Introduction to Storybuilder
- What is Storybuilder? What is a Story?
- Story Dashboard
- Adding documents to your Story
- Labels
- Choose which document version to display in your Story (prefix priority list)
- How to create additional Stories and hide Stories
What is Storybuilder? What is a Story? 
Storybuilder, Everlaw’s narrative building toolkit, allows review teams to seamlessly move between their review and post-review workflows. All Storybuilder capabilities and tools can be used via a single object called a Story. Within a Story, relevant documents and testimony from deposition transcripts can be labeled by people, critical events, or other relevant issues related to the case via a Timeline view. You can also prepare for a deposition or presentation by creating a Deposition in Everlaw, or a Draft that lives as a separate collaborative tool for written work product.
Depositions include a collaborative text editor that can be used to prepare briefs and witness prep binders so that your case team and/or witness feels prepared to enter a deposition. In a Deposition object, you can reference previous testimony and exhibits (or potential exhibits). You can also curate an exhibit list, chat colleagues during the deposition, and create tasks. Afterward, you can write a summary and review the transcript of the deposition, which will automatically link transcript text to marked exhibits. You can highlight and label important text in your transcript, preserving particularly important snippets as key testimony which can be referenced in other Depositions or Drafts in the Story.
Each project that you start on Everlaw will have a Project Story by default. If you have access to a Story you will see it on your homepage.
All Project Administrators can view, edit, and share all Stories in the project, as well as Depositions and Drafts. If you have Receive permissions on Storybuilder, you can receive Stories and any associated Drafts and Depositions explicitly shared with you. You will also see transcripts associated with Depositions automatically, without being given explicit permissions. You can learn more in this article.
If you have Share permissions on the Project Story, you can share it with others by clicking the three-dot menu icon.
When opening your Project Story, you will see the Story’s dashboard. Alongside the dashboard are tabs for the Timeline view, as well as the Depositions and Drafts that live within your story. To rename your Project Story, click the title in the top left, rename, and press Enter on your keyboard. You can favorite your Story by clicking the star icon, which will add your Story to Favorites on your Everlaw homepage.
Story Dashboard
In the dashboard, you can view a count of documents and testimony added to your Story listed under Evidence in Story. You can adjust the time span by what matters most to you.
If your documents have a Story date then they will be represented in the date visualization in the center of the dashboard. Click and drag within the date visualizer to select a series of documents with that date range. If you click the blue View button, you will be taken to the Timeline view, filtered by the selected date range.
You can also view how many potentially relevant documents were reviewed in a certain time period. By default, the dashboard suggests documents Rated in the past week, but you can customize the suggested addition criteria to suit the needs of your case.
If you have Edit permissions on the Story, you can click the pencil icon to choose which review criteria to display, and for what time span. To choose a different suggested additions criteria other than “rated hot,” click the X to remove the Hot rating. Select which code or rating you’d like to use as your “relevant document criteria” then click Save.
To change the time span, click one of the available radio buttons, then click Save. You can remove the time parameter entirely by unchecking the box that says “Only review documents in the last…”
You can also view upcoming depositions, which are determined by dates set by a user within a Deposition. Prior depositions, or depositions without a date, will not be displayed.
The Tasks section of the dashboard aggregates all tasks across Depositions that are assigned to you or created by you. If you are a project or organization administrator, you can view, edit, and complete all tasks across all depositions. Your permissions on individual tasks are reflective of your permissions on the associated Deposition. For example, if you have View permissions on a Deposition, you won't be able to edit the due date for tasks associated with that Deposition. However, you can edit the due date for tasks associated with a Deposition you have Edit permissions on.
You can learn more about task permissions here.
In the top right, you can view which Depositions have unread chat messages. If there are unread chat messages, the icon will have a yellow badge. You can click it to reveal the list of Depositions. Clicking a Deposition will take you to it. If the badge is disabled, that means you either have no access to Depositions, or there are no unread messages.
At the bottom of the dashboard, you can click on recently accessed Depositions and Drafts within your Story. The Recently Accessed section updates anytime you access an object (not anyone else on the Story) and will be updated on page refresh.
Your Story is also the central location to navigate to all other Storybuilder views and objects, which can be done by clicking headers in the top menu.
To view the Timeline of that Story, click the Timeline tab. To learn more about the Timeline view, visit this help article.
To access your Depositions, create one, or search across all transcript content, click the Depositions tab in the header of your Story.
You can filter cards by card owner (if the owner is not you). To filter by your cards, use the filter “Owned by Me” next to the text filter.
You can also search transcript content on this page, which will search across any transcript text that you have uploaded to a Deposition object. Transcript content search supports all advanced searching capabilities, which you can learn more about in this article. You can also click the “i” icon to view a help menu of common search syntaxes.
Adding documents to your Story
You can add documents to your Story and its objects either individually or in batches if you have at least Edit permissions on the Story. Documents added to a Story will be viewable in the associated Timeline. The documents will not be automatically added to associated Depositions and Drafts; however, documents added to a Deposition or Draft will automatically be added to the associated Story and its Timeline. The exception is any standalone Draft, which is not associated with a Story.
Documents added to the Story will be automatically named and dated according to the highest prioritized metadata value from a pre-populated name and date priority list in the Timeline. This can be configured in the Timeline’s settings under “Document names and dates.”
Anyone with Edit permissions on the Story can set the priority of metadata fields that Everlaw uses to date and name your documents when they are added to the Story. By default, Everlaw titles the documents in the following order of metadata fields: Title, Subject, Filename, Bates number, and Control number. If you wish to edit this priority order, add and remove metadata fields or reconfigure its positioning with a simple drag and drop before clicking Save.
Please note that updating the priority list settings will not modify the names or dates of existing documents in the Timeline, and will only impact the documents that are added afterwards.
If metadata field is included in the Name priority list, it will also appear as a renaming option if you click to edit the title of any document in the Story.
Add an individual document to a Story or any of its objects
To individually add documents to a Story, open a document in the review window, and click the Storybuilder icon to bring up a dialog box. If the icon is disabled, it’s likely that you don’t have Edit permissions on the Story. If a Story or standalone Draft is highlighted in yellow, that means the document is already added to that Story.
Once you click the Story icon, you can give the document a name, which will be pre-populated by its prioritized metadata value. You can also input a custom value or choose from a dropdown menu of other available metadata values, pulled from the Name priority list.
Story date is also pre-populated according to its Date priority list settings. You can edit this date by choosing an existing metadata date field or a custom date from the dropdown. Unlike name fields where you must first add the metadata field in the Name priority list for it to show up as a renaming option, Everlaw populates all possible date metadata values as date options regardless of what has been added or removed from the Date priority list.
If you choose to enter a custom date, you can enter date, date and time, month only, or year only. All dates, custom or metadata, will be displayed according to your project’s timezone.
Please note that the Story date of a document exists separately from the metadata associated with the document, so any edits to the Story date does not change the document’s underlying metadata.
If there are existing notes applied to the document, you are given the option to copy the content into the description or relevance fields.
At the bottom, you can add Story labels to the document. You can also add the document to any Depositions and Drafts in that Story that you have at least Edit permissions on. When you are done, click Add.
Batch add documents to a Story
To batch add documents to your Story, run a search and then go to the results table. By default, all documents are selected, but you can choose a smaller set using the checkboxes on the left side of the table.
From the results table toolbar select the Modify option from the Batch icon, or press the spacebar on your keyboard to expand the batch coding panel. Scroll down to the Storybuilder category and select the Story, Depositions, and Drafts you would like to add the document to. Remember, documents added to Depositions and Drafts will automatically be added to the associated Story, but not the other way around.
To batch remove documents from a Story and/or Depositions and Drafts, click the tag a second time. The tag will appear under the Remove section in the batch panel and will be outlined in red. You can both add and remove documents in a single batch action.
Once you are done making your selections, click Apply. The documents will be automatically named and dated in the Story according to the Name and Date priority list settings.
Labels
Labels are a critical component of post-review document management and deposition preparation. They enable you to organize your information in the Timeline by issues, people, events, and whatever categories you deem important. They can be applied to any document or testimony in your Story, as well as any highlights in your transcripts. Labels are entirely separate from codes and ratings applied to the documents during review.
Every label must belong to a category, some of which are included by default in the Timeline view. There are five default categories: Events, Issues, People, Depositions, and Drafts. To learn more about creating, editing, and filtering documents by labels, visit this help article.
If you have Edit permissions on the Story, you can add or remove labels to documents throughout the entire Story. You can even add the labels directly from document panels in Depositions and Drafts.
Choose which document version to display in your Story (prefix priority list)
If you have multiple produced versions of a single document on the platform, you can choose which version of the document to display throughout your Story and its associated objects. This might be relevant if you prefer viewing all documents in your story by a specific Bates prefix. It also ensures you never have two or more of the same document version within your Story; only one will ever be displayed.
Please note that Storybuilder version priorities will only connect documents produced on Everlaw, regardless of how you have configured versions under the Metadata tab in Project Settings.
To begin, go to the Timeline and within Settings, select Version Settings.
Choose your order of preference for prefix display from the filter bar at the bottom and use the arrows, or drag and drop the prefixes. The prefixes higher on the list will be prioritized. When you are finished prioritizing your prefixes, click Submit.
Now, for all documents referenced throughout your Story (including in the Timeline, Depositions, and Drafts), the version with the highest prioritized prefix will be displayed.
To use a concrete example, let’s imagine that document A has three different versions on the platform: #1.1, ABC123, and DEF123. Document B has three different versions on the platform, as well, but one of them is from a production that Document A was not a part of. The three versions of Document B on the platform are: #2.1, ABC456, and GHI456.
Let’s also imagine that the prefix priority list looks like this:
Based on this prefix priority list, any reference to Document A will display the DEF123 version in this Story. Document B does not have a DEF version on the platform, but it does have an ABC version, which is the next prefix on the prefix priority list. Therefore, any reference to Document B will display its ABC456 version. Any documents with neither DEF nor ABC versions on the platform will display the control numbered version of the document. Note that Storybuilder version priorities will only connect documents produced on Everlaw, regardless of what project settings are set to show as versions in the review window.
Click “How it works” on the prefix priority list to see a visual depiction of this tool.
How to create additional Stories and hide Stories
Storybuilder is designed to have one Story per project. However, it is possible, though not recommended, to have multiple Stories in your project. To add a new Story, you must be a Project Administrator. Go to the General section of the Project Settings page, then select Stories. Click the “New Story” button and enter the Story name. Note that all associated Depositions and Drafts in that Story will also be hidden from all users in their next browser refresh.
You can learn more about creating and managing multiple Stories in the General Settings article in Project settings.
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