Tag Archives: Tools

Lesson #99

Tools – Notes Finder function

With 10 different sets of Notes Logs, it can be difficult to remember exactly where a particular note was entered in RB9. Use Notes Finder to search for log notes entered manually by users and automatically by the system.

With this tool, you can search for notes made in:

• Case listings
• Contact listings
• Firm listings
• Firms’ collections histories
• Invoice listings
• Job listings
• Location listings
• Resource listings
• Tracking listings
• Witness listings

Search each Notes Log category for notes by:

• Date or date range
• All (system generated and entered by staff) or a single person who entered the note(s)
• Word or phrase
• Notes type — such as marketing — or action type for collections — such as call made. You can search all types, a single type, or several types at once.

You can include all notes in your search or exclude cancelled notes from your search.

View search results

RB9 displays the notes that meet your search criteria with the most recent notes listed first. You can see at a glance:

• Each note’s contents.
• Where the note is stored.
• Who entered it and when — or if added by the system automatically, who triggered the entry.
• Type of note.
• How it was communicated or what action was taken.
• If you include cancelled notes, when they were cancelled and by whom.

You can sort the notes listed by one or more columns in ascending or descending order (but when you exit the function, RB9 will revert back to the default order). Export the list as an Excel spreadsheet or a CSV (comma-separated values) file to save, print, share, or use in other applications.

Drill down in any note to see more information associated with the note — such as the contact listing associated with a contact note. From there you can edit/update the listing, upload/download repository files, and add more notes to its Notes Log.

NOTE: This is an RB9-only function. It is not included in RB Lite.

TL;DR: Use the Notes Finder tool to find notes quickly anywhere in RB9.

RB concepts in this lesson

Contact: Person who works for a firm you do business with, such as attorneys.

Firm: Business you provide services to, usually law firms.

Job: Usually the reporting of a deposition, but can also be any kind of service you provide with your reporters or other resources. More >

Location: Place where jobs occur.

Notes Logs: Un-editable internal-use only notes entered either by a user or automatically by RB appear in chronological logs in the database record where they occurred, such as a case, job, invoice, or entity. More >

Resource: Person or thing that provides your business with a service, such as reporters.

Tracking: System for keeping track of where production items are in your production cycle and physically in your office.

Lesson #98

Tools – Label Templates function

In the Production module’s Envelopes and Labels function you can print addresses on a variety of labels for parties, contacts, firms, locations, and resources using information from RB9’s database.

Before printing labels out of RB9, set up label templates that will automatically include the recipient mailing address, plus your company logo and other information if desired. Then store them in the Label Templates function for everyone on your staff to use. With DYMO label software and RB9’s Label Templates function you can modify label templates, create new ones, and manage all of your company’s label templates.

Customize default labels & create your own

RB9 comes with a default set that you can use as is or customize to better match your company. You can also create an unlimited amount of new label templates to meet all of your company’s labeling needs. RB9 works with DYMO label printers only.

Use DYMO software to set up labels. Whether editing existing templates or creating label templates from scratch, you can add/delete:

• Text
• Address field (which RB9 uses for mail merge)
• Graphics like your company logo

Label template management made easy

After creating/editing label templates, upload them to RB9’s Label Templates function — which stores all of your company’s label templates together in the database. This way everyone has access to the same label templates when printing labels from RB9 — and you won’t lose your label templates when transferring to new computer because they are stored in the cloud not locally.

The Label Templates window lists all label templates in your RB9 database. By default labels are sorted by type, then name, but you can sort your results in the grid by one or both columns in ascending or descending order (but when you exit the function, RB will revert back to the default order). Export the list as an Excel spreadsheet or a CSV (comma-separated values) file to save, print, share, or use in other applications.

You can download any existing template to modify. Afterwards upload the modified template with a new name to add as a new template in RB9 or with the same name to replace the existing template in RB9.

You can add as many new templates as you want by uploading .dymo files from your computer. And when you no longer need a template or want to replace it with a modified version, you can delete it from the Label Templates list.

NOTE: This is an RB9-only function. It is not included in RB Lite.

TL;DR: Modify default label templates and create new ones for your office to use when printing addresses on labels for parties, contacts, firms, locations, or resources using information from RB9’s database.

RB concepts in this lesson

Contact: Person who works for a firm you do business with.

Firm: Business you provide services to — usually law firms.

Location: Place where jobs occur.

Resource: Person or thing that provides your business with a service — such as reporters.

Lesson #97

Tools – Form Templates function

Some RB emails are form letters or include attachments that automatically contain RB information. You can customize the content of these forms — even add new forms — in Form Templates.

Form Templates is a word processor with mail merge, so you don’t need Microsoft Word to manage forms, letters, and other documents that use RB data. It’s a simpler word processor than Word but includes data merge fields and is designed to work with RB functions.

Complete set of forms included

RB comes with a starter set of form templates to cover a variety of needs — such as job confirmations, letters to witnesses, and collections letters. You can use the included templates as is, edit them to match your business better, import forms from other applications, create templates from scratch, and copy templates to create additional templates.

You can create form templates in RB for:

• Job confirmations & cancellations
• Assignment confirmations (AKA resource worksheets) & cancellations
• Letters to contacts, witnesses, & others related to a job
• Payment receipts
• RB-PDF Transcript cover pages & errata sheets
• Collections letters

Customize & create your own

Use RB’s Form Templates to create your own company-branded letters, notices, transcript cover pages, and errata sheets. You can include your own content, formatting, company logo, and merge data fields.

When editing templates or creating new ones, you can:

• Enter your own content, including images and simple graphics.
• Insert headers, footers, and tables.
• Add RB data fields.
• Format everything to match your needs and corporate culture.

Any edits you make to an existing form are saved system-wide in the form. And when you create a new form, it is saved on the RB server and is available to other RB registered users in your company.

RB’s Form Templates is easy to navigate and use, but powerful and full of options. All existing forms in your system are grouped by the functions they are used in, so you can find forms easily. You can also create your own subgroups to further organize your forms when the main groups are not enough. You can sort form lists by one or more columns in ascending or descending order to help you locate the form you want to edit/copy/delete (but when you exit the function, RB will revert back to the default order).

Full styling toolkit

The many tools in Form Templates are grouped into major categories on tabs, with each tab displaying all of its tools organized in subgroups so you minimize searching for a particular tool. And some tool groups have a popup option so you can change multiple related options at once.

This full-featured word processor with mail merge contains many controls and options in all aspects of form creation:

Text

Tools for styling your forms include most common text controls present in word processor applications, such as font types, sizes, colors, weights, and styling. You can style bulleted or numbered lists, and set text alignment, indents, tabs, borders, and backgrounds on paragraphs. You can choose different pagination options for multi-page forms, such as widow and orphan control, and set up re-usable character and paragraph styles.

Inserts

You can insert headers, footers, page numbers, images, graphics, blank pages, page breaks, tables, special symbols, hyperlinks, and text frames into forms. At a minimum, you can customize all of your forms by inserting your company logo. You can further customize the appearance of your logo or other graphics by setting text wrap options, positioning (including on the z axis), and size.

Tables

If you have a table in your form, you can customize it by adding or deleting rows/columns, and setting the properties of frame lines in the table, such as line colors, line widths, and cell background colors, or not having frame lines at all. You can also add custom formulas to your forms, such as sum totals.

Layout

Customize the layout of your template’s pages by setting margins, orientation, paper size, columns, content breaks, background color and borders, and paragraph spacing.

View

Form Templates has typical word processor View controls, so you can zoom in/out, or select a set view percentage. You can toggle rulers, status bar, table gridlines, control characters, and other guides on and off.

Lots of merge field options

Along with tools for styling your forms and adding boilerplate content, Form Templates includes several types of merge data fields:

• Contextual data fields – Only relevant RB data fields appear as options when inserting a merge data field in the form you are editing/creating, instead of listing every available RB data field for you to scroll through. When you insert a merge data field, RB only displays fields related to the category of form you are updating, logically grouped into sets, so you can quickly find a specific merge field.
• List data fields – You create tables of related merge fields that you select. You can re-arrange the order that the fields appear as columns in the table, or have the information display in paragraph format. For example, you can easily add a list of parties scheduled to appear to a Job Worksheet, that includes each party’s firm name, the party’s email address, party type, and services requested.
• Special fields – You customize their formatting, such as a Date field where you can select the order and appearance of day/month/year, and even include time stamps.

Merge fields are important because, when inserted into a form, real data from the job/client/resource/location you’re sending the form for will automatically merge into the place of the field, so you don’t have to manually re-key any of the information.

If you want a copy of a form template outside RB, you can print or export the form in a variety of formats, such as PDF, Word, HTML, or text.

TL;DR: Some RB functions include email-able/printable forms that automatically include RB information. These forms can be used as is or modified if needed in the Form Templates function. You can also import forms from other applications, and create your own forms.

RB concepts in this lesson

Job: Usually the reporting of a deposition but can also be any kind of service you provide with your reporters or other resources. More >

Location: Place where jobs occur such as court rooms, hospitals, schools, doctors’ offices, or private residences.

RB-PDF Transcript: PDF version of a transcript with built-in transcript-specific features like hyperlinked exhibits, word lists/indexes, errata sheets, and enhanced headers/footers containing case and depo information.

Resource: Person or thing that provides your business with a service such as reporters.

Lesson #96

Tools – Tag Manager function

Tags — the labels you create in RB9 to organize entities with — can be used to quickly print envelopes or labels for targeted mailings, or to send bulk emails to specific groups. By organizing clients with accurate qualifiers you can do a better job with your outreach efforts. You can also use tags to organize resources and job locations, then use this function to contact them by group.

If you use tags to organize entities, Tag Manager is where you can look up entities by tag, add or remove tags from multiple entities at once, print envelopes and labels for specific groups, and bulk email tagged entities.

Set up tags to re-use

Before using Tag Manager set up tags for contacts, firms, resources, and locations in Lists. You can use any word or phrase as a tag, and use as many tags as you want to define and organize entities. Tags are especially helpful in organizing firms for marketing purposes and contacts for customer service treatment. For example you might have a tag for your 25 best clients (“Top 25”) who require constant monitoring.

Setting up tag lists in RB9 is recommended over entering tags manually in each entity. With preset lists users select tags from drop-downs — which is faster than typing and eliminates misspellings — plus everyone in your company will have the same options to select from. A tag manually entered in one entity is not available to select later until you add it to a tag list.

Apply tags to entities

You can tag entities one at a time — for example tag new customers as you enter them in RB9. But if you have a group of entities to tag, use Tag Manager where you can bulk update a set of entities at once. In Tag Manager you can search for firms, contacts, resources, and locations by name or tag. If searching by tag you can select one from the contextual drop-down or key in a partial/full tag name in the field to find manually entered tags. You can also search for contacts by firm.

Using tags in Tag Manager

The results grid in Tag Manager displays the name and address of each entity that matches your search criteria. It also shows if a displayed entity is active — e.g., a client who is still scheduling jobs. This is useful if you want to send emails, letters, etc. to only active or inactive clients.

You can sort your results in the grid by one or more columns in ascending or descending order (but when you exit the function, RB9 will revert back to the default order). Export the list as an Excel spreadsheet or a CSV (comma-separated values) file to save, print, share, or use in other applications.

After finding entities in Tag Manager you can view the details of any entry in the results by clicking its hyperlink.

Add tags to multiple entities at once by selecting them in Tag Manager results, then choosing a tag in the drop-down and saving your choice.

Remove a tag from a group of entities at once is a just-as-easy similar process.

If you want to do a mass mailing from RB9, first find firms, contacts, resources, or locations in Tag Manager. Then print envelopes or mailing labels for the selected entities. Or similarly send contacts, resources, or locations an email directly from this function.

NOTE: This is an RB9-only function. It is not included in RB Lite.

TL;DR: After tagging entities use the Tag Manager to look up tagged entities, email selected entities, print envelopes or labels for targeted mailings, quickly remove tags from entities, and add more tags to entities.

RB concepts in this lesson

Contact: Person who works for a firm you do business with — such as attorneys.

Entity: Individual, business, place, or discrete part of your company — such as revenue centers or branch offices. More >

Firm: Business you provide services to — usually law firms.

Location: Place where jobs occur — such as court rooms.

Resource: Person or thing that provides your business with a service — such as reporters.

Tags: Labels you create in RB to organize entities with relevant, searchable keywords or phrases.

Lesson #95

Tools – Bulk Update function

When something changes that affects a lot of jobs or entities — for example you have a new sales representative — save time by changing that particular setting (field) for a group of records —i.e., all of the affected contacts — at once. Use the Bulk Update function to update multiple jobs, firms, contacts, resources, or locations at the same time.

Depending on the information you want to change, you first select the group of records (jobs, firms, contacts, resources, or locations) where that information is stored. Then you can select the specific field in those records that you want to update. Depending on the field, you choose the value you want in that field — it might be a list option, a Yes/No choice, a lookup from the RB database, or a text entry of a number or percentage. Finally you choose which specific entries in the group of records to update.

Update contacts

For contacts, you can update:

• Billing rates
• Classification
• Whether or not to send them marketing materials
• Designated gender
• Credit rating
• Sales rep or resource they belong to (Client Of)
• What salutation to use in addressing them
• Preferred methods for receiving invoices and statements

You can choose to change every listing in Contacts, only those listings for contacts that are still doing business with you (active clients), or select a custom set of contacts to update, such as all the contacts at one firm. You can also search for all contacts assigned to a single sales rep if you are bulk updating those contacts to a new sales rep.

Update firms

For firms, you can update many more fields:

• Current account status
• Whether to show detailed breakdowns on their invoices
• Billing rates
• Your ranking of them (the type of firm they are or their value to you)
• Credit rating
• Whether they are COD (Cash on Delivery)
• Sales rep or resource they belong to (Client Of)
• Resource responsible for collecting payments from them
• Whether monthly statements are printed for each contact at this firm separately or combined and sent to “Accounts Payable”
• Percentage you deduct if you offer a negotiated discount on all the firms’ invoices
• Whether or not to send them marketing materials
• Percentage you charge the firms monthly on past-due invoices
• Type of firm (e.g., law firm, insurance company, corporation)
• Deadline in business days past the payment terms of invoices for the firms to render payment before RB notifies you to start collection efforts
• Percentage you charge the firms as a one-time account service fee on past-due invoices
• Firm designated as the firms’ headquarters (Parent Firm)
• Terms for payment that will appear on the firms’ invoices
• Percentage for the state sales tax for the firms
• Where the firms heard of you (source of initial contact)
• Method for receiving consolidated statements

Like contacts, you can choose to change every listing in Firms, only active firms, or a custom set of specific firms. You can also search for all firms assigned to a single sales rep if you are bulk updating those firms to a new sales rep.

Update resources

For resources, you can update:

• Percentages for extra commission pay Client Of resources receive for their clients’/cases’ jobs  when they cover the job or when someone else covers the job (can be 2 different percentages)
• Percentage for sales reps’ commissions
• Number of days from the invoice date before resources are paid on originals or copies (can be 2 different amounts)
• If they are excluded from the pay process (for example,  an owner or conference room would not earn pay on tasks assigned to them)
• Their Pay Group (e.g., Monthly, Weekly, On Demand)
• Whether you provide them with 1099 forms
• Order of preference for assigning tasks or their availability
• Profession or other resource type
• What salutation to use in addressing them
• If they do their own scoping

As with contacts and firms, you can choose to change every listing in Resources, only active resources, or a custom set of specific resources.

Update locations

For locations, there is only one field you can update: Location Type, i.e., the category of the facilities where jobs take place, e.g., hospital, courthouse, or school.

As with the other entities, you can choose to change every listing in Locations, only active locations, or a custom set of specific locations.

There is no Undo in Bulk Update

When you select Update All for firms, contacts, resources, or locations, RB9 warns you that you are about to update all the entities in the selected table and you must affirm that you want to change the entire table. The default reply is No to help minimize errors made with this irreversible command.

Update jobs

For jobs, you can update how you classify a group of jobs (such as depo, trial, or video conference) and which sales rep is responsible for the jobs.

You can choose to update every job within a specified date range; narrow which ones to update in that date range to those ordered by a specific firm, contact, or case; or select a custom set of jobs. You can also search for all jobs assigned to a single sales rep if you are bulk updating those jobs to a new sales rep.

Whether you are updating entities or jobs, you can sort your search results in the grid by one or more columns in ascending or descending order (but when you exit the function, RB will revert back to the default order). Export the list as an Excel spreadsheet or a CSV (comma-separated values) file to save, print, share, or use in other applications.

NOTE: In addition to the stand-alone Bulk Update function, Billing Rates and Pay Rates have a Mass Update feature (in the Service Item Master), which you can use to update rates in multiple billing or pay rate tables at once. With these power-user features, you will be able to keep your RB database updated more easily.

TL;DR: If you have a number of entities or jobs that need the same information changed, save time by changing them all at once.

RB concepts in this lesson

Client Of: Resource that receives a commission for jobs their clients scheduled or that are part of a case the resource was designated as the Client Of resource. You can also give reporters right of first refusal on their clients/cases’ jobs by displaying unassigned jobs from their clients/cases in Resource-side online calendars in RB Connect.

Contact: Person who works for a firm you do business with— such as attorneys, paralegals, secretaries, legal assistants, claim adjusters, and court clerks.

Firm: Business you provide services to — usually law firms, but can also be other court reporting firms, vendors, insurance companies, corporate clients, and courts.

Job: Usually the reporting of a deposition but can also be any kind of service you provide with your reporters or other resources — such as realtime, videoconferencing, or read & sign. More >

Location: Place where jobs occur — such as court rooms, hospitals, schools, doctors’ offices, or private residences.

Parent Firm: Headquarters of a multi-branch corporation.

Pay Groups: Categories of time periods your company uses to pay resources, e.g., Monthly, Weekly, On Demand. Group resources according to their pay period (frequency) to reduce errors when running payroll.

Resource: Person or thing that provides your business with a service — such as reporters, videographers, interpreters, scopists, account executives, other agencies that cover jobs for you, or a conference room.

Task: Service requested with a job — such as reporting, interpreting, or video, that require a separate resource (person, company, thing) to accomplish. More >

Lesson #94

Tools – Bulk Import function

Data entry and getting RB populated is a time-consuming task. One of those long drawn-out processes is entering firms, contacts, and resources from scratch. If you have existing client and reporter/resource information, don’t re-key these entities into RB; instead export it to Microsoft Excel spreadsheets from your application, then import it into RB.

RB offers 3 import options:

• Firms
• Firms with Contacts
• Resources

If you’re new to RB and want to import your clients first, we recommend using Firms with Contacts so you import your client law firms and other entities, such as insurance companies, along with your contacts at those firms at the same time.

Preparation is key

Bringing your client and resource databases into RB using Microsoft Excel spreadsheets will save you a lot of time but there are a few things to note:

• To import your data into RB the Excel spreadsheet must have all of the same column headers in the same order as the Bulk Import headers. So we provide Excel templates to make it easy to set up your spreadsheet correctly. All you have to do is copy and paste your data into the template.
• While you must have the exact same column headers in the exact same order, you do not have to populate all the fields in the spreadsheet. Only required fields in each spreadsheet must have entries in each row in the spreadsheet. For example when importing Firms with Contacts, only the firm name and the contact’s name must be included in each row.
• If you are including an entity’s state you must use the 2-letter USPS abbreviation.
• If you are including email addresses for contacts or resources, each entity should have only one email address.
• When importing entities RB does not check the database for duplicate entries. If you discover duplicate entities after importing, you can either delete the duplicate or merge the entries.

Process is easy

After exporting your existing data to an Excel spreadsheet the import process is simple: Select the type of spreadsheet you are importing in Bulk Import and upload the spreadsheet’s .xlsx file.

If the spreadsheet was formatted correctly, the data will appear in the Bulk Import results grid. You can view your entries but not edit them. If you see any errors, you can edit your spreadsheet and re-upload the file or edit the entries in RB after importing. If the data looks ok, you can have RB import the entries to the appropriate Entity database automatically.

TL;DR: Import existing client and resource information from other applications via Microsoft Excel spreadsheets.

RB concepts in this lesson

Contact: Person who works for a firm you do business with.

Entity: Individual, business, place, or discrete part of your company, such as revenue centers or branch offices. More >

Firm: Business you provide services to, usually law firms.

Resource: Person or thing that provides your business with a service, such as reporters.

Lesson #93

DIY in your RB

Import data, create forms and labels, perform custom data searches, and more in this versatile toolkit. In this module, you can:

• Import existing client and resource information from other applications into RB.
• Quickly update different clients, jobs, resources, and locations at the same time. 
• Use tags (keywords or phrases) to organize entities like clients or resources. Send emails or regular mail to all entities tagged the same. 
• Create forms and letters using the set of customizable templates in a word processor with mail merge that automatically incorporates your RB data. 
• Modify default label templates and create new ones.
• Search notes globally in RB Notes Logs.
• Monitor repository usage by in-house staff as well as by clients and resources via RB Connect as required by general security rules for business applications.
• Save copies of your RB database to your hard drive/server.
• View automatic emails sent from your RB.
• Perform custom searches of your RB data­base, and create your own reports from the results. (If you require more complex reports from RB, we offer a plug-in called Data Reader and custom programming if you would like OMTI to create something for you. )
• Import RB entities, invoices, paychecks, and payment transactions into QuickBooks. 
• Send invitations to reporters to join ReporterBase.com and grant you proxy to apply their digital signatures to RB-PDF Transcripts. Then monitor your use of their signatures.
• Find other court reporting agencies and related businesses to share work with.

Tools functions by name

• Bulk Import
• Bulk Update
• Tag Manager – RB9-only function
• Form Templates
• Label Templates – RB9-only function
• Notes Finder – RB9-only function
• Repository Download Log – RB9-only function
• Download Backup File – RB9-only function
• Email Log – RB9-only function
• Query Maker – RB9-only function
• QuickBooks Integrator – RB9-only function
• Send Invitations for Signature Proxy – RB9-only function
• Signature Proxy Usage – RB9-only function
• RB Network

TL;DR: Import data, update records, create forms and labels, and more in this versatile toolkit.

RB concepts in this lesson

Notes Logs: Un-editable internal-use only notes entered either by a user or automatically by RB appear in chronological logs in the database record where they occurred.

RB Connect: Online repository, calendar, and access to your office for clients and resources. More >

RB-PDF Transcript: PDF version of a transcript with built-in transcript-specific features and customization options. More >

ReporterBase Digital Signature Proxy (RB-DSP): Free digital signatures for reporters and agencies that agencies apply to RB-PDF Transcripts. More >