As an administrator, your job is to support the document review team by providing the best database structure and maintaining that structure for easy review. The more you can learn and understand the reviewer’s perspective, the easier your job becomes in providing proper support.
Searching
Administrators should understand basic search concepts used in Concordance, including how to differentiate between full-text and relational clauses, and how to use search operators and wildcards. Understanding these concepts helps you troubleshoot questions or problems reviewers may have when learning to use Concordance.
Searching Overview:
•Full-text searching uses the .dct and .ivt files
•Full-text searching is very fast, highlights hits in red, searches multiple fields
•Relational searching searches the entire database each time
•Relational searching uses different operators, searches one field, runs slower, and does not provide keyword highlights
Tips to Increase Search Processing Speed:
•Reviewers can speed up relational searching by placing a full-text search clause before the relational clause to cull down the amount of data Concordance must relationally search
•Check the Key box on fields to improve relational search processing speed
•Locate empty or not empty paragraph fields (empty: fieldname = “”, not empty: fieldname = *)
•Search for punctuation with relational searching (OCR co %) or globally replace punctuation with a%a, then reindex and run a full-text search
Tips for Assisting Reviewers:
•Verify that users are not running relational searches on paragraph fields
•Verify that reviewers are placing a full-text search clause before the relational clause to cut down search processing time
•Verify that search syntax is correct
•Verify the search terms are included in the dictionary
•Verify that the field is indexed for full-text searching
•Reindex the database to ensure all updates are available to reviewers
Saving Queries
Reviewers can save their search history by saving a query file from a current Concordance session. By doing so, they can later restore those same searches to create new complex searches and/or capture query results on database updates. Saved query files can also be executed on different databases if the field names used in the searches match. Please note that restored query files will update internal search number references in the Review view.
As an administrator you may need to help reviewers save or modify query files, and clear their search history from the database. Searches are saved in a .qry file and are editable text files containing only the search string.
Search Query Options:
•Use the Save all Queries command on the Search menu to save all searches in the current query session to a .qry query file.
•Use the Execute Saved Queries command on the Search menu to relaunch a previous query saved to a .qry file, and capture any new and/or edited data since the initial search was run.
•Use the Clear Search History command on the Search menu to delete the search history when you index, reindex, or pack the database.
Modifying Query Files
Query files are text files that contain only the search string. These files can be opened and edited in any text editor program. Reviewers may want to modify a saved query file to write new complex search queries and then run the edited query file on a database. However, as an administrator, you will typically review these files in order to delete unnecessary queries that you do not need to store or rerun later.
Saving Search Results
In the Review View, you can print your search results or save them to an ASCII text file by selecting a search, right-clicking, and choosing Save. The resulting text file contains the data that is displayed in the Review View. This can be a helpful report in case a reviewer needs to prove what search criteria was used during e-discovery.
Clearing Searches
Clearing reviewers’ search history allows you to erase all searches from a current Concordance session without reopening a database, and it allows users to start the new search session without looking at the results of previous searches.
To clear search history, on the Search menu select Clear Search History. The search results in the Review View will be cleared except for the All query used to locate all records in the database. It is recommended to save the searches to a .qry file before clearing them since there is no Undo function after clearing your search history.
Sorting Records
The results of any search are sorted in the order in which documents are added to the database, and typical sorting only affects current search results. Administrators, however, have the means to permanently apply a sort order to a database.
Reviewers may want to have documents permanently sorted in a database chronologically, or by author, type, or other field, to help speed up their review. We recommend that you only accommodate this request under special circumstances due to the time involved in managing these extra files and databases.
Sorting Overview:
•The default sort order of all queries is the record creation or load order of the documents when they were added to the database (accession number)
•Sorting can be done on up to 16 fields at one time with a maximum character limit of 1,000
•Sorting of paragraph fields is done on the first 60 characters only and uses the longest value in the field up to 60
•Sort order is temporary and only applies to the current query
•Speed up sorting by selecting the Key check box for database fields in the Modify dialog box.
To Permanently Sort a Database:
1.Back up the original database.
2.In Concordance, open the database you want to permanently sort.
3.Sort the database.
4.Either:
•Export the database by going to Documents>Export>As a Concordance database and using the Export Wizard.
•Replicate the database by going to Tools>Replication>Create a replica.
5.Use the exported or replicated database.
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Exporting a database does not export the database's security settings. Replicating a database preserves the database's security settings. |
