We're extremely excited to bring Delegate 3.0 to the market this week. This release introduces one of the biggest new pieces of functionality in application history with Automated Workflows! To learn more, head on over and check out the release notes.
Automated Workflows in Relativity Server Playlist
Videos in Playlist:
Overview of Delegate 3.0's Automated Workflows
Simplify New Case Startup in Relativity Server
Prep Indexes and Reports for Persistent Highlighting in Relativity
Automations for Recurring Weekly Tasks in Relativity Server
Below, our Director of Product Management, Tim Randall, shares what makes Delegate 3.0 special and why he's excited for the future of Automated Workflows for Relativity Server.
What is the biggest problem this solves for Relativity Server users?
Most of our customers can relate to how little time there is to get things ready when review teams are ready to go. Your client comes in, helps with document collection, and then, as soon as you've loaded those documents, they want to begin document review yesterday.
Getting cases ready for review isn't easy. Long running processes dominate the beginning of any review which creates a slew of tough challenges that Relativity admins must work through. Imaging, OCR, analytics, STRs--these things aren't instant and can take hours to complete.
When your customer is banging on your door to get these things ready you either vastly expand your team to be available at the drop of a hat through all hours, or if that's not an option, you have team members stuck getting up in the middle of the night to check to see if Imaging is complete so they can begin OCR as soon as it is.
Even when attempting to actively monitor these processes they can be slow moving or result in wide gaps between the completion of one task and the start of another. I think the thing I'm most excited about with this release is giving teams the ability to chain several important tasks together within their Relativity cases, allowing them to have confidence that when one finishes the next will pick right up without them having to observe and press "go."
Of course, I'm excited about the communication aspects around the tool that help make admins aware immediately and clearly if anything goes wrong (even if you define that wrong as a partial complete!)
Are there any specific automations you want people to try first and why?
There are a lot of "common sense" applications around new cases that I'm excited to see teams take a shot at using. Common sequences like Imaging -> OCR -> dtSearch or Email Threading -> Near Dupe Identification -> dtSearch -> STR are ones that I hope teams can take advantage of immediately.
That said, what I am most excited about is seeing the unique ways teams take advantage of the Relativity SQL Scripts as a part of their workflows. Looking ahead, as we expand Automated Workflows in 3.1 to support scheduled and recurring triggers, I think this will lead to a lot of innovation. I would love to see project teams begin using Automated Workflows to generate reports and send them out to review managers and partners weekly or perform regular data clean-up on a consistent basis.
What was the thing you were excited about delivering for this release? Any quotes from the customers you'd cite?
When doing discovery on this feature and talking with the market about their pains and what they need help with, I learned so much about the different hurdles teams jump through to minimize the delay between collection and review starting. I've heard horror stories of system admins getting up every few hours throughout the night just to make sure they could hit the run button on the next step.
Probably the most consistent comment that I heard while discussing features with the community was how often team and project leaders were being asked for some type of automation for their workspaces by their team. Whether that was in the form of something more accessible compared to in house tools or a need to replace manual processes, I heard this repeatedly.
The other thing that I heard frequently was how excited review teams were at being able to chain Relativity Script execution together, running multiple scripts in sequence.
Anything exciting you want to share about the future of Delegate and Automated Workflows?
We have a very rich roadmap for Delegate and Automated Workflows. There is a lot that we have planned, and of course, depending on what existing and new customers need most, we're always ready to pivot to prioritize the needs of our customers!
That said we have some pretty exciting features that are prioritized at the top right now for Delegate 3.1 and 3.2.
We'll be introducing a Delegate API to provide easy to use endpoints (hosted as a Kepler service!) for creating, running, and getting the status of automated workflows. This enables savvy teams to tie these Relativity automations into their non-Relativity workflows.
Around the same time, we'll be adding new triggers for running workflows including scheduling them to run at a specific time and date and setting up recurring triggers.
We also have some exciting new steps that will be added including support for Relativity RIP, creating production OCR, a manual confirmation step to allow for QC phases of workflows, and more.
Beyond that we're excited to start adding integration to our other software including adding steps for automating Blackout activities and integrating with our upcoming Name Normalization tool for Chronicle.
Thanks, Tim!
As always, let us know what you think of Delegate 3.0, and reach out if you want to talk about any specific ideas you have about what might improve your experience using Delegate.