Behind the scenes at Bundledocs – what goes into software updates?

Our CTO James Hogan recently took the time to share what goes on in Bundledocs when it comes to creating updates to our solution for our customers.  

 

What are the initial steps when developing an update for customers? 

When it comes to implementing software updates to our solution the process begins when we receive insight from our customers or information on upcoming updates from judiciaries. We always think of the customers’ needs first and work forward from there. Crucially, we try to develop products that satisfy, and customer involvement is essential for us to be consistent. We aim to deliver new features to our product after every three-week development period. This three-week release cadence allows us to react to the changing needs of our customers and the changing regulations they work against. 

 
Our software engineering team follow the Agile Scrum process and over time we have found that a three-week sprint period works well for us. On the first day of each sprint, we look forward and plan, on the last we review the work we’ve completed and share what we’ve learned. Separately, we discuss the way in which we worked in a more general sense at our sprint retrospectives. This is where we discuss and refine our development process. Each day, our development team meets to give a summary of what they’re working on. Collaboration plays a major role in what we do. The main objective of our stand-up is for each team member to offer and seek advice on how and what we’re all building on that day.  

 

How do you identify and address updates? 

 

Work items for the development team arrive at weekly refinement meetings. These refinement meetings allow the development team meet with stakeholders to gather requirements and set priorities. It’s the development team’s responsibility to estimate the complexity and deliverability of requirements by analysing each requirement from a technical perspective. During a refinement meeting, we may agree to design a prototype for, or investigate further, some requirement that needs clarification. At the following refinement meeting we may present our designs or findings to the stakeholders. Once we are agreed on the design and requirements of an item it’s ready for planning. During planning, the whole development team gets involved in setting a path towards building out the requirements successfully. This always includes a serious discussion around confidentiality, integrity, availability, scalability, security, and performance. 

  

How do you and the team delegate tasks? 

 

As technology moves quickly so does our product, and development team members will always hold varying degrees of experience with our product areas. To identify product area leaders within the team we maintain a skills matrix for each development team member that defines both product areas and a self-assessed measure of confidence in each product area. The skills matrix helps us identify our product area leaders and those in need of experience in a product area.  

 

During refinement, we record a complexity level estimate against each work item. During planning, we might allocate a task with a low complexity estimate to a developer in need of experience in a product area. Equally, we might allocate a task with a high complexity estimate to a more experienced team member. This process encourages skills growth and knowledge sharing within the team. 

  

How do you manage the updating process? 

 

We maintain a process improvement guide as part of the last meeting in our sprint, our sprint retrospective. This is a living document that sets out the development team’s own process. During the retrospective, we discuss the team’s capacity and the timebox we allocate to each meeting we hold.  

 

Currently, we timebox 5.5 hours to plan the work of each sprint. Sometimes work items have an obvious path to conclusion while others require a deeper discussion, and so the planning duration for individual work items is variable. We find our process provides a great opportunity for everyone to discuss technologies, pitch approaches, and gain exposure to areas of the product they may not otherwise have been exposed. Knowledge building and sharing is a key component of our process. 

 

To find out more about or latest updates join our mailing list here. 

Five Tricks To Help Power Up Your E-Bundling

E-bundling has fundamentally changed the way in which court bundles are created. In addition to saving time and allowing you to collaborate with colleagues from anywhere at any time, utilising the additional features that Bundledocs offer can elevate a user's experience. 

Our support team liaise with our customers daily and they have identified the features that our customers regularly enquire about when creating bundles. Read on to see how you can take your bundle creation to the next level.  


Sort documents chronologically 

When preparing large bundles for court there can be a lot of documents that will be worked on. If you are preparing your documents and you need to sort them by date you can do this easily with Bundledocs – in just a single click. To do so, show the documents dates on screen. Following this, you have the option to amend the document dates if needed. Clicking the ‘sort by date’ button will automatically display the dates of each document in your bundle by ascending order. If you are required to present them in descending order, simply click the button again and it will change the filter automatically.  

To see this in action you can visit our dedicated tutorial How to Sort Documents in Date Order.

Move your documents 

When creating bundles, there are numerous documents added throughout the process. Depending on how your bundle is to be presented you may need to move some documents around. We make this easy for you, with the click of a mouse, you can simply move around the order of your documents into your desired structure. Need to move more than one document? You also have the option to select each file and number them in in the order you would like them to appear.  

 

Create a custom index 

In order to meet court requirements creating a custom index within your bundle is vital. The good news is that with Bundledocs this can be done in a simple click. Your first step will be creating sections and adding documents before generating your bundle. Once you generate your bundle your document will be instantly indexed, sectioned, numbered, and hyperlinked. There are many ways that you can customise your index such as changing the title, including dates, removing the index entirely – or even by uploading your own index. With Bundledocs you have the freedom to create an e-bundle that will meet your specific requirements.

Contact our support team for free setup and access to our free templates. 

 

 

Remove section index page 

With Bundledocs you can automatically generate a complete index which is fully sectioned, numbered and hyperlinked for easy navigation. However, in some cases your bundle will not require an index. For instances like these you can remove your section index pages in three simple steps – simply generate the bundle, expand the ‘Section Pages’ section and select ‘Remove Section Index Pages’. Now your e-bundle is ready to go.  

To see this in action you can visit our dedicated tutorial How to Remove Section Index Pages

Share your files securely 

When it comes to sharing your final bundle with clients, colleagues, and the court with Bundledocs you can do so securely. Our ISO 27001 accreditation ensures that your confidential data always remains secure. When sending via email for an added level of security you can password protect your documents ensuring that only those who have the password can open the email.  

With emails the data limitations mean that your bundle may have to be split into sections. To eradicate this, you can share your bundle via our secure share function which allows you to share bundles with a third-party securely with full visibility on when the files is received and downloaded.  

 

If you want to find out about our additional features to make your bundling process even easier get in touch with our support team today.  

Get Court Compliant with Bundledocs

The UK Judiciary recently introduced new guidance on the preparation of electronic bundles for court hearings. Up until the pandemic e-bundles had been utilised. However, during 2020 and beyond e-bundles were used extensively as court hearings were held remotely with documents becoming bigger and more demanding. This updated guidance which replaces the previous revision published in May 2020 has been developed to ensure consistency in the creation of e-bundles for the efficient preparation and management of court hearings. 

What does this mean for your firm? The good news is that at Bundledocs we are fully compliant. Here we have laid out some of the main points within the updated guidance and how you can approach creating your e-bundles compliantly: 

Ebundle Creation 

All bundles must now be provided in PDF format – something that our solution does automatically. Within your e-bundle all pages must be digitally numbered by computer-generated numbering, not by hand. Regardless of whether the first page is part of an index, the first page of the bundle must be numbered as one with additional pages following sequentially. If you are required to produce a hard copy of your bundle – the pagination must match the e-bundle.  

With Bundledocs you can manipulate your documents to meet requirements set out by the UK judiciary. If any of the pages in the bundle have been created in landscape orientation, they must appear within the bundle in this format so that they can be read from left to right.  Additionally, you have the option to change the default page view to be 100% to meet guidance set out by the judiciary. 

When it comes to the presentation of your ebundle the resolution should not be greater that 300 dpi to prevent slow scrolling or rendering when your ebundle is being viewed. To avoid excessively large bundles, you can easily adjust the resolution for your ebundle.  

 

Formatting 

All entries in an index must now be hyperlinked to the corresponding document, all sections must be bookmarked for ease of navigation and the bookmark should contain the page number of the document. With Bundledocs you can automatically  generate a customised index and bookmarks, which update each time you generate your bundle. Additionally, all pages with typed text must be subject to OCR, this allows for easier searching for text, highlighting parts of a page, and copying text from the bundle. Our built in OCR functionality means your firm will not have to purchase additional OCR software.  

Pre-Hearing 

E-bundles can be shared with the courts prior to hearings via email or by uploading to a document upload centre – the issue here is that some bundles may be too large to be sent via email. Bundledocs features a secure share functionality where you can share direct to a third party or via outlook. There is also the option to share as an email attachment or via the third parties software. Additionally, you can download you e-bundle and upload directly depending on the requirements set out by the court.  

If new documents need to be added after an e-bundle has been submitted to the judge the judiciary requires that pages are added to the end of a bundle and paginated accordingly. The judge should then be provided with the new bundle and separately the completed revised bundle. Our solution allows you to add additional documents at the last minute while generating a new version with numbering etc. automatically updated. There is also the option to generate your bundle with just the late inserts – rather than the entire bundle which can then be shared.               

We want to help you create e-bundles with complete ease. Get in touch to grab a copy of our court compliant template today.

Bundledocs Announce Appointment of Simon Hill as Non-Executive Director

Bundledocs has today announced the appointment of Simon Hill as its new Non-Executive Director.

Simon is currently the CEO and co-founder of Xperate, a UK based software development company which offers consultancy services to the wider tech community. He has previously worked in CEO and senior leadership roles for Tikit Plc, BT Group Plc, and TFB Plc. Simon brings over 20 years’ experience to Bundledocs, having worked across the technology sector servicing industries such as SMEs, legal services, and professional services.

 

Speaking on the appointment Brian Kenneally, Bundledocs Founder and CEO said, “Simon has a notable track record of growing businesses and delivering strategic transformation across the legal tech industry. Simon is widely regarded as a serial tech entrepreneur and his insights and experience will undoubtedly be invaluable to us as we continue to expand our services globally. We are looking forward to working with Simon as we further develop Bundledocs into the future.”

“We are looking forward to working with Simon as we further develop Bundledocs into the future”
— Brian Kenneally, CEO

 

Commenting on his appointment, Simon Hill said, “I am delighted to have been appointed as Non-Executive Director at Bundledocs. Since Bundledocs launched in 2019 I have admired their vision and growth across territories. Having seen how much Bundledocs has achieved to date, I was interested in getting further insight into their operations. I am looking forward to working with the team to assist in their ambitious growth plans.”

 

Bundledocs has over 1,000 clients in over 34 countries. They have become the market leader in the electronic document production space, working primarily with the legal sector. In late 2020 they were the first electronic document bundling tool on the market to receive ISO 27001 compliance.  

Interested to learn more about Bundledocs? Contact our team today.

Bundledocs Announce New Partnership with IIZUKA

Bundledocs is delighted to announce a new partnership with IIZUKA.

IIZUKA provides Case Manager, a leading secure, cloud-based case management software system, to customers across the world. With a growing number of clients in the legal, regulatory and investigatory sectors who require the ability to bundle documents, IIZUKA have chosen a market leader to partner with to provide this valuable service to our customers.

The partnership will allow Case Manager users to take a wide variety of documents from Case Manager to produce a court compliant e-bundle in minutes. Each bundle is fully court compliant, with the ability to redact, annotate and manipulate as needed. Just like Case Manager, Bundledocs is completely secure and can be accessed from any device. It will increase Case Manager’s flexibility and allow users to more easily share bundles and collaborate on casework with third parties.

IIZUKA Managing Director Greg Hayes said:

‘Case Manager is trusted by all sorts of customers to manage complex casework. In recent years, we’ve seen an increase in customers from the legal and regulatory sectors who use Case Manager to manage investigations, for example in healthcare, social care, housing and health and safety sectors. They need to be able to collate, index and share documents with third parties and prepare bundles for court appearances and so we’ve partnered with Bundledocs to make this easier and quicker. 

We chose Bundledocs because of their excellent product and reputation and we look forward to developing this partnership and working together to provide an even better service for customers.’ 

If you would like to see how Bundledocs works with Case Manager, then get in touch today.

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