Team RB Conference attendees learned ‘What’s UP with RB’

About 200 RB users attended our free online user conference, Nov. 5, 2014. At the conference, Client Support Manager Jason Yee and Technical Support Manager Ted Yoo explained and demonstrated important highlights of the RB8 & RB Web updates that were released right after the conference.

And attendees got to hear OMTI President & CEO Yong Lee in person debunk rumors of his premature demise, while presenting a new RB option: RB8 Cloud, and present the OMTI 2015 Roadmap.

Things are looking UP

With a theme of “Things are looking UP,” Yong welcomed the crowd and explained that he was in Korea, so while the attendees were listening to him speak, it was 3:30AM and cold, but he was UP and looking forward to talking about RB’s future, but first he would hand the presentation over to Jason and Ted to talk about the latest updates.

Step Right UP: OMTI Customer Portal

But first, Jason made a small detour to talk about a few features of our online offices, the OMTI Customer Portal, that people might not be aware of.

He showed attendees how they can manage their companies’ RB users access to RB information, like Update notices and newsletters, but also automatic billing information, so they spend less time dealing with renewals and such. He also showed how they can easily update credit card information from the first screen they sign into, again reducing any hassles in managing their RB subscriptions.

Finally, he showed attendees the Idea Collaborator in the Customer Portal, where other users are submitting and voting on ideas that become the basis of what’s in RB and RB Web updates.

What’s UP with RB8

In the session about RB8 office management software for court reporting agencies, Jason talked about updates to three areas: Calendar, Production and general management.

Calendar

Calendar updates were largely focused on increasing speed and efficiency for not only staff, but also clients and reporters. New and updated functions for staff give them the ability to confirm jobs faster, use affiliated agencies and other resources as depo locations, delete multiple time-offs at once, set job due days at the number client firms want, and improve communications with clients and resources.

Updates more directly affecting clients and resources include the ability for staff to create smarter emails: They can insert more data fields into email subject lines, for instance a job’s case, location, date & time, so the recipient no longer has to open an email to get the gist of it. Plus forms that used to be attached to an email can now be embedded into the email, such as confirmation, cancelation, and resource worksheet forms, so recipients don’t have to open attachments to read them, they are in the body of the email instead.

Production

Production updates included new features to meet state and client requirements, plus a major streamlining of RB-PDF Transcript production. Errata Sheets and agency signatures can now be added to transcripts to meet the requirements of certain states. And improved functions meet lawyers’ requests with more customization options and better-looking transcripts.

But the big update in this module is the streamlined RB-PDF Transcript Creator, which eliminates unnecessary steps in production while at the same time consolidating production into one step-by-step screen so staff create transcripts with all the right features and don’t overlook anything, saving time and reducing errors.

Office Management

Finally Jason covered some highlights in other areas of RB8. He described the Send Resource Payroll Report function which automates this job by creating an email report for you, then sending it to your resource(s). And he announced that users can now include longer messages in invoices — twice as long as previously.

Jason demo-ed a new feature for managing notes logs: Users can now classify notes by type and how they are received — classifications the users develop themselves, so they fit their unique businesss communications. Then they can designate notes in different logs by these types and search logs by these notes types to more easily find relevant information.

RB Web 8 UPdates

For the next session, Jason handed the mic to Ted to describe and demo what’s new in RB Web online offices for attorneys, reporters, and staff. The main theme here was giving the end user, whether attorney or reporter, more control. So now attorneys can upload files to any jobs in their calendar for which they are the ordering attorney at any time, not just when they first request the job.

They can also back order transcripts online for any job they were billled for. This will be a great convenience for attorney who paid an appearance fee but didn’t order a transcript at the time of a depo, but later decide they need one.

And in Transcript Packages, attorneys can now work collaboratively online with other attorneys who have access to the same package. On a comment-by-comment basis, attorneys can share their comments with all attorneys who have access, or none, or they can select exactly who can see which comment.

For Reporters, the big RB Web update is that they can create their own master word lists from cases online.

RB Web Mobile On

Ted also did a short presentation on RB Web Mobile On, which is a browser-based version of RB Web online offices that works on smart phones and tablets. He discussed ways browser-based is better than dedicated apps and are less expensive while offering the same functionality.

Coming UP: RB8 Cloud

After Ted’s talk, Yong returned with an overview of cloud computing, reasons to move to the cloud, and the specific story of OMTI moving all of our servers to the cloud. In making this move ourselves, we believe we have proved the concept and will soon (first quarter 2015) offer a version of RB8 in the cloud for court reporting agencies. Yong then described some of the specific benefits of RB8 Cloud for agencies, such as its security (no more open ports) and better performance for RB Web (since an agency’s RB8 and RB Web will reside next to each other in the cloud).

UP Ahead: A Roadmap for RB8

Finally, Yong talked about the future starting from today. He reiterated that OMTI is not going away, RB is not being sold, and he is not dead. He is living in Korea now and “goofing off,” which he explained he deserves after decades of building OMTI and RB. But he is still in charge, and everyone is still in place in the business.

What is new is that OMTI has bought its first building, where we are relocating to this month and is the reason why we now have a new phone number: 650-396-2105.

And 2015 marks OMTI’s 30th anniversary and also the year RB9 development begins in earnest. RB8 is almost 10 years old and is built on Windows 7 architecture. RB9 will be built on Windows 10, and will come in 2 versions , one being browser based for smaller agencies.

Yong’s session was followed by a long Q&A where attendees were able to ask all of their questions about the new update and anything else RB/OMTI. It was great to hear from our users, answer their questions, and get some opinions on where to go next.

Thanks to everyone who attended, and we look forward to your participation next year.

Watch it again

We have posted videos of the conference for those who were unable to attend or for attendees who want a refresher. And we have updated the RB8 and RB Web user guides to cover all of the new features in the product updates.

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