Tips for preparing batches

If you intend to pre-sort your documents for Batch Load, here are some tips that will help you organize your documents for faster application of common metadata and processing.

The examples in this article refer to the tutorial files found at (assuming you installed MasterFile with defaults) "C:\Program Files (x86)\MasterFile\Tutorial\".

Express Load processes files by folders and their subfolder, letting you pick all files within them or selected ones in the folder tree. However, when you want to apply common default information to different sets of documents, it's easiest to move those sets into their own sub-folders and then apply the appropriate defaults to the batch.

  • Documents from the same case/investigation matter should be all stored in one folder.
  • Within that directory, create additional subfolders for documents of the same type (for example, letters).
  • Look through the subfolders to see if the documents can be further divided to allow additional fields to be set with defaults. For example if you have a large batch of correspondence from one individual to another, they can all be placed into one subfolder so the  "From" and "To" fields can be set as defaults. You can see this in the subfolder "from - Alfred Jones" above.
  • Remaining documents should be stored in the folder that will let you set the most defaults for them.

If more than one user is using Express Load to process files in a single folder, divide the documents into subfolders by user name, to avoid duplicate documents in the database.

Filenaming conventions

Adopting a filenaming convention especially for work product can dramatically speed up data entry. Prepending the document date to the file name lets Express Load automatically fill the "Document date" profile field.

Here's the format

    yyyy.mm.dd.## - <file name>

    yyyy   is the year
    mm     is the month as a number with leading zeros, i.e. 01, 02, not 1, 2, ...
    dd     is the day of the month with leading zeros.
    ##     is an optional sequence number with leading zeros. Leave a space after
           "dd" (or after "##" if the sequence number is used).

Only the date can be specified in this manner; time is not supported.

  • You can include a document sequence number between two "#" signs anywhere in the file name (after the document date if provided). Express Load will then automatically fill the "Document number or ID" profile field. Note that this field is not designed for and should not be used for Bates numbers; instead "DP_Production_History_t" should be used which manages and tracks Bates numbers, production, etc. You can find more details on "DP_Production_History_t" in the CSV Import/Export guide here.
  • For correspondence, set out the appropriate names for the "From/Author" and "To" profile fields, so anyone using Express Load can complete those fields without opening each document.
  • Similarly, for other types of documents with only authors, set out the authors and document type so the "From/Author" and "Document type" fields can be filled without opening each document.

Images, or scanned documents

We  recommend you pre-process document images and electronic documents with the Evidence Cruncher.

The EC will OCR and convert documents into searchable PDF. Express Load will then load in each profile:

  • the searchable PDF as the first attachment; that lets you view it with the "Launch" button or with [R+ General > View documents] and keeps it ready for production and other processing.
  • the original source file from which the PDF file (for example Word/WordPerfect or other Office applications. Note that document images are not loaded as they are placed in the PDF version that is.
  • any generated OCR text.