', 'view', 'want', 'wanted', 'was', 'wasn't', 'we', ‘well’, 'were', 'why', 'what', 'when', 'where', 'whether', 'which', 'while', 'who', 'will', ‘with’, 'within', 'without', ‘word’, 'words', 'would', 'yes', ‘you’, ‘your’


Display panel

The toolbar for the display panel allows users to interact with the whole document easily.

Icon

Description

Navigate between pages in the document

Options to zoom in/out of the document and change the scale of the document

 Select text to annotate based on the flow of text (e.g. cannot highlight the next line without highlighting the end of the current line)

Select area of document to annotate within a defined box region (e.g. can be used for annotating an image or chart which wouldn't be selectable with the text select tools)

 Select text to annotate using a rectangular box to pick up text (e.g. can highlight small parts of multiple lines at once)

 Select text to copy to clipboard based on the flow of text

Click and drag on the page to navigate 

Apply a tag to the document

Helps users to organise documents by assigning them a relevant marker

Additional options includes: Details, Find, Parallel comparison, Compare with, Actions, Open new document, Versions.

(for more information, see below)

Navigate between different documents in the selected folder

Additional Options 

Icon

Description

Opens a dialog box to display the same details that appear in the document preview details panel.

Find.png

Allows users to conduct a text search within the content of the document.

Parallel_comparison.png

Allows users to open two documents side by side to manually compare content.

It is possible to open the same document twice to compare content across different sections of the same document.

Compare_with.png

Uses one document view to compare content of two documents.

Blue highlights show content that appears only in the document compared from (A) but not the document compared to (B).

Red highlights add content that appears only in document B but not document A. 

A new icon will appear at the top right of the document view allowing the user to easily toggle which of the selected documents is being compared to and from.

Actions.png

Additional options to interact with the document.

(for more information, see below)

Open_new_document.png

Opens a dialog box which lists all folders and documents that a user has access to so they can select which new document to open.

Selecting a document will open it in the same tab.

Versions.png

Lists any alternate versions of the document which the user can select to view.

 Actions 

Icon

Description

Add_to_worksheet.png

Allows users to add the document to an existing worksheet record or create a new worksheet record.

Add_to_collection.png

 Allows users to add the document to a collection so that alterations can be made within the collection without affecting the source document.

Set_access.png

 Users can manage permissions for specific documents to determine which users can access that document.

Access can be set by user or by group.

Manage_pages.png

 Allows users to reorder, insert, replace, extract, split, and delete individual pages within a document rather than having to replace an entire document where only one page has been altered.

Download_original.png

Users can download the original file prior any records that have been added to the document such as redactions or annotations.

Download_as_PDF.png

Users can download the current view of the document in a .pdf format, including the added records.

Users can export the document and any associated work products such as annotations and stamps as selected in the export dialog.
For more information please see our article on 'Document exporting'.


Overlay panel

Allows the user to view and interact with content that has been overlaid on the document.

Icon

Description

Show and create annotations

Show and create redactions

Navigate between the content that has been overlaid on the document

Choose to view content that has been overlaid on the document according to the worksheet or version it was created in

Find and filter the content that has been overlaid on the document