A fundamental feature of the Opus 2 platform is its ability to take highlighted strings of text in a document and turn these into structured data in a worksheet. This is done using the ‘text in a document’ worksheet field.
This article describes the specifics of the ‘text in a document’ field type. For more general information about worksheet configuration, please refer to configuring a worksheet.
In Opus 2, an annotation (or a note or a designation) on a document is a worksheet record. Any worksheet that has been configured to include a ‘text in a document’ field will be available as a ‘new record’ option when a highlight is made on a document.
This can be illustrated with a common example from Opus 2’s case management solution. This solution usually includes a worksheet titled ‘Chronology’ and a worksheet titled ‘Notes’. Both worksheets are customarily configured with a ‘text in a document’ field. When a case management project user is highlighting text in a document, the pop-up dialog that appears on the highlighted text includes an option to create a new record for either of these worksheets: ‘Create Note’ or ‘Create Event’. If the former is selected, a new record will be added to the ‘Notes’ worksheet. With the latter option a new event is added to the ‘Chronology’ worksheet.
The record is not simply added to the worksheet but is also shown in the notes panel on the right-hand side of the document viewer. Any document associated with a record will automatically display all records from all associated worksheets in the notes panel.
The relationship between documents and worksheets that is established using the ‘text in a document’ field allows you to see associated information both ways: in the worksheet, different documents that have been associated are displayed in individual worksheet records, in the document viewer, all worksheet records that refer to that individual document are shown in the notes panel.
The ‘Text in a document’ field type
When configuring a worksheet, the ‘text in a document’ field type is part of the ‘file’ category of fields. The field options are as follows:
Name | The title of the field. In the worksheet view, this is the column header. |
Description | A description of the purpose of the field. This will be shown on the ‘Project Overview’ page. |
API Key | An optional API key. If none is given one will be created automatically. |
Required | Not required: The record can be created even if this field is empty
Mandatory: The record cannot be saved unless data is entered in this field
Suggested: If a user tries to save the record without data in this field, a warning message will pop up, but the user will be able to save anyway. |
Characters to extract | The number of characters from the highlighted text that will be shown in the worksheet record. Default is 100. |
Use as bookmark | This turns the highlighted text into a bookmark rather than an annotation. See 'Configuring a bookmark’ below for further explanation. |
Include in principal Id | Makes the highlighted text excerpt part of the principal Id of the worksheet record. For more information, see [principal Id]. |
Configuring a bookmark
If you want to simply create a bookmark in a document, without adding a comment or any other data to a note in the margin, you can configure a ‘text in a document’ field to be used as a bookmark.
When the ‘use as bookmark’ option is switched on, a bookmark icon is added to the left-hand side panel of the document viewer. Any highlighted text that the user adds as a bookmark record will be displayed in this panel and allow the user to quickly return to a piece of highlighted text. No annotation card will be displayed in the right-hand side panel of the document viewer.
If you want to use both bookmarks and annotations in a project, you need to configure two separate worksheets, one for annotations, and one for bookmarks.
Three use cases: create a comment, an event and a task from a piece of text in a document
The following three simple use cases illustrate how the ‘text in a document’ field can be used to create structured data from highlighted pieces of text. These examples are not exhaustive. It is likely that your Opus 2 instance already features some versions of these examples.
For instance, the Opus 2 Case Management solution features a ‘Chronology’ worksheet – this is configured with multiple fields of various types to allow users to construct a detailed timeline of events. The inclusion of a ‘text in a document’ field in the Chronology worksheet is what allows users to create a new Chronology entry directly from the document they are reading.
What these more simplified use cases illustrate is the flexibility involved in configuring document annotation and the ability to create data from information in a document.
If you have a specific type of information you want to extract from the documents in your project, using the ‘text in a document’ field along with a combination of other worksheet fields will allow you to structure your data in the way that works best for your own use case.
Use case one: create a ‘Comment’ type annotation
To configure the ability to leave general comments in the margin of a document, a worksheet titled ‘Notes’ is created with the following fields:
A text in a document field titled ‘Highlighted text'
A multi-line text field titled ‘Comment’
When a piece of text is highlighted in a document, the option to create a new note will appear in the highlight options dialog box:
Clicking on the ‘Create Note’ button opens the dialog box to create a new record in the ‘Notes’ worksheet with the two fields:
Once the note has been saved, it can be viewed in the margin of the relevant document:
It can also be viewed as a record in the Notes worksheet:
Use case two, create an ‘Event’ type annotation
To configure the ability to store events mentioned in a document as data in a worksheet that can be displayed in a timeline, a worksheet titled ‘Events’ is created with the following fields:
A text in a document field titled ‘Highlighted text'
A date field titled ‘Date of event’
A multi line text field titled ‘Summary’
When a piece of text is highlighted in a document, the option to create a new event will appear in the highlight options dialog box:
Clicking on the ‘Create Event’ button opens the dialog box to create a new record in the ‘Events’ worksheet with the three fields:
Once the event has been saved, it can be viewed in the margin of the relevant document:
It can also be viewed as a record in the Events worksheet. Since this record has a date field, it can be displayed in timeline view:
Use case three, create a ‘Task’ type annotation
To configure the ability to create tasks related to document text, a worksheet titled ‘Tasks’ is created with the following fields:
A text in a document field titled ‘Highlighted text'
A short text field titled ‘Task’
A choice field titled ‘Status’, with options ‘Not started’, ‘In progress’ and ‘Complete’.
When a piece of text is highlighted in a document, the option to create a new task will appear in the highlight options dialog box:
Clicking on the ‘Create Task’ button opens the dialog box to create a new record in the ‘Task’ worksheet with the three fields:
Once the task has been saved, it can be viewed in the margin of the relevant document:
It can also be viewed as a record in the Task worksheet. Since this record has a choice field, it can be displayed in card view:
