Database Administration and Permissions

In Everlaw, your database is the central storage location for all documents in your matter. When you upload documents to Everlaw, they go into your database. Documents in your database are then made available for review in projects. Projects are self-contained, user-facing review environments where users can organize, tag, and annotate documents.  

Actions taken at the database-level affect all projects in the database, while actions taken within a project are generally localized to that project. For this reason, the type and scope of permissions for database administrators differ from those of project administrators, and each family of permissions is independent of the other.

This article explains the features to administer databases on Everlaw and the different types of database permissions. You can use it to understand how to administer a database, including closing a database down when a case is complete.

For a high-level overview of the difference between database and project admins, please see this help article.

Types of Database permissions

There are four types of database permissions. Other than Admin, which includes all the other permissions, each permission can be granted independently of the others.  This section describes the functionality associated with each database permission.

Upload

Upload permissions allows users to:

• View, create, edit, and manage native uploads, processed uploads, and file transfers
• Reprocess documents

Delete

Delete permissions allows users to:

• Delete documents from the database
• Delete uploads from the Uploads Page (This is only possible if you also have access to the Uploads)
  

Legal holds

Legal permissions allows users to view custodians, hold notices, and data preservations on the organization's Legal Holds page

Database Admin

Database Admin permissions allows users to:

• Do everything described above for Upload, Delete, and Legal hold permissions
• Create new partial projects
• Rename, export, suspend, reactivate, and delete individual projects (also requires Project Admin permissions on the project)
• Rename the database, and with it the default project
• Suspend, reactivate, or delete the entire database
• Grant and revoke database permissions for other users
• Configure upload notifications
• View all users in the database
• Manage entities

Database Settings page overview

Users with Database Admin permission have access to the Database Settings page, which contains tools to administer projects and users in a database, as well as the database itself. To access this page, go to Project Management > Database Settings.

The table below summarizes the functionality found on the sub-pages of Database Settings. 

Page	Description
Overview	See a high level summary of your database, including total number of projects and documents Create new projects and rename existing projects Rename the database, and with it the default project Suspend, reactivate, and delete the entire database or individual projects Monitor database-level tasks and access output of those tasks, such as completed exports
Permissions	See and administer users with database permissions Give database permissions to new users
Admin Activity	See a log of all database admin activity
Entities	Resolve entity conflicts. Entities are collections of one or more contacts — email addresses and names associated with specific individuals, which Everlaw collects as metadata during document upload.
General	Toggle setting for allowing overlapping Bates numbering in your database

Create and administer projects

From the Overview tab of the Database Settings page, you can create new projects and administer existing ones.

Database Admins can add an unlimited number of new projects to their database. New projects are, by default, partial projects and contain no documents. You are automatically added as a Project Admin on any project you create from Database Settings. 

The project level actions available to you are dependent on your organization and project-level permissions: 

• If you are a Database Admin and a Project Admin of a project: All project-level actions are available, except for converting the project from partial to complete
• If you are a Database Admin and a user but not an Admin of a project: You have access to the project’s homepage
• If you are a Database Admin and not a user on a project: No project-level actions are available
• If you are an Organization Admin: All project-level actions are available, including converting the project from partial to complete.

To learn more about creating and managing projects, visit our Projects article.

Administer database permissions

As a Database Admin, you can administer database permissions for other users, including other database admins. To administer permissions, navigate to the Permissions page of Database Settings.

The top table displays all active users in the database who have database permissions. An “active” user is a user who is a member of at least one project in the database. 

• To modify the permissions of an existing user: Click on the permissions column corresponding to the user, and select or deselect to modify.
  
  

• To remove a user’s database permissions entirely: Click on the remove button in the remove column corresponding to the user. The user will have their database permissions revoked, but this will not affect their project permissions or access.
  
  

• To give new users database permissions:
  1. Select Add user.
     A dropdown list displays all users who are currently members of a project in the database.
     
  2. Choose the user and their database permissions.
     If you are (1) on a suspended database and (2) a Project Admin of the default project, you have the additional option to give database permissions to users who are not already members of a project. Any users added through this method are also automatically be added to the default project.
     
     

Export database permissions

You can export the list of Database users, their emails, title, User Identification Label, and permissions to a CSV, if the feature is enabled for your organization. Database permission exports are only permitted if an Organization Admin has enabled the User Information Export setting in Organization Security Settings.

To do export a user permissions list:

1. Go to Project Management > Database Settings.
2. Open the Permissions page.
3. Select Export.

Inactive users not on any project will not be included in exports. 

Inactive database users

When a database user is removed from all projects in a database, they become an inactive user. This means that they previously had database permissions, but they no longer have access to any projects in the database.

Inactive users cannot perform any actions on the database or its projects, but if they are re-added to a project in the database, they will automatically receive their database permissions again.

To remove all database permissions from an inactive user, select Remove to the right of their name in the Inactive users list.

If a removed user is later re-added to a project in the database, they will not have any database permissions until the permissions are explicitly granted again.

If the sole Database or Organization Admin is removed, you will be unable to suspend or delete your database without reaching out to Everlaw support.

Rename a database

Required permission: Database Admin and a member of the default project (Project Admin permissions not required)

Databases can be renamed from Database Settings. Renaming a database will always result in the renaming of the database’s default project.

To rename a database, and subsequently its default project:

1. Go to Project Management > Database Settings.
2. On the Overview page, select the database’s rename button, located next to the project name.
   
   This opens the Rename Database dialog.
3. Enter a new name for your database / default project, and select whether you would like to send an email notification to Database and Organization Admins.
   
4. Select Save.

Suspend, delete, export, and reactivate

Required permissions: Database Administrator and Project Administrator

Database admins can suspend, delete, and reactivate individual projects that they are project administrators on, or the database as a whole. These options are available on the Overview page of Database Settings. 

Suspend, delete, export, and reactivate Projects

To suspend, reactivate, or delete a project, select the three-dot menu under Actions. Then select the action. 

If a project is already suspended, it will be marked as such on the table and can be reactivated via the three-dot menu in the Action column. 

Suspend a database

You can suspend a database from the Database Settings > Overview page:

• Suspending a database will make the projects in the database temporarily inaccessible to all users, but all work product and review configurations will be preserved.
• Database Admins can still navigate to Database Settings and perform administrative actions, including exporting documents and review product from projects. 

To suspend or delete a database, select Database actions, then select either Suspend database or Delete database. 

There are two types of suspensions available at the database level:

• Scheduled suspension for the end of the current billing month: Projects remain active until the end of the month, UTC time.
• Immediate suspension: Projects are instantly made unavailable for users who are not database admins. 

If a database has a scheduled suspension, select Manage suspension on the Overview tab of database settings. Admins have the option to:

• Retain the current scheduled suspension
• Suspend immediately
• Cancel the suspension altogether

Database-level actions affect all projects in the database, even those that you are not a member or admin of. If you are suspending or deleting a database with such projects, a warning appears to alert you and to confirm that you wish to continue. 

Once confirmed, follow the instructions in the remaining steps to confirm the suspension or deletion. 

To navigate to Database Settings for a suspended database, select one of the database projects in the suspended section of the project selector. The suspended section only appears for database admins.

Delete databases

Deleting a database will make both the projects and the database permanently and immediately inaccessible to all users, including database admins. If you want Everlaw to purge any and all backups of the database as part of the deletion, be sure to select that option on the final deletion dialog. 

Reactivate databases

To reactivate a suspended database:

1. Go to Database settings > Overview.
2. Select Database actions. Then from the menu, select Reactivate Database.
   
3. On the reactivation dialog, choose which projects you want to reactivate. At least one complete project must be reactivated for the database to be reactivated.
4. Select Reactivate.
   
   Suspended databases are immediately available upon reactivation.

You can also reactivate a suspended database by attempting to reactivate a project in the database. Everlaw will detect that the underlying database is suspended, and will reroute you to the database reactivation option. 

Export a database

Required permissions: Either a database admin and a project admin on the project or an organization admin on the database

You can export project data while the database or project is suspended. Because you cannot modify project permission settings after a database is suspended, we highly recommend that you ensure you have the proper project permissions to perform desired exports before suspending the database. 

To start an export:

1. Select the three dot menu icon associated with the project you wish to export
2. Select Export project.
   
   
3. A dialog will appear where you can select project data and files you want to include in your export, along with other settings. 
   

   Important

   Certain project data is not exportable via the project export, and can only be exported from specific areas of the platform while the project is active. Data in this category include: search term reports (STRs), Storybuilder Timelines, Storybuilder Drafts, Storybuilder Depositions, and platform messages. For more information on what is not included in a project export, please see this article.
   

4. Select Export. 

Billing implications of suspensions and reactivations

Below are some important things to keep in mind as you assess the billing implications of suspensions and reactivations. As always, please check your contract or reach out to our Customer Experience team (support@everlaw.com) to understand or verify the implications of a suspension. 

• Billing occurs at the database level, so individual project suspensions and deletions will generally have no effect on the billable size of your matter. The exception is if you delete the last remaining review project in an ECA database, as this removes any promoted data. 
• Databases are billed at the suspended rate only if the database is suspended for a full calendar month. In other words, if the database becomes active at any point in the month, the database will be billed at the active rate for the entire month. This also means that suspending a project earlier in the month versus later in the month has no billing implication. 
• Suspending a partial project while the complete project remains active does not have an impact on your monthly bill, because the total amount of billable data remains active in the complete project.
• Everlaw runs on UTC time, which means new billing cycles start on the first of each month UTC time. This is especially important to keep in mind if you are suspending or reactivating databases on the first or last day of the month. 
• For example, May 1, 2022 at 12am (UTC) corresponds to April 30, 2022 at 5pm (PDT). If you are in the PDT time zone and suspend your database at 5:03pm on April 30th, you will still be billed at the active rate for the month of May because the database was active in May (UTC time).
• Similarly, May 1, 2022 at 12am (UTC) corresponds to May 1, 2022 at 10am (AEST). If you are in the AEST time zone and reactivate your database at 9am on May 1st, you will be billed at the active rate for the month of April because the database was active in the April (UTC time). 

Overlapping Bates

By default, Everlaw does not allow for documents with overlapping Bates ranges. For example, if ABC001 is a two-paged document, Everlaw normally wouldn't allow for the upload of ABC002 because ABC002 is already occupied by the second page of ABC001.

However, database admins can allow overlapping Bates to occur by toggling the option in the General page of Database Settings. 

While turning this option on will allow documents to have overlaps in their Bates ranges, it will not allow documents to have overlapping Begin Bates. Everlaw requires processed data to have a unique identifier representing the beginning of a document (such as Begin Bates number or Control Number). For example, the following three documents would be considered to have overlapping Begin Bates numbers and would not be uploaded to the platform:

• DEF001
• DEF001_final
• DEF001.0002

The following scenario would be enabled by allowing for overlapping Bates:

• Let’s say you are uploading ABC001 (3 pages), ABC002 (2 pages), and ABC003 (1 page). ABC002 and ABC003 have Bates ranges that overlap with ABC001. 

• These documents will be successfully uploaded because their Begin Bates do not overlap even though there is overlap in their Bates ranges. 

This setting is especially relevant for users in countries, such as Australia, with document numbering systems that do not rely on End Bates numbers.

If the setting is toggled off after being on, only future uploads will be affected. Existing documents with overlapping Bates ranges will remain unmodified in your database. 

Note that allowing overlapping Bates can sometimes create uncertainty for processed uploads when overlaying with separate files for each image. This can happen if two documents have overlapping Bates ranges and there are single-page images within the overlapping area. For example, if ABC001 and ABC002 are both five-page documents, ABC003.tiff may be assigned to either of these documents. 

Note for AU, UK, and EU users: By default, the “Overlapping Bates” setting will be enabled for all new databases.

Learn more about standard formats for processed data. 

Database admin activity

The Database Settings > Admin Activity page contains a log of all database admin events. This log can be filtered by datetime, user, or event type. 

Upload notifications

Database administrators can also configure upload notifications for any projects that they are added to in the database. To learn more about upload notifications, our Advanced Settings for Uploads article.