How to Use Custom Fields for Guided Automated Workflows With Delegate

Today we'll take a look at how you can use custom fields with your automated workflows to keep your work in Relativity as efficient as possible.

Relativity has a number of built-in system fields to help you understand the state of your documents - for example, "Has Images" and "Has Native." Because they are related to common processes in just about every case, these fields can be very helpful when considering how to design a time- and effort-saving automated workflow.

When you have other processes that run on the same documents, adding custom fields is an easy way to help guide your workflows, including with Delegate’s Automated Workflows.

Imagine you have developed a set of Relativity Scripts that are part of a "secret sauce process" for your review teams, and you want to be able to run these scripts on documents that haven’t had the secret sauce applied. Let's walk through how to do it.

Create a new field and saved search

1. For the Document object, add a new Yes/No field - Has Secret Sauce - to track if our documents have been processed.  

2. Create a new saved search that has a condition of Has Secret Sauce = No  

Update your Relativity Scripts to utilize the Saved Search

1. Add an input of type search

2. Update the SQL to filter on the results of the Saved Search

Technical Note - In Relativity, all saved searches get turned in SQL statements and those SQL statement are run to retrieve document results.  When you select a saved search in the input, the replace value in the scripts turns into the FROM clause in the generated SQL associated with the search.  See the example in Relativity’s documentation for additional details.

Create a new workflow

1. Add a new workflow

2. Choose a trigger (we'll use New Documents Loaded - but please make it like you like it)

3. For each of your secret sauce Relativity Scripts, add a step of type of Run Relativity Script

   1. Specify any inputs, including the Saved Search you setup above.

   2. Configure error and notification behavior

4. At the end of the workflow, add a step of type Update Field

   1. Set the Saved Search to the one you setup above.

   2. Set the Field to Has Secret Sauce

   3. Set the value to Yes

Heads up! - If you have any other processes that could change the value of Has Secret Sauce, such that the results of the Saved Search change between the start and the end of the workflow’s execution, you will need to put additional safeguards in place so that you are not incorrectly updating this value for docs that still need the secret sauce.

And that's it! Now whenever new docs are loaded, our process will kick off and apply our secret sauce automatically. Bon appétit!

Ready to use Custom Fields for Guided Automated Workflows? Get in touch!