Batch Redaction

Introduction

Batch redactions allow you to redact terms and phrases from multiple documents at once from a results table. Batch redactions save time when there are specific words, phrases, or patterns (such as email address or other personally identifiable information) that you want to redact from multiple documents.

Do a batch redaction

To do a batch redaction:

1. Open a results table of the documents you would like to redact. You can do this by running a search for the documents, or by opening the documents from a homepage card.
2. Select which documents you would like to redact using the checkboxes on the left side of each document’s row. By default, all the documents in your results table are selected, but you can select and deselect documents by clicking the checkboxes in the document’s row.
   • Batch redactions are run on refreshed search results, even if you have not refreshed your search. This means that all selected documents will be redacted, as well as any documents that fit your search criteria but are not displayed in the results table. To display all documents to be redacted, click the Refresh button in the results table toolbar. 
3. Select Batch > Redact. A redaction panel appears for you to enter the document text and/or metadata to redact. 
4. Enter or select the terms or metadata fields you wish to redact.
   • Click on the text box under Redact a term to see a dropdown of persistent highlight categories, as well as individual persistent highlights.
     • If you select a persistent highlights category, you can expand the name of the category to view the underlying persistent highlights.
   • Click on Redact metadata fields to see a dropdown of all visible metadata fields on your documents.
     
   • To redact a new term or phrase: type it into the textbox and hit "Enter". You can run and redact simple keyword searches. For example, to redact any instance of the word “California” or the word “Oakland,” you can run a boolean search for “california OR oakland.” 
     • You can also run and redact advanced content searches. For example, you could redact all strings in which the words “summary” and “report” appear within five words of each other. This would redact “summary” and “report,” as well as any (five or fewer) words that appear between them.
5. You can see a preview of the text to be redacted under Sample hits, the Total documents that will be affected by the batch redaction per term, and the number of Non-redactable documents.
   • Sample hits are generated from the text of the selected documents in your results table and you can use them to QA your intended redactions.
     Note: only 30 terms generate live hits, although all terms with hits will be redacted.
   • Non-redactable documents can't be redacted because they do not have images with embedded text
     
     • You can view a report of which documents were and were not redacted after completing the batch redaction task from the card in the Batches & Exports column.
   • Counts of non-redactable hits cannot be generated for metadata
6. Once you have entered the terms or phrases you would like to redact, select Configure redactions.
7. In Configure redaction settings you can add redaction stamps, notes, and configure your redaction dependency settings for spreadsheets.
   

   If you apply a note during the batch redaction, the same note will appear on all redacted documents. This note is at the document level, rather than a redaction note linked to the particular redaction. One note is added per redacted document, rather than one note per redaction.

8. When you are done, select Next.
9. In Configure PII redaction type, there are partial redaction options for the terms that match potential PII formats. You can choose a partial redaction format for each batch redaction term.
   • Note: Metadata or advanced search terms (regex, wildcard, fuzzy, proximity) do not have partial redaction options.
10. Once you have configured your batch redaction, click Apply. This will start a batch action that can be monitored from the homepage under Batches & Exports.

• Spreadsheet batch redactions are limited to 5000 redactions across all pages of the spreadsheet. This limit applies to both batch redactions from the results table and the Redact all instances button in the review window. If a batch redaction creates more than 5000 redactions on one spreadsheet, that spreadsheet will not be redacted, and this failure will be indicated on the Batches & Exports card and associated CSV. Other documents in the batch redaction will still be redacted.
  

A batch redaction may also be partially successful, meaning that some documents were redacted and others were not. By downloading the report, you can see whether contents and/or metadata were redacted. 

Batch delete redactions

You can delete redactions in a batch. These can be redactions that were created as batch redactions, or redactions created in the review window.

Permissions Required: Users with Admin redaction permissions can delete redactions created by anyone. Users with Create redaction permissions can only delete redactions that they created.

To batch delete redactions:

1. Access a results table with the documents you'd like to delete the redactions from. 
2. Select which documents you would like to redact using the checkboxes on the left side of each document’s row. By default, all the documents in your results table are selected, but you can select and deselect documents by clicking the checkboxes in the document’s row.
3. Select Batch > Redact.
4. Select Delete to access the redaction deletion panel. By default Delete specific redactions is selected. To delete all redactions from your selected documents, select Delete all redactions.
5. When you delete specific redactions, you can select by text, metadata field, or by redaction stamp.
   In the Delete document text redactions entry box, you can un-redact by searching for redacted words or phrases. Here are some additional things to know about deleting batch redactions:
   • You can search for persistent highlights and persistent highlight categories, and enter most regular expressions (regex). For batch redaction deletion searches, if your search term is in quotes, you cannot use wildcards in conjunction with the following three symbols: [@ . '] [“at” symbol, period, apostrophe]. In this case, wildcards will behave like normal asterisks.
   • Batch un-redacting by text match will only work for text redactions that are an exact match for the phrase searched. Metadata, image, and full-page redactions are not included in the batch deletion.
   • The batch redaction panel automatically display sample hits for all text redactions.
     
     In the Delete metadata field redaction entry box, you can delete all redactions on a particular metadata field.
     In the Delete redactions by stamp entry box, you can delete redactions with a specific redaction stamp. This method of un-redacting works for all types of redactions, including text, image, full-page, and metadata redactions, as long as those redactions have the selected redaction stamp.
6. When you are ready to make your deletion, select Delete redactions. A popup dialog with a warning message appears.
   
7. Select Delete to kick off the deletion. A card is automatically generated in the Batches & Exports column on the homepage.
   • From this card, you can see how many documents were un-redacted. Click on the number to go to a search of all documents affected by this deletion.
   • You can download a CSV containing information about the deleted redactions.
   • Click  Undo  to undo this batch deletion.
     • Undoing a batch deletion also generates a Batch Action card. If any documents have been deleted or reprocessed, Everlaw is not able to undo a completed redaction deletion on those documents.
     • If new metadata redactions or full-page redactions have been created where redactions were removed, Everlaw does not replace the new redactions with the deleted ones. 
     • You can download a report of successful and unsuccessful redaction replacement on the undo batch action card.