RCA Study — Relativity 101
Related Items
Related Items are documents deemed relational based on their content and grouped together into, for example, duplicates and email families and accessible via the related items pane in the core reviewer interface.
Batch Status
There are three different batch statuses: • Blank: The batch is currently inactive. • In Progress: The batch has been checked out, but not yet checked in. • Completed: The batch has been checked in as completed.
Relativity passwords
8 characters or more 1 lowercase letter 1 uppercase letter 1 number 1 non-alphanumeric character
Batches
A Batch is a group of documents assembled based on criteria set by the admin and assigned to a reviewer for review. Batching helps structure large scale reviews by organizing documents into smaller groups based on certain criteria, and then assigning those groups of documents to the review team. Documents are often batched based on criteria like the document's custodian, email thread, or specific issues that have been flagged. Batches typically include entire document families, like emails and their attachments, to help streamline the review process. Your system administrator may create batches of documents and either assign them to you or ask you to check them out yourself.
Pivot Widgets
A Pivot is a feature you use to quickly analyze case data to identify trends and patterns in a case by summarizing data in tables and charts to simplify analysis; pertaining to pivot profiles, which are pre-designed sets of pivot parameters used to execute a pivot. You can analyze data in order to reveal trends and patterns in a case by using Pivot. Tables and charts are created to visually summarize and simplify the analysis process. Pivot can be used whether you are looking at all records, a subset of records, or search results. This means you can use Pivot on any Relativity field that has been pivot enabled. Once the fields are Pivot enabled, you can add Pivot widgets to visualize data on the document list.
Search terms reports (STR)
A Search Terms Report is a feature that allows the user to enter a list of terms or phrases and generate a report listing those words' frequencies in a set of documents; pertaining to the Search Terms Report tab. Search terms reports (STR) provide the ability to identify documents containing specific keywords or terms that are important to a case. Search terms reports use the dtSearch index and syntax to find the terms. Once the STR has been run, a persistent highlights set can be created to highlight the STR terms in the viewer.
Tab
A Tab is an interface component that gives the user access to an assortment of Relativity functionality; a Relativity feature's corresponding area of setup; pertaining to the Tabs tab.
Transcript
A Transcript is a document version of an attorneys' dictation made during litigation; pertaining to the process transcripts operation and LiveNote integration.
Batch Views
A batch view limits the displayed documents to your current batch(es). Within a batch, documents can be grouped by fields, such as custodian or designation. Some batch views are configured to show only reviewed or unreviewed documents. These views update automatically each time a document is coded and saved.
Dashboards
A dashboard is a customized display of documents that updates automatically in response to filtering or searching. Dashboards can include both standard document lists and widgets. With dashboards, you can customize how documents are displayed. You can use the dashboards to gain insight into document metadata, manage workflows, and gauge reviewer progress. You can use only a standard document list, or you can add widgets (such as Pivot) that visually report on desired criteria. Once you've customized your page with Pivot widgets, you can preserve your page configuration by creating a dashboard. You can save multiple dashboards to quickly change between page configurations. The dashboard will update automatically in response to filtering or searching.
Reviewer
A reviewer evaluates documents and makes coding decisions based on the review guidelines provided by the case team. They are a subset of end users and may include case subject matter experts, paralegals, contract attorneys, and senior attorneys.
Saved Searches
A saved search is a saved set of criteria that returns the latest documents that meet that criteria. In Relativity, you can create saved searches by defining custom queries and unique views. You can also execute a search on the fly, save it for later use, or perform a combination of these tasks.
System Administrator
A system administrator (or admin) is a member of the system admin group in Relativity, giving them access to everything in an instance. They manage the instance level settings, agents, and servers. They have rights to manage both instance and workspace level security permissions. A System Administrator is a user with rights to see every item within a Relativity environment, including having access to Admin mode, which allows you to create and edit new clients, matters, users, groups, and views, among other capabilities.
Workspace Administrator
A workspace administrator configures and maintains the workspace environment. They create and manage review workflows and workspace permissions.
Save, Save and Next
After a set of coding decisions are made on a document, there are two ways to save these decisions. After clicking Save, you remain on the current document and the layout shifts to read only mode. Clicking Save & Next saves your input and moves you to the next document in the set.
Review Batches Tab
All batches created in a workspace are located under the Review Batches tab, which provides important information about your batches, such as the batch name, batch status, who it's assigned to, the batch size, and if it has been reviewed.
Admin
An Admin is a Relativity system administrator.
Find Similar Documents
An analytics tool to find documents based on the presence of ideas or concepts. The analytics engine attempts to understand semantic meaning and context of terms. Find Similar Documents differs drastically from standard keyword or metadata searching. Instead of searching for exact hits for a phrase, or the presence (or absence) of a list of search terms, Find Similar Documents looks for the conceptual matches between the documents. It identifies matches within your data set quickly and efficiently from within the viewer.
Email threading
An email thread is a single email conversation that starts with an original email (the beginning of the conversation) and includes all the subsequent replies and forwards pertaining to that original email.
Checking Batches Out
By clicking the Edit link next to a batch, you can check it out. If you have the appropriate permissions, you can also assign batches to other users by selecting their name. You may only be able to check out one batch at a time. However, a system admin can assign you multiple batches at once.
Navigation Bar
Case Workspace Areas: Browse through documents Controls how your documents are displayed and allows you to navigate through them. Buttons in upper right
Layouts
Case Workspace Areas: Customizable coding forms for viewing and editing a document's fields. Layouts are web-based coding forms that allow Users to view and edit Document fields. Layouts are created by the system admin and are built based on the workflows of the review. Right side bar
Related Items Pane
Case Workspace Areas: Identify and act on documents related to the active document Related Items are documents deemed relational based on their content and grouped together into, for example, duplicates and email families and accessible via the related items pane in the core reviewer interface. Bottom right pane
Persistent Highlight Sets
Case Workspace Areas: See the number of and jump to key terms Persistent highlights apply term highlighting in the document viewer. You can hide or apply term highlights in the document you're reviewing from the Persistent Highlight Set panel. Pane on left side
User Settings / Navigation
Case Workspace Areas: Access alerts, your favorite, user drop-down options and settings, and quick nav to search tabs and workspaces.
Add Widget button
Case Workspace Areas: Add a new Pivot or Cluster widget to the dashboard.
Saved search button
Case Workspace Areas: Allows you to save your current search conditions on your list as a new saved search.
Browser
Case Workspace Areas: Browse through documents using folders, saved searches or the field tree.
Document List
Case Workspace Areas: Central location for viewing and acting on your documents.
Document list controls
Case Workspace Areas: Controls how your documents are displayed and allows you to navigate through them.
Document browser menu
Case Workspace Areas: Controls whether the browser displays folders, tags, saved searches or clusters.
View bar
Case Workspace Areas: Controls which documents and fields are displayed in the document list. Dropdown in top left
Search panel
Case Workspace Areas: Create and set search and filter conditions for your documents.
Total items
Case Workspace Areas: Displays the total number of documents in the set.
Tab strip
Case Workspace Areas: Navigate between the different sections of your case.
Mass operations bar
Case Workspace Areas: Options to take mass action on some or all documents in the document list.
New Document button
Case Workspace Areas: Upload a new document to your workspace.
Sampling button
Case Workspace Areas: Use sampling to create a randomized sample of the documents.
Search bar
Case Workspace Areas: Use the Search Bar to search documents for key terms. You can run a search using any index in the workspace for which you have permissions. Running an index search from here will also create a filter card in the search panel.
Dashboard functions
Case Workspace Areas: Where you can save your current dashboard.
Choices (Coding documents)
Choices are the predetermined values that you can choose from in single and multi-choice list fields. In a workspace, you use choices in coding fields to record decisions on a document. For example, a Responsiveness field might have choices like Responsive, Not Responsive, and Not Sure.
Coding highlighting (ETV)
Coding highlighting allows you to see how emails in the current thread are coded for particular fields. Coding discrepancies that could exist in a coded email thread are visually apparent, making it easy to make corrections or see where mistakes were made during review. To use coding highlighting, click to open the Display Options section of the legend, and then click on the Highlight Field switch to enable coding highlighting.
Choice
Coding: Choices are predetermined values that are applied to single and multi-choice list fields; used in coding fields to allow users to record decisions on a document.
Viewer
Core Reviewer Interface: The Viewer is the area of the core reviewer interface in which document review takes place; component that displays loaded forms of documents from the workspace and provides options for controlling the mode in which those documents are displayed; area in which the reviewer applies markups, redactions, and persistent highlights to documents. The Viewer is the area of the core reviewer interface in which document review takes place; component that displays loaded forms of documents from the workspace and provides options for controlling the mode in which those documents are displayed; area in which the reviewer applies markups, redactions, and persistent highlights to documents. Large pane in the middle of the screen.
Saved Searches
Document Browser Menu: Create a new saved search or access previously saved searches.
Field Tre
Document Browser Menu: Displays a tree of field selections.
Folders
Document Browser Menu: Navigate the folder hierarchy for your workspace.
Clusters
Document Browser Menu: Shows the Relativity Analytics cluster hierarchy.
Show / Hide Filters
Document List Controls: Click the blue icon to show filters for columns in the item list. Click the orange icon to hide them.
Clear Filters
Document List Controls: Click this icon to clear any filters that have been applied to the item list.
Turn Grid Style On / Off
Document List Controls: This shrinks the row padding and alternates row shading to make your data more compact and easier to read. Use these navigational controls to navigate the pages in the item list.
Reset column sizes
Document List Controls: To return to the original settings for the columns, click the Reset Column Sizes icon.
Production
Documents that have completely gone through the Review process and are ready to be delivered to others.
Coding documents
During a document review, reviewers utilize specific layouts to code documents based on the criteria received from the case team. This occurs in the layouts pane
Extracted Text
Extracted Text is metadata removed during processing and then put into a separate file, which is then loaded into Relativity as part of a larger load file; also pertains to the Extracted Text field in Relativity.
Favorites
Favorites is a feature in which a user can bookmark their most visited areas of Relativity so that they can easily navigate to those areas after logging in. The Favorites menu contains all of your bookmarks (Favorites) and the last 10 pages of your browsing history (Recents). The Favorites menu appears at the top of the application window next to your username. You can use Favorites to quickly navigate within Relativity.
Field
Fields are used to store Document metadata or coding within Relativity.
Filtering
Filtering is a way to search for a specific single item or group of items within a list in Relativity. An easy way to search for information in Relativity is to filter. You can use filters to quickly narrow your searchable set, allowing you to browse through the key documents in the viewer efficiently. The field type associated with each column determines the available filter types, such as textboxes, pop-up pickers, and drop-down lists. To activate the filter options at the top of each column in the item list, click the Show filters ( ) icon. The icon turns orange when filters are activated.
Folders
Folders are containers of documents in Relativity that are arranged in a hierarchy in the folder browser.
Group Identifier
Group identifier is a shared value that identifies the family group a file belongs to.
Mass Edit (ETV)
If you ever encounter coding discrepancies in an email thread's coding designations, then you can use the email thread visualization tool to code entire branches of emails quickly and visually. To mass edit emails in a displayed thread, click the Enable Mass Edit Selection ( ) icon to go from navigation to selection mode.
Imaging
Imaging is the process of converting a group of documents to images in Relativity using imaging profiles and sets and the options of Basic and Native.
User Settings and Navigation
In order to use Relativity efficiently, it is essential to understand the navigation features. Once logged into Relativity, you'll see there are some tools available to you in the top-right corner of the workspace.
Keyboard Shortcuts
Keyboard Shortcuts are combinations of two (2) or more keys that, when pressed, perform a task that would typically require a mouse; used in Relativity to, for example, code and edit documents in the core reviewer interface.
Keyword Expansion
Keyword Expansion allows you to use an initial list of words as a jumping-off point by taking a single keyword and providing a list of conceptually related terms. The output of this feature is solely based upon the language in your data set. It does not use any outside dictionaries or thesauri. This can be a very powerful tool to find any code words or hidden language.
Logic Groups
Logic groups act as visual parentheses for your search query. The criteria within logic groups are evaluated first before evaluating against other search conditions or logic groups. Using the search panel, you can easily set conditions and drag and drop them into logic groups. The logic display at the top of the panel updates automatically to reflect your drag-and-drop changes.
Markup Sets
Markup Sets are securable sets of redactions available to reviewers for applying text redactions to documents in the viewer.
Markups and Annotations
Markups refer to the redactions you can add to a document to cover information deemed confidential or privileged to the case. The document must be imaged before you can apply redactions and annotations.
Mass Operations
Mass Operations are single actions performed on multiple documents or objects at the same time, such as mass edit, move delete, produce, replace, image, print image, send to CaseMap export file, cluster, process transcripts. You can quickly perform an action on a set of documents using mass operations. The Mass Operation bar sits at the bottom of the interface below the item list. While there are a total of 16 possible mass operations, your system admin will determine which specific mass operations you can use. • Edit • Image • Tally/Sum/Average • Export to File • Save as List • Mass Save as PDF
Native Files
Native Files are files saved using a certain program in a proprietary format that only that program can recognize; a file format native to a program that other programs may not recognize; pertaining to the Native File Behavior setting on the Relativity Desktop Client used to import a load file into a workspace.
Image Viewer Options
Once a document is imaged, a user has the option to select the Image mode radio button in the viewer. The Image mode interface contains various tools for adding redactions.
Persistent Highlighting
Persistent highlights apply term highlighting in the document viewer. You can hide or apply term highlights in the document you're reviewing from the Persistent Highlight Set panel. Throughout your review, you may come across certain words or phrases that are highlighted across a document set. This feature is called persistent highlighting, and is often set up by your system admin to support reviewers as they make coding decisions. Persistent highlight sets are reusable and transferable highlighting parameters that are controlled by your system admin and allow you to more easily find specified terms within your document set. Your workspace might contain more than one persistent highlight set. Each set can be turned on/off by clicking on its light bulb icon ( ) in the Persistent Highlights Sets pane. An additional light bulb will be present if the current document is being viewed as the result of a search in order to see the search term hits.
Produce
Produce is to prepare documents, electronically stored data, and other tangible items for submission to a party during the discovery phase of litigation; pertaining to production sets and the mass produce operation in Relativity.
Propagation
Propagation is a setting that automatically forces a coding value to a specified group of related items such as duplicates, family, similar documents, etc. during document review.
Quick Nav
Quick Nav helps you to quickly search for and navigate to any workspace or tab in Relativity. To access quick nav, click the quick nav icon ( ) toward the upper right corner of Relativity. Once selected, type the name of any tab or workspace.
Relativity Home
Relativity Home can be considered the base camp of a Relativity instance. Here, system administrators manage all system administrator objects and workspaces within the Relativity instance. Users who aren't system administrators can navigate to any area their group is permitted to access. You can always return to the Home page by clicking the Relativity icon ( ) at the top left of your screen.
Searching for Documents
Relativity includes flexible search features designed to facilitate the document review process. These easily accessible features support a range of searching needs from filtering on fields and simple keyword searches to the development of complex queries and saved searches. The following list summarizes the searching features available in Relativity: • Filtering •. Search Conditions •. Keyword Search •. Saved Searches •. dtSearch •. Concept Search (Relativity Analytics)
What is Relativity
Relativity is a feature rich, web-based eDiscovery platform that helps to identify, collect, search, analyze, and review large volumes of electronic information for the purposes of litigation, investigations, or compliance. Relativity is a web-based application accessible from multiple browsers.
EDRM
Relativity is an end-to-end ediscovery solution, covering the phases in the Electronic Discovery Reference Model
dtSearch
Relativity's dtSearch engine provides advanced search features including proximity, stemming, and fuzzy searches, as well as basic features such as Boolean operators and wildcards. System admins are responsible for creating and maintaining dtSearch indexes. Unlike keyword search indexes, dtSearch indexes must be manually built or updated when the document set used to create them is modified.
What is RelativityOne?
RelativityOne is the SaaS version of Relativity built in the Microsoft cloud. RelativityOne provides access to the same set of flexible and extensible tools you'll find in on-premises deployments of Relativity, but from the cloud.
Core Reviewer Interface
The Core Reviewer Interface is used to review and interact with documents. The panels in the Core Reviewer interface are the Relativity Viewer, the Document View Selector, the Navigation Bar, Layouts (coding forms), Persistent Highlight Sets, and the Related Items Pane.
Related Items Thread View
The Related Items Thread View is a replica of the email thread view, but from within the core reviewer interface. If your workspace is configured for email threading, you should have access to a Thread Group icon ( ) right below the layout. Clicking this icon will display the entire thread group for the currently opened document using the same visual display we just discussed. Here you can quickly navigate between documents in the group by clicking the control number. Doing so will open the selected document in the viewer and highlight it in the thread pane view.
Email Thread Visualization
The email thread visualization tool can help you quickly see the story of an email conversation. To open email thread visualization, click the Show/Hide Email Thread Visualization icon ( ) in bottom of the viewer. Doing so will launch the Email Thread Visualization pane. With the email thread visualization tool, you can: • Identify missing emails to ensure all documents were collected. • Easily navigate to other emails in the thread. • Make quicker coding decisions on entire thread branches. • Perform QC checks on coding decisions.
Keyword Search
The keyword search index is Relativity's default search engine. As the default search engine, the keyword search index automatically populates with extracted text during data import. This means there is no manual setup involved from your system admin. Once data is loaded into the case workspace, the keyword search index is immediately available for use for searching. The keyword search engine supports the following search features: • Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) • Quotation marks for exact matches • Wildcards (*)
Email Thread Icons
The number inside the square icon indicates each email's position within the thread. The color of the icon indicates inclusiveness. An inclusive email contains the unique content not included in any other email. • Inclusive, non-duplicate messages appear black. • Non-inclusive or duplicate spare messages appear white. • The Email Threading Display field includes the following file type icons: • A Send message (or Other) - represented by a simple square icon. • A Reply message - represented by an icon with a single left arrow. • A Reply All message - represented by an icon with a double left arrow. • A Forward message - represented by an icon with a single right arrow. • A Draft message - represented by a pencil on the left of the icon. • An Email that contains attachments - represented by an icon with a paper icon on the right. • An Unknown message - represented by a paper icon (file type cannot be found).
Saved Searches Browser
The saved searches browser holds all of the saved searches in your workspace and provides you with the ability to create, organize, edit, and perform other tasks with saved searches.
Add Widget button
To add a Pivot, simply click the Add Widget button at the top of the page to open the pivot creation menu.
Checking Batches In
To check a batch in, navigate back to the Review Batches tab and click Edit next to that batch. A pop-up window opens, allowing you to select one of the following options: • Check In As Pending: Checks in the batch as pending (this is often used when the batch is only partially complete). • Check In As Completed: Checks in the batch as completed.
Control Number
Unique identifier of each record within a Relativity workspace. Control Number is often used as the unique identifier for loads and overlays.
Relativity End Users
Users are individuals who have access to the Relativity environment. An end user is the most broad term used to describe a person with a Relativity account. End users encompass all personas, including but not limited to reviewers, system administrators, litigation support professionals, and infrastructure specialists.
Pivot Properties
Using different Pivot settings, you can identify trends or patterns in your workspace data, thereby simplifying the analysis process. There are multiple types of pivots you can use, such as bar charts, stacked bar charts, pie charts, line charts and tables. Pivots can also be displayed as a stacked bar chart if you select both a Group By and Pivot On value. After you select your display settings, the Pivot widget appears on your page. The other panels on the page are automatically resized or moved to accommodate the new widget.
Related items menu
View Bar: Select whether to display related items to the documents displayed (e.g., Family, Duplicates).
View menu
View Bar: Select a view or click the icons to edit or delete a document view.
Views
Views are customizable lists of items within Relativity. Essentially, any time you see a list of items in Relativity, it is a View.
Email Thread Visualization (ETV) Legend
When you display the email thread visualization pane for the first time during a Relativity session, a legend will appear in an opened state showing the meaning behind the different icons. • Emails that are inclusive, non-duplicate spares are represented by solid email icons. • Emails that are not inclusive are represented by the white email icons. • Missing emails are indicated by a question mark icon. • An email that has duplicate spares contains a double stacked email icon. • An email that contains a single attachment has a single paper icon.
Stop Words
When you run a keyword search, stop words are ignored because they do not act as meaningful criteria in a search query. They include characters (such as punctuation marks and single letters), numbers, and words (such as "at", "a", "on," and "the"). While keyword searches ignore stop words, their position in a phrase is taken into account when the query is executed. Documents that contain phrases with same number of intervening stop words will be returned even when the stop words differ from those in the original phrase.
Sampling
With Relativity's sampling function you can select a subset of items from a larger population to QC those items or identify characteristics of the whole population. You can create a sample set of documents or other items using any of the following sampling types: • Fixed Size • Percentage • Statistical
Email Thread Visualization Pane
Within the Email Thread Visualization pane, the email thread and thread structure of the currently opened document will be displayed. The email thread is depicted from left to right with the earliest emails in the thread group appearing on the left. The currently opened email is outlined in gray and displays as larger than the unselected emails. This allows you to see where you are in the context of the entire thread.
Workspaces
Workspaces are data repositories used to store, display, search, organize, and categorize documents or information related to a specific Client and Matter. In Relativity, documents related to a case or investigation are stored in a workspace. A workspace is a securable document repository that helps facilitate searching, organizing, and categorizing content. In Relativity, a workspace provides a secure data repository for documents used in cases. Organizations can store all types of documents (such as productions, entity data, and so on) in a workspace to facilitate searching, organizing, and categorizing content.
Search Panel
You also have the option to narrow the documents in your view by adding filter cards directly to the search panel. Click on the Expand Search Panel icon ( ) to expand it.
Switching Layouts
You can easily navigate back and forth between layouts by clicking the drop-down at the top of the layout. This can be especially useful for reviewers jumping between a first pass and second pass review layout. You can switch layouts in both read only and edit modes. However, if you've made unsaved changes to your document in edit mode, you will first be prompted to save your decision(s) before switching layouts.
Imaging on the fly
You can image a single document on the fly using the Image button ( ) in the viewer. (As opposed to batch imaging)
Search Conditions
You can use the search conditions option to build complex queries by selecting fields, operators, and values. Depending on the type of field you select, different operators appear. You can use this option alone or in conjunction with keyword searches, dtSearches, Analytics, or Cluster Visualization.
Proximity Searching
dtSearch — You can use the W/N (within N words) operator to return documents with two words or phrases occur within a certain proximity of each other. The documents returned by the search must contain the terms within the required proximity, such as five words.
Stemming
dtSearch — return documents containing grammatical variations of a root word. The tilde (~) is the character used for stemming searches when added at the end of the root word.
Fuzzy Searching
dtSearch — return documents containing spelling variations of a term. Fuzzy searching may be useful when looking for documents that contain misspelled terms, typographical errors, or have been scanned with Optical Character Recognition (OCR). The percent sign (%) is used for fuzzy searches. The number of percent signs used indicates how many characters in the search term will be ignored by the dtSearch engine when it runs the query.
Document
A Document is a record within a Relativity workspace.
Search Index
A Search Index is a user-defined set of specifications to facilitate a search across content and isolate individual terms within individual documents; pertaining to the Search Indexes tab; pertaining to Keyword Search, dtSearch, and Relativity Analytics.
Document View Selector
Core Reviewer Interface: Select which form of the current document you would like to display in the viewer Radio button in the upper left of the screen which allows you to toggle views.