Importing files from another system

What to export

• Files: a name, and if you have them the file number, client, adverse party, court file number, lawyers and status
• Parties: the opposing parties on each file and their counsel
• Tasks: the work on each file and its dates

They go in that order, because a party and a task each need their file. Column names do not have to match: you choose which column is which, and lawyers and assignees are matched to your people by name. A name that matches nobody is reported, not invented.

Before anything is written

The preview shows the first rows as they would land and lists every row that cannot be read, by spreadsheet row number. Those rows are left out; the rest still go in.

If the dates could be read either way round, as 03/04 can, and nothing in the file settles it, the import will not run until you say which order the file uses. A two-digit year is read as 20xx.

Files and conflicts

Each file is screened by the conflict check as it goes in, against every file already there and the ones before it in the same spreadsheet. A file that hits is imported, named in the result, and keeps the hit on its conflict record. If the check cannot run, the import stops. A file already there, by name or file number, is left alone, so running the same spreadsheet twice does not duplicate files.

Parties are screened as they are added to each file, and what the check finds is added to the file’s conflict record, never written over it. A party whose file cannot be found is reported rather than made into a new file.

Limitation dates

A task’s hard due date arrives locked as a limitation date unless the spreadsheet says it is not one. Those the spreadsheet did not classify are listed under Import / Export until an administrator confirms them; they are locked and on the limitation date register in the meantime. One that is not really a limitation date is changed on the task itself, which only a lawyer, partner or administrator can do, and the change is recorded.

A task whose file is not there yet goes to Unfiled rather than being dropped.

Undoing an import

Each import is kept as a batch, and undo removes what that batch created. A file is kept if anyone has since added a task, party, memo entry or event to it, and a task is kept if it has notes; undo names what it kept. The batch’s record stays, marked undone.

Taking files back out

An administrator can export every file at once: a zip with a folder per file, holding its details, parties, memo, events, team, tasks, notes, history, document links and time.