screening electronic folders

[nonamouse]

I'm wondering if anyone who has been screening electronic folders has developed a really efficient technique or some shortcuts or other tips that they would like to share. It might save ALJs and attorneys who are starting the transition some headaches and time on the steep part of the learning curve. I found the official "training" less than meaty.

[cinderella]

Non- I've been through all the training (including electronic case pulling) and I think it's just a matter of experience. The more I review or draft, the faster I become. Obviously, two screens is crucial, although you can toggle back and forth on one screen. That said, I certainly find reviewing paper cases faster than electronic. Plus, it's pretty rough on the eyes. However, it's the wave of the future, so we need to fully embrace it! Good luck!!

[cinderella]

Correction: Two screens crucial! Sheesh- it's late. Sorry about that!

[aljsouth]

O.K. Two screens are vital. After that you do pick up some speed but it is never as fast as paper.

There are some things you can do that help. Cutting and pasting works on case data section, but you have to use select area under (I think) annotations for doing this in the exhibits. Highlighting is easy as well as sticky notes. You can also send your notes to the private section of the file. I do this in every case. They will still be there after remands.

Several of our SA's do reviews at home. It is slower because of one screen, but so is writing the decision at home. Toggling will work, but is not as good as two screens. Also, at home you can only open one exhibit at a time -- unless you open each one and minimize them. Even then you can't open 20 exhibits at one time like you can at the office.

Bottom line -- you will become more familar with efiles and will learn tricks and get faster. It will never be as fast as paper.

[cinderella]

Just as an aside-Our SAs are not allowed to do review at Flexi or on O/T. Only drafting is allowed during those times.

[southerner]

OT can be drafting or screening for SA's in our office. The HOD prefers we draft on flexdays, but ultimately that is an SA option in our office.

[lokemper]

"Two screens?" "Toggling?" "Training?" Your words are strange to my eyes. What are these things of which you all write? I've been working near two months and have neither seen nor experienced any of these things.

[aljsouth]

lokemper said:

"Two screens?" "Toggling?" "Training?" Your words are strange to my eyes. What are these things of which you all write? I've been working near two months and have neither seen nor experienced any of these things.

Two Screens = two monitors. Incredible you don't have one if you write decision..

Toggle=opening several programs or documents at the same time. You can "toggle" by clicking on the incon at the bottom of the screen showing the programs running.

Training= well, you are right about that. Odar is laughable in its "training" of staff and of all employees about anything new. The low expectations of employees about training are fully justified. Honesty forces me to say that , in the past, judges training is quite good. Of course they keep threatening to do it all VTC, a disaster in the making.

[nonamouse]

lokemper said:

"Two screens?" "Toggling?" "Training?" Your words are strange to my eyes. What are these things of which you all write? I've been working near two months and have neither seen nor experienced any of these things.

I feel your pain. I started this thread because I know how little was done before we transitioned. Initially, we had only one old monitor, toggling between screens was the only choice. Now I have two decent sized monitors with the efile on one and my Word document on the other.

I was one of the people supposedly "trained" in order to train the rest of our office. I did actually go around and work one-on-one with my group's writers and a couple of the ALJs on the basics. However, we didn't have the efiles in any significant quantity until about one year after the initial training.

One nice thing in my office is that a cd is burned at master docket and again before the hearing so that even if the system is down or sluggish one can still hold a hearing or write a decision. This practice has allowed us to continue working flexiplace with efiles using written instructions from ALJs. I don't know if this is standard practice everywhere.

None of the ALJs in our office are using electronic bookmarks with the virtual sticky notes or other marking tools yet. If they ever do use them it would make taking the case home difficult.

[lildiesel]

aljsouth,

You mentioned,

"You can also send your notes to the private section of the file. I do this in every case."

I'm getting nowhere fast after going over all the training material.

To copy a document (i.e., hilighted medical record) to the private section, do you hilight, right click, and copy the subject 'thumbnail', then past it to the private section? I can't get the last step (paste) to take.

Any help you might provide is greatly appreciated.

I'm essentially trying to go into the hearings with my own 'quick- tab' references; i.e., "Claimant was relatively symptom free until three days ago ... .", for questioning claimants without forewarning/alerting counsel to that line of inquiry.

I think you are doing something very similar, which is available but no one has bothered to let us in on the secret.

[nonamouse]

lildiesel,

Are you using the actual efile online during the hearings or a burned copy from a cd?

If you are using the online efile, then I would think that you could simply bookmark the pages of exhibits that you want to use. You could leave the bookmark list open on one side of the screen with the brief text as your cue for what it refers to.

On each bookmarked page you can use the virtual pen on the DMA viewer's toolbar to circle the exact text or you could use the highlight tool. You can use a virtual sticky to type a question and have it showing right on the exhibit page.

I was under the impression that when a cd is burned that bookmarks and any notations made directly on bookmarked pages with virtual stickys, etc do not transfer to the burned file. Therefore a rep would not have access to any bookmarks you made with notes. It seems simpler to me to use the bookmarks with a sticky than cutting and pasting whole exhibit pages into a Word document and then placing that into the private section. However, I may be misunderstanding what you are trying to accomplish with the cut/paste.

Forgive me if I'm telling you about functions that you have already tried and discarded.

[lildiesel]

Thank you, aljsouth.

I believe I follow your reasoning. To clarify any misimpression, I am indeed accessing the e-file directly from the network (not a CD copy) and have encountered but slight difficulty using the method you suggest (bookmarks, sticky notes, etc.). That's an excellent approach, but still leaves me uncertain, management assurances notwithstanding, as to who else has access to my internal work product, impressions, and delusional tangents. I'm sure you catch my drift.

Your reference to 'cut and paste' followed by creation of a word document, which is then added to the 'private' folder may be the key. I'm not greatly enamorded of the limited bookmark descriptive fields, and really do much better eliciting hearing testimony by glancing down at hi-lighted original text while moving from point to point.

However, if adding a 'cut and paste' word document to the private folder entails printing out a hard copy and re-scanning it into the file, as it were, ab initio, that's a little much.

Again, thank you for your assistance. If I've muddled the picture, please advise.

I'm at the point where right-clicking on a document thumbnail does in fact allow me to 'copy', but getting that copy inserted directly into the 'private file' is the brickwall.

[lildiesel]

Nonamouse,

Sorry, I misread the thread. Meant to address the above post to you rather than aljsouth.

[aljsouth]

Lildiesel

Here is how to copy and paste and to send to private section.

You can copy and paste from word data by highlighting the section you want with your left mouse button, click and hold and move the mouse. Then with right button click within the highlighted section. A menu comes up and select copy. Then move mouse to word document (more on this later) and right click and select paste (can also use ctrl + v and eliminate clicking with mouse).

Case documents and exhibits are different. You cannot copy and paste. You can select annotations on the tool bar at the top of the page. Left click on select area. Then use left mouse, click and hold, to select the area you want. Then right click within the selected area, left click copy. At this point you do what you did above to get it on a word document.

PRIVATE SECTION

open a word document. Select DGS MENU at left on tool bar. Select decisions, then select and open ALJ notes (SA select their notes). A page with a SSN line appears. put in cl's SSN. click on retrieve information. Wait until the claimant's name and info appears in the fields below retrieve info. Click on done. It will show you a save screen and prompt you to save (it automatically names it in a way the systme knows how to read). Make sure it is in a folder you want to save it in, then click on save.

Type in notes (can cut and paste exhibit list and make notes under each one, or use a word form, it is up to you). When done with your notes SAVE the document again.

Then select DGS Tools (this appears on the tool bar only after you have gone through the process under the beginning with DGS menu). Select send to efile. It will give you prompts including a warning about the internet, keep going. The system will send it to the efile. It makes a beep when done. Wait a few minutes before expecting it to actually appear in the efile.

Currently as I write eview is very slow. You may want to wait until this is fixed to try it.

[lildiesel]

Many thanks, aljsouth and nonamouse.

It was that first 'DGS to alj notes and into the 'private' section' step that I was missing. Of course, I'm now reviewing an e-file with extra (practice) documents all over the place that no one seems to know how to delete. Probably some security feature, but it leaves me with a dozen versions of "alj notes" in the F and private sections.

I'm just starting the process, but feel like someone given a brief run-down on where to find the brakes, steering wheel, gas pedal, and gear shift, then admonished, "You can't be so resistive to change" as I'm sent out to compete in the Indy 500.

After reading written instructions from at least four separate sources and suffering through the several videos (monuments to irrelevance all), I'm certain we in the trenches are the last best hope for dealing with this most recent blunder.

Let's keep each other updated as these next weeks and months unfold, and again, many thanks.

[kingfisher]

Nonamouse,

You said,

"None of the ALJs in our office are using electronic bookmarks with the virtual sticky notes or other marking tools yet. If they ever do use them it would make taking the case home difficult."

This concerns me, as my intention is to help both myself and any writer working on the case at home. Do you know if virtual post-its, highlighter or bookmarked pages show up on the CD? If not, I guess they are not serving the intended purpose.

[nonamouse]

kingfisher,

In our training they said that the electronic notes were never meant to copy with the exhibits/data to the cd. The reason was to prevent the accidental exposure of internal notes by an ALJ or writer to the rep or claimant. Unless someone has made a recent change to the system, no one can burn electronic sticky notes and other markings to the cd. In my office we have been taking home raw efiles (on CD) for flexiplace. ALJs only do screening with them and attorneys write OTRs or screen.

The cd feature was not designed for use in flexiplace. However, it has been the only way to continue working flexiplace with an efile. I personally have occasional paranoid moments when I think that the efiles are a back door way for the agency to get rid of flexiplace eventually. They would have to provide a secure connection to the network from each person's home in order for us to properly use the efiles with all electronic notations on flexiplace. While I have a friend in private industry who has such a connection from her company, I cannot see the government paying for it to save flexiplace.

[learnedhand]

Nonamouse, the agency was piloting just such a connection for outside attorneys to add records just before all the security fears. The idea was that we would also have access with a protected password similar to the way we access our email from home. That idea has gone by the wayside, at least for the foreseeable future. I was really looking forward to it.

[nonamouse]

learnedhand,

If the remote connection for efiles worked as well as the remote email access, then I would have given up on flexiplace anyway. It has been such a pain in the rear that I have given up on the email access.

I was not aware that they were piloting the connection for private attys to send records. I was aware that they could fax in records with a bar code to the efile. Hmmm. I guess we were not in the pilot area. Whatever they finally use as the norm, it will beat the heck out of having our staff stand at a copier all day to get a file ready.

[aljsouth]

Supposedly the private section will not burn to CD; or, rather, it takes a lot more effort to burn it. It is not supposed to be released. I use it in every case. I am very mindful that the agency will cave in and release it if NOSSCAR demands it do so. So don't put anything in there you don't want public. I don't use sticky notes because I make good notes in ARPR and don't want to review the same exhibits again.

Some of our senior attorneys do use the highlighting and sticky notes and it is helpful in reviewing a file.