Document Metadata, Aliases, and Editable Metadata and Other Settings

Metadata is key information about your documents. It is useful for understanding your data, and some metadata fields have additional functionality to organize your documents, such as determining attachment groups. Everlaw offers flexibility on the metadata fields available to your team and how they are used.

This article describes how to use the tools on Metadata tab of the Project Settings page. 

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Everlaw has three types of metadata: document metadata, aliases, and editable metadata. For an overview of how metadata is defined on Everlaw, and how it is viewed in the review window, see this article on metadata.

To access all metadata types:

  1. Select Project Management > Project Settings.
  2. Go to the  the Metadata tab.

Document Metadata

These metadata fields are associated with documents during upload, usually via a load file. Example fields are Custodian, From, Subject, etc. Because they are considered part of the production, these fields can never be edited or deleted. They are always stored in the system, and you do not need to worry about users overwriting them.

Hide a field

Project Administrators can hide fields that aren't relevant to the needs of the project. For instance, some productions contain a "pgcount" field that mirrors Everlaw's own "Num Pages" display. To hide any particular field from users, click on the eye  button for that field, and the eye will become crossed out. Hidden fields are not visible to users in either the search interface or the document review window. To unhide a field, click on the crossed out eye . In the example below, the "Application" field is hidden.

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Create a field

While fields are usually created during upload, you can also add a new empty metadata field directly from the metadata page. To do so:

  1. At the bottom of the metadata table, select + Add metadata field.
  2. A dropdown will show a subset of Everlaw’s primary standard fields, or you can create a custom field.
  3. Select Add.

Adding metadata fields is not necessary prior to upload.

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Aliases

An alias is a view onto multiple fields. You may want to use a single consolidated field to span conceptually related fields, e.g. "Creator" to be a combination of the fields "From" and "Author". All the fields in an alias must be of the same metadata type; for example, you cannot alias a Time and Text field together.

Required permissions: Project Administrator to create an alias. 

Once you create an alias, you can search within that alias by selecting it as a metadata search term. When you search on an alias, Everlaw returns documents that match the search term on any of the aliased fields, regardless of their order. 

To create an alias:

  1. Select the metadata fields you want included from the set of available Metadata fields. The chosen fields are highlighted in yellow.image1.png
  2. Once you have chosen all the metadata fields to include, select + New Alias on the “Alias” section of the page. A text box prompts you to name the new Alias.
  3. Type in a name for the alias
  4. Press enter on your keyboard.
  5. Your new Alias, and its included fields, will appear. 

Once created, the alias is visible to all users who have the permissions to view the underlying fields. If a group does not have View permission on any underlying user field, users in that group will not be able to view or search on the alias itself. 

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Aliases cannot be added to other aliases as a field, but you can add another metadata field to an existing alias. To do so:

  1. Check the box of the metadata field(s) you would like to add.
  2. Click on the plus icon next to the alias name to which you would like to add the field(s).
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Here are some additional tips for working with aliases:

  • Click on an alias to expand it and view its fields.
  • To reorder the fields in an alias, drag and drop the metadata fields to reorder them. Fields can always be alphabetized again with the Alphabetize button in the top row.
    • The order of the fields in the alias determines how metadata appears within that alias. In the example below, the alias “People” contains the fields “In Reply To,” “Author,” and “Custodian” (the fields have been reordered).image7.png
    • Below is an example of how three documents’ metadata would display in this alias. Note that the alias will prioritize whichever value is in the first field (in this case, “In Reply To”) for display. If a document’s “In Reply To” field is blank, the alias will display the value for the second field (in this case, “Author”), and so on.image6.png
      If you were to run a search for the People alias and the term “gwood,” documents with “gwood” in any of the aliased fields would be returned in your search, regardless of how the alias displays for that particular document.
  • You can rename an alias using the pencil icon to the right of the alias title.
  • To remove a field from an alias, click the red "x" to the right of the listed field. Please note that you will not see a red “x” if a field has the same name as its alias, or if it’s the only field within an alias.
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  • By default, the alias and all of the fields within it will be visible to all users on the project. You can hide or show all the fields within an alias using the eye icons in the top row of the alias. To hide or show an individual field, click on its eye under Show/Hide in Project on the Metadata fields list.show_and_hide_fields__1_.gif
  • There is no way to hide an alias. For an alias to no longer be visible on the project, you can delete it using the trash can icon.
  • If you delete an alias, any searches that reference that alias will return zero results. Thus, exercise caution when deleting aliases.
  • User groups must have at least View permissions on any and all aliased user fields in order to view the alias. If the group does not have View permission on any underlying user field, they will not be able to view or search on the alias itself.

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Editable metadata

Required permissions: Project Administrator

Project administrators can make any metadata field editable by checking the box next to the metadata field's name that says Make editable. This allows users to edit the values of that field from the review window. This can be useful in correcting incorrect information in metadata fields or populating missing values.

Project Administrators can undo this by unchecking the Make editable field on any currently editable field. When you make an editable field not editable, you can choose to keep any edited metadata values or to revert the metadata back to its original values. For more information, read our article on editing metadata. Please note that edited metadata is specific to the project it was entered in and will not affect other projects in the database.

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Project metadata settings 

Primary Date field

Primary Date is an automatic Everlaw smart search term that orders date fields in file type groups. When applicable, a document's Primary Date will be its first available date field in its file type hierarchy. All date fields beneath the first value will not be considered for Primary Date. Read more about Primary Date as an Everlaw Smart Term

 By default, Everlaw will sort the most relevant date fields on your project to the top of the file type group hierarchies. For instance, "Date Created" will default to the top of the audio, video, and image file type hierarchy, while "Start Date" and "End Date" will default to the top of the email, SMS, and chat file type hierarchy. This means that you can run a search for Primary Dates across multiple file types and collect documents with relevant date fields matching your search.  metadata_page.png 

Project admins can expand the file type group hierarchies and drag and drop fields to determine the list order. Admins can also click "Reset to default" to restore the original order for all the file type hierarchies. Changes made here are reflected instantly on your project.  

Database Metadata Settings

Required permissions: Project Administrator

Display Text-extracted Metadata

When this setting is enabled on your database, Everlaw attempts to automatically extract email metadata from the text of documents for which metadata is not provided. Text-extracted metadata includes common email header fields like Subject, Date Sent, To, From, Cc, Bcc, etc. and behave like typical metadata fields. This setting is enabled by default. If enabled after being disabled, a task will run to populate blank metadata fields if email header metadata is extractable from a document's text. This will apply to future uploads and may change some search results. The changes can be undone by turning off Display text-extracted metadata.

Attachment Grouping 

Many productions include metadata fields that can be used to group emails and their attachments together. Setting the Attachment Group fields here enables a reviewer to automatically see the number of documents in the Attachment Group of the document they are viewing in the Review Window.

To set the Attachment Groups:

  1. Select the Metadata fields that represent an attachment or family group on the table. These will often have names like "Family Range," "Attachment Range," "Begin Attachment," or some related abbreviation (e.g., "FmlyRng," "BEGATT").
  2. Click on Attachment grouping under Database metadata settings on the right of the page..
  3. Click the blue plus button to add the selected fields to the attachment grouping criteria. 
  4. Once an attachment group has been set up, click Update to ensure that your data is now searchable throughout the project. Should you need any assistance setting up any project settings, please reach out to support@everlaw.com.

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Note: When a field like BEGATTACH is present, there is often a corresponding ENDATTACH. Because Everlaw searches for documents with matching values in their Attachment Group fields, it is not necessary to put both BEGATTACH and ENDATTACH in the group. Using just one of them is enough.

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Deduplication

Admins can specify which fields to use to identify duplicate documents. By default, Everlaw uses the MD5 and SHA1 hash values. To add additional fields or remove existing fields to the criteria for exact duplicates:

  1. Select fields to add on the metadata fields table
  2. Click the blue plus button associated with the “ExactDuplicates” setting.
  3. To remove a field from the criteria, click the red “x” next to the field’s name.
  4. Once the appropriate changes have been made, click "Update" to ensure duplicate identification is based on the new criteria.

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Chat conversations

You can pull together chat conversations during search, review, and when coding documents. Everlaw identifies chat conversations using the following metadata settings/fields:

  • ChatConversationId: Identifies chat documents that belong to the same conversation
  • ChatConversationIndex: Identifies the order that documents should appear in a conversation
  • ParentId: Identifies the container file that was processed to generate the chat documents

Documents must have a value for each of these fields to group together. To be identified as part of the same conversation, documents must have matching ParentID and ChatConversationId. Documents are sorted by their ChatConversationIndex.

These fields define grouping and auto-code for chat conversations. During native processing of chat data, Everlaw automatically generates and assigns the requisite metadata fields. Project Admins can modify the fields underlying chat conversations from the Project Settings > Metadata page. This is useful for mapping analogous fields from processed uploads to the ones used in Everlaw to identify chat conversations. To modify these fields: :

  1. Select the metadata field(s) to add to a given chat metadata setting in the metadata table.
  2. Select the plus next to the metadata setting.
  3. Select Update once all the underlying changes are made.

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In addition, you can map corresponding processed data fields to the Everlaw chat fields when uploading processed data or performing an overlay. Follow these steps:

  1. In the type assignment step, ensure that the corresponding field for Chat Conversation Id is typed as Text and the corresponding field for Chat Conversation Index is typed as Number.
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  2. In the mapping step, ensure that the corresponding fields are correctly mapped to the Everlaw Chat Conversation Index and Chat Conversation Id fields. 
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Note: Chat conversation grouping is only available for data uploaded after Release 104 (February 27, 2024 for AU customers and March 1, 2024 for all others). Native chat data uploaded prior to this release can be reprocessed to work with grouping functionality. The original container file for a chat must be reprocessed, not the individual chat files. Processed chat data can be mapped to the fields used for grouping following the steps outlined above. 

 

Email Threading 

Everlaw identifies email duplicates using email text content, metadata, and message IDs. You can change the metadata that is used to determine email threading by adding and removing metadata fields. To update the fields used for email threading:

  1. Select the metadata field(s) to add to email threading the metadata table.
  2. Select the plus next to the metadata setting.
  3. Select Update once all the underlying changes are made.

 Please note that if threading is currently in progress, the Update button will be disabled. If you need to edit your email threading metadata while rethreading is in progress, please contact support@everlaw.com

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Raw fields

You can view all raw metadata fields in your database by expanding this section. Learn more about metadata on Everlaw. 

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