image: Photodisc Green
A great deal of attention is paid to collecting and reviewing electronically stored information. Much less attention is given to producing the results of a collection. Even less attention is given to tools that can easily create a production set that can be viewed by anyone.
Whether you are an attorney who needs to produce ESI to an opponent, a computer specialist tasked with delivering data culled from a forensic collection to a client, or an in-house attorney looking for a quick way to send internal documents to outside counsel for review, you may not have the ability or the budget to create load files suitable for review in a litigation support program; or the intended recipient may not have a litigation support program. What can you do to provide deliverables that are immediately usable? Try dtSearch Publish.
dtSearch Publish is a tool that lets you quickly publish a document collection to a CD, DVD, or external hard drive that is searchable by the recipient using dtSearch's powerful search engine technology. What's more, the recipient doesn't need to have dtSearch installed on their computer to search the collection. The search capabilities are automatically built into the collection you produce, requiring no software installation by the recipient.
CREATING A PRODUCTION SET WITH DTPUBLISH
A wizard helps you create a collection of documents for review. All you need to do is follow the steps outlined below to create a usable e-discovery product.
Note that the choice of target media is directly related to the size of the collection -- for larger collections, correspondingly larger storage media is required. You cannot span a collection over multiple CDs or DVDs. If your collection exceeds the capacity of the target you need to upgrade to media with greater storage capacity.
1. Click on the New CD button on the wizard to designate a master folder on your hard drive to hold the files until they are burned to CD or DVD.
2. Once you've created the target, add the documents you want to produce. You have the option of adding individual files using Windows Explorer to copy the files into the documents folder, or you can copy items in bulk using the Add Folder command.
3. Once you've added the documents you want to produce, create an index. Click on the Create Index button to name the index file, specify a location for it, and designate whether a summary or a detailed report is required. A detailed report will list all files indexed. Advanced features give you the option to cache document text or documents in the index to accelerate their review, decide if it should be case-sensitive, and specify the fields to display in the search results. Sticking with the default settings, however, makes this a simple two-click process.
4. Once the index is created, set the parameters to the index and add the documents. Like step 3, advanced features are available: index a particular file or folder; add items from an Outlook PST or from the web; apply file filters to exclude certain file types by extension.
Once the index parameters are set, the indexing process starts. When complete, the results screen gives you the option to review the activity log.
5. Create a search form to access and review the document set. As with previous steps, you can use default settings or create a customized search form with advanced features.
Finally, you are ready to review the document set you created on CD, DVD, or an external hard drive. If you can search your collection, it works. While you have the option of further customization, using the default settings for this simple five-step process will create everything you need to burn a searchable collection of documents to removable media or an external drive. Note, however, that you need to supply the burning software.
DELIVERING ACCESSIBLE ESI
Turning now to the end result, the recipient places the CD or DVD in the appropriate drive, or attaches the external drive, and launches the program to a search page that looks like a web browser with two panes: a search pane and a results pane. A tool bar rests across the top of the page. See Figure 1.
Figure 1. The search interface to dtSearch Publish.
The opening view presents a field on the left side of the page to search the collection using keywords or phrases. A drop-down menu gives you the option of searching for all the words typed in the field, any of the words, or the exact phrase. In the alternative, you can use a Boolean search strategy. You can also elect whether to use stemming, fuzzy, or phonic search features. Finally, you have the option to rank the results by the number of search terms matched in a document (hits), by date, by name, or by size of the file.
After you enter search terms, select a search strategy, and run the search against the collection. The results are listed below the search box. Each document returned is listed by its file name, along with additional information about the document based on the display fields that were specified by the person who created the document set. The default view of the search results shows the number of hits, the date and size of the file, as well as the title of the document.
When you select a document from the results list, its content comes into view in the right-hand window pane. dtSearch converts the file to HTML and displays the converted HTML with the search terms highlighted. Using buttons on the viewer pane, you can navigate quickly from hit to hit within the document, or from document to document.
The viewer window is actually an embedded browser control. Because everything is based on HTML, advanced users can extensively customize the appearance of the search, search results, and documents windows, and add their own JavaScript functions. The dtSearch viewer renders the content of the document without installing the original application that created it.
You can create your own templates for search results. In that case, you can add a link to the original file, which would require you to install the original application to the local machine. For example, a link to a Word document will open in Word. You can then print or edit the file from its native application.
When you find a document of interest, you can right-click on the viewer pane and select from several options. For example, you can highlight individual text and copy and paste it into another document, print the document, preview it for printing, or publish it as a PDF file. You can even append the selected document to an existing PDF. As you review documents, you can continue to select ones of interest and collect them into a single PDF file. An export to Excel feature is also available if the type of document involved is more appropriate for further use in a spreadsheet program.
Each index to a document set is limited to one terabyte of data, but you can put multiple indexes on a single drive. The interface does not support drive swapping, so the size of the medium limits the size of the data. However, using external drives such as a USB hard drive, you can use dtSearch Publish with terabytes of data. All common file formats are supported as well as many more.
CONCLUSION
dtPublish is easy to use, both for the creator of the CD or DVD, and the recipient. It is an elegant solution to creating a production set of electronically stored information that is immediately usable by the recipient. No specialized litigation software is needed, and no advanced IT support is required to access the contents of the CD or DVD. dtPublish is an ideal tool for corporations and in-house legal departments that must frequently respond to e-discovery, for attorneys who need to produce ESI in discovery for other attorneys who lack robust litigation support capabilities, and for computer forensics examiners who need to provide their customers with a usable collection of items recovered during a computer forensic examination.
Bruce A. Olson is president of ONLAW Trial Technologies, a consulting firm offering trial technology, e-discovery, and computer forensics services.
:::: PRODUCT INFORMATION ::::
Manufacturer: dtSearch
Product: dtSearch Publisher
Pricing: from $2,500; a "service bureau," or annual license, is available for $3,500 per year
