This article contains all release notes for the year of 2022.
January
In Filevine’s January releases, you’ll find the ability to validate Vinesigned documents, a new choice for changing time zones in auto-reports, and new print options for documents.
Document Verification for Vinesign
Uphold the validity of your Vinesigned documents with Vinesign’s updated verification page and public verification portal.
Users now have a new way to certify that their signed documents are authentic and unaltered. Private blockchain technology checks document history, verifying that your document is the most up-to-date version. Each document’s verification page is also now a separate file, rather than appended to the end of the document.
Learn more about Document Verification.
Auto-report Time Zone Preferences
Ensure that you receive your auto-reports on the times and dates you want with the new timezone configuration in your auto-report settings.
Formerly, all auto-reports operated using UTC (Coordinated Universal Time). Now, you can choose from a descriptive list of time zones to specify which time zone you’d like your auto-reports to be aligned with.
Learn more about auto-reports.
Preview & Edit Documents in a New Tab
Opening a document to preview or edit now creates a new tab, loading faster and allowing users to queue multiple documents for review. Print clarity has also been improved, and users may now select to print with or without annotations included.
March
In the March releases, you’ll find more precision in calculated fields, customized roles in Lead Docket, and new functionality in Filevine’s Outlook Add-in.
Increased Decimal Rounding
Decimal and percentage amount fields and calculated fields now account for eight decimal places, allowing for greater rounding accuracy in large and recurring calculations. For certain large calculations where eight decimals won’t account for accuracy, it is recommended that users default to fractions.
Learn more about rounding in calculated fields.
Customize Roles in Lead Docket
Lead Docket users can now better align their roles with your unique team members. Administrators can make changes to roles in Lead Docket, including:
- create new roles to account for each type of team member
- edit role names and descriptions to reflect how your team works
- change role priorities to match your team’s hierarchy
Learn more about Lead Docket’s custom roles.
Create a Project or Contact in Outlook
Users of the Outlook Add-in can now create a Filevine project and contact, all without leaving their inbox. Add new contacts or create a new project within the context of an email.
Note: If you currently use Lead Docket as your intake system, you should continue using your current intake methods to ensure that your leads are routed correctly.
Learn more about new Outlook Add-in functionality.
April
In Filevine’s April release notes, you’ll find new in-line text edits and fillable fields for the PDF Editor, a new way to update project contacts, and more.
Docs+ Functionality
Docs+ users can now edit the text of PDF documents, add fillable fields, and more. The PDF Editor has four new types of functionality:
- In-line text edits: Move, remove, modify, or replace text from any text-generated document with the new Edit tool.
- Enhanced Redaction: Make multiple redactions at once by searching for recurring words or patterns (eg. CC numbers, SSNs, Phone numbers, and more) with the Search and Redact tool.
- Fillable PDFs: Create fillable PDFs that can be shared with and filled by others with the Forms tool.
- Measurements: Calculate area dimensions, measure distances between lines, or trace a perimeter in drawings, photos, or other documents according to scale with the new Measurements tool.
Mass Update Change Project Contact
Users can now update project contacts en masse for all project types through the Mass Update Advanced tool.
Save time and reduce errors by updating the project contact for hundreds of projects at one time rather than manually updating each project with either a new or existing contact.
Lead Docket Referral Emails
The initial email for referral firms has moved from Manage > Settings > Referrals, and is now found in your message templates, standardizing outbound communication.
May
In Filevine’s May release notes, you’ll find a brand new look for Vinesign and more.
Vinesign Refresh
Vinesign has a new look! We’ve refreshed the Vinesign user interface to be more visually appealing, efficient, and user-friendly. Benefits include:
- centralized home page
- improved document search
- better experience for signers
- streamlined experience for users
Learn more about Vinesign’s new look.
Non-Empty Folder Delete
Filevine users now have an improved folder management experience, with updates to our folder deletion process.
- Org Admins can now delete folders that contain files and subfolders. All users can still delete empty folders, as before.
- Deleted files will still be recoverable via Undelete on an individual basis, but the folder structure is not recoverable.
Learn more about folder deletion.
June
In Filevine’s June release notes, you’ll find new functionalities for email within Filevine, updates to OCR, and the beginning of a new look for Filevine.
Native Email Previewer and Sender
Docs+ users can now search, preview, and send email files from within Filevine. The native email previewer and sender saves users time by never requiring them to leave the platform.
- Docs+ users can now preview emails that have been saved in the Docs section, including their attachments.
- The text in email files is now searchable for Docs+ users, both in the previewer and in the project and global searches.
- Outlook users with Docs+ can also open and respond to emails and send a project document as an email attachment—all directly from Filevine.
Learn more about email capabilities in Filevine.
Intra-Doc and Enhanced Search
Rolling out over the next 5-7 business days, Docs+ users will gain access to OCR updates for faster, more accurate searching.
- Searching within PDFs now highlights the results on-page, showing exactly where your search term appears.
- When using the global or project search, results now display a document preview including highlighted results. Clicking a highlighted result in the preview takes you to the page and location where it appears in the document.
Timekeeper ID
The latest enhancements to Timekeeping make it even easier to create time entries. Users can now add Timekeeper IDs as shorthand markers to users for additional record keeping.
Filevine Interface Redesign
Phase 2 of the Redesign kicked off this month, and more exciting changes will be coming soon:
- The first update for Phase 2 was the introduction of a new singular font scheme. Introduced at the beginning of June, the new font helps create a more uniform feel across the entire Filevine Interface.
- Phase 2 is still in progress, and more details will be added to the Phase 2 Redesign landing page as further updates are released.
To learn more about the Interface Redesign and see what phase we are in, visit our New Features page.
July
In Filevine’s July release notes, you’ll find updated default digest email settings, a new date of death field for contacts, and more.
Exported PDFs Now Editable by Default
To more easily share fillable forms from Filevine, exported PDFs are now editable by default. To export a flattened PDF, select “Print” and save to your computer. Learn more about exporting PDFs in Filevine.
Date of Death
When creating and editing contacts, users can now mark a contact as deceased and enter their date of death.
- Contacts in Filevine now have a “Deceased” toggle that allows users to add a date of death.
- If a contact has a stored date of death, they will have a “Deceased” indicator wherever they appear in the platform.
Disabling Default Digest Email
Daily digest emails are now disabled by default for new users. Users can enable daily digest emails in their notifications settings. Learn more about managing these settings.
August WNWN
The theme of our WNWN event this quarter is connection. Whether it’s connecting you to your clients, your data to your workflows, or your various software tools to each other, our latest product developments and enhancements were all made with connection in mind. It’s Filevine’s mission to improve your ability to make genuine connections with your clients and your team members.
We have exciting new features to share with you—like our improved Tag Management and our brand new Data Connector, new developments to Lead Docket’s intake capabilities, and new Vinesign Packets functionality.
Tags
Filevine’s updated tags and new Tag Manager tool expand the usefulness of tags and streamline communication across Filevine, giving users more control over how work is searched, sorted, and stored.
Now, only users with access to the Tag Manager tool can create and update tags, helping to standardize tags across Filevine. Tags now include a color and description for better visual categorization and consistency.
Data Connector
Filevine users can now quickly export saved CSV reports securely through an AWS S3 bucket. The new ability to export your data directly from the cloud will bring further data integrity and visibility to your organization.
Contact your Filevine representative or support to set up the Data Connector in your Org. Learn more about the data connector.
Lead Docket Updates
Lead Docket users can now use several new features that work to streamline the intake process, including:
- Lead Forms: Users can send fillable forms to leads directly from Lead Docket, allowing leads to provide information on their time. Admins and users with lead forms permissions can customize forms for each case type. Learn more about lead forms.
- Automations: With automations, firms can automate key actions and entire processes in Lead Docket, creating a seamless intake process. Available automations include updating lead statuses, sending lead forms, sending Vinesign templates, and pushing case details to Filevine. Learn more about automations.
- Referral Groups: Referral groups allow you to group together and prioritize referral firms. Referral groups can also work with automations to automatically re-refer leads to the next firm in a referral group after a given period of time has passed, or after the previous firm rejects the lead. Learn more about referral groups.
Learn more about Lead Docket’s recent releases.
Vinesign Packets
Vinesign users can now send multiple documents at once, saving time and streamlining the signature collection process. Multiple documents are sent to signers in one collated file. Once signed, senders can download the signed documents and their verification pages individually.
Learn more about sending multiple documents in Vinesign.
Time and Billing
Upcoming changes to Filevine’s time and billing features will improve your team’s ability to manage invoices and track your billable hours.
We know a billing rate is sensitive information, so we’re adding a new tab inside of Billing Setup where the Org admin can control access to billing rates. When a user does not have rate-viewing permissions, no rates will show when adding a time entry, in the project billing section, in Timesheet, or in reports. Rate-viewing permissions will be available to Filevine Insiders next week.
Users can now create invoices for multiple projects at one time. In the Advanced Billing tool, users can select multiple projects, create an invoice for each, and receive a notification when all invoices are ready. This functionality is currently available on an opt-in basis.
Something similar for the Invoices tab is in the works. Users will be able to select multiple invoices and take action on them all at once—whether that is generating a new PDF, finalizing the invoices, downloading existing PDFs, or marking invoices as sent. We expect these additional invoice actions to be available to Filevine Insiders in the next 3-4 weeks.
Merge and Delete and Trending Tags
Tags will soon be able to be merged and deleted in bulk in the Tag Manager tool. Users will be able to select multiple tags and choose to merge or delete them with additional icons.
Users will also soon be able to view the 10 most-used tags in a project, displayed at the top of the project’s Activity feed. Click on any of these trending tags to filter the Activity feed by items with that tag.
Filevine Redesign
In the last few months, we updated our font with a new, modern font and began updating our icon set. Throughout the coming months, we’ll continue to release updates to our user experience and interface.
Up next, we are making the following changes:
- a new navigation bar at the top of Filevine: this bar features larger, clearer icons that we hope will make it easier to differentiate between sections within Filevine
- a new page title: starting with the project activity section page, this new page title is more compact, allowing more content onto user’s screens
- moved the vitals information: vital’s new side panel is quickly accessed through the vitals button, found inside the new page title
- bringing themes to Filevine: users will be able to select from three different color themes for Filevine
Learn more about Filevine Interface Redesign updates.
LEX Summit 2023
LEX Summit 2023 is focused on bringing the future of legal work to the present. At LEX Summit, you’ll gather with like-minded legal tech innovators who are changing the way legal work gets done.
This year’s user conference is taking place Feb. 12–15, 2023 at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in the heart of Downtown SLC. Learn more about the LEX Summit.
Filevine Community
Innovators are the official Filevine user community to mastermind with other users by asking questions and sharing best practices. It’s a central hub to stay up-to-date on new features and enhancements, learn about upcoming events, network with other users, and more.
To join the conversation, create your account at innovators.filevine.com.
September
In Filevine’s September release notes, you’ll find new ways to receive project notifications and updates to Vinesign and Outlaw.
Project Subscription Toggle
Users can now subscribe to notifications from a project straight to their feed. When looking at a project’s team, use the new “Subscribe” toggle in Role View to receive notifications for the project’s activity.
Vinesign Notifications & Reminders
Vinesign users can now streamline communications around signature collection with customized notifications and reminders.
- Update important people at your organization with the option to share notifications and completed documents by cc'ing others on a document’s progress.
- Be notified via email whenever your document is sent, viewed, opened, signed, and completed. Admins can also configure status change notifications to be sent to Filevine.
- Remind your signers on a custom schedule to ensure no document slips through the cracks.
Learn more about sending documents in Vinesign.
Billing Rate Permissions
Filevine can now hide rate information for selected users to better manage visibility of sensitive information.
By default, rate-viewing permissions are turned off for all users. Without rate-viewing permissions, users will not see rates across the Org when adding a time entry, in the project billing section, in Timesheet, or in newly-created reports. Users without rate-viewing permissions cannot access the invoice modal. Learn more about this view.
Admins are encouraged to review which users have access to rate-viewing permissions and set up rate-viewing permissions for their Org. Learn how to set up rate permissions.
Bulk Invoice Actions & Invoice Creation
Accelerate the process of creating and taking action on multiple invoices at once with updates to the Billing Advanced tool.
With bulk invoicing, you can create invoices for multiple projects at the same time. Choose all unbilled items for a project, or all unbilled items within a chosen date range, and queue one invoice each for multiple projects. You will then receive a notification when all invoices have been created. Bulk invoicing is available in the Unbilled tab of the Billing Advanced tool.
Users can perform the following bulk actions for billing items:
- generate a PDF
- finalize
- download
- mark invoice as sent
- delete or void
Bulk billing actions are available in the Invoices tab of the Billing Advanced tool.
Outlaw Custom Workflows & Checkpoints
Improve your document assembly processes and workflows with added oversight and customizability for every document type you generate with your Outlaw and Filevine connection.
Custom Workflows give your team control over the workflows you use to assemble and execute documents and contracts. Define the phases and functionality for each of the step-by-step processes for different types of contracts and documents.
Checkpoints and Checkpoint Groups allow you and your team to automatically loop in certain parties for approvals on contracts and documents at exactly the right stage in your workflow. Whether you need approvals on the language used or want a certain party to review after negotiation changes are made, setting a Checkpoint ensures your documents and contracts move forward with the proper oversight needed to mitigate risks.
October
In this month’s release notes, you’ll find Filevine’s new powerful tool, Doc Assembly, improvements to file uploads, and the ability to merge and delete tags in the Tags Manager Advanced tool.
Doc Assembly
Doc Assembly is Filevine’s new native solution for legal document creation. Doc Assembly features best-in-class automations and data connections, as well as a revolutionary new file type built specifically for legal.
Filevine's patented new file format, .vine, creates living documents that seamlessly connect with your source of record, empowering your team to manage document creation at scale.
Draft and assemble legal documents in a seamless and contextual workflow that uses and syncs project data, directly in Filevine. Pull existing data together from across a Filevine projects — no matter if it is a static section, collection section, or contact — and utilize it to create your document assembly. Create documents from the point in your workflow that makes the most sense for you, whether that’s specific sections or one centralized location.
Learn more about Doc Assembly.
Improved File Uploads
Improvements to Filevine’s upload utility provide faster uploads for all customers, including parallel uploads of documents >100MB each.
Docs+ customers can now upload files up to 25GB, better supporting large files like medical records, large documents, and video files.
Tag Merge and Delete
Tag Management opens the door to governance over the tags in your system like never before with the opportunity to merge and delete tags.
Users with access to the Tag Manager Advanced tool can control the tags in their Org. In this Advanced tool, select two or more tags and then select the merge or delete icons in the flyout. Merged tags will appear as one tag, and deleted tags will be removed from the Tag Manager.
Changes to Project Team Roles
The primary role will now appear in the list of roles in the Roles Setup Advanced tool, and can be treated as a role. In this tool, you can drag the primary role to shift its place in the role display order in projects. Unlike other roles, you cannot currently change the name of the primary role.
Note: You will not see Primary listed as a role in the Card View of a project’s Team section, as the Card View is a legacy team management experience and is no longer prioritized for development.
November
Review weekly release notes for the month of November below.
11/21/2022 – 11/25/2022
Due to the holiday week, additional release information will be available in the first week of December release notes.
11/14/2022 – 11/18/2022
Tags work, updated Outlook Add-In API released everywhere, and bug fixes!
Tags
- Address Book now uses a tag picker, rather than a dropdown list of tags
- Tag pickers through Filevine now have a loading icon to indicate when they are doing work (instead of “no results”).
- If there are no tags on a note or comment, the option is now to “Add Tags” rather than “Edit Tags.”
- The “Edit Tags” text on a comment is now indented to better preserve the visual hierarchy of the vine.
- The term “hashtags” is being replaced with the word “tags” in the UI. Text updated this week includes contact cards, the dialog title when adding a tag to a document, and the Advanced tool, which is now called "Auto-tags."
Bug Fixes
- FIXED: The result highlighting in project search has been improved; for example, if the search phrase does not contain a middle initial but the project name does, elements of the search phrase are highlighted.
- FIXED: It is now possible to remove all tags from a project contact card.
- FIXED: If there are automatic tags associated with custom field widgets (i.e., doc gen, report fusion, or file upload), hovering over the (i) icon in the project section again lists the names of those automatic tags. This happens even if the tags were not properly indexed into OpenSearch originally.
- FIXED: In the project Activity page, if you had selected a tag filter pill, clicking it again caused the page to spin; it doesn’t do that any more.
- FIXED: If a note, comment, or document is tagged with an archived tag and that item is moved to another Org, the archived tag is no longer copied over.
- FIXED: The Search Deeper functionality will now find notes and comments by tag even if the name of the tag is not included in the body of the note or comment.
- FIXED: When attaching a document to a note or comment, the Upload icon is now correct; it previously featured an arrow pointing down.
- FIXED: After selecting the Edit icon for a note, clicking inside the note field no longer toggles whether the note was expanded or collapsed.
- FIXED: It is now possible to change a project with unbilled items to a new rate schedule if the current rate schedule has been deleted.
- FIXED: Errors with Document Signed URL when visited directly without parameters.
- FIXED: When 'Multisign off' is enabled, users cannot add or manage signers. The ability to add or manage signers is now only possible when 'Multisign on' is enabled.
- FIXED: Color Template converter ran on all Org documents to show new enhanced colors for previous UI created documents.
- FIXED: A2P new registration guidelines for character count, changing from 38 to 40.
- FIXED: FV upload issue when assigning roles from Lead Docket. It now assigns the proper party upon sending to Filevine.
11/14/2022 – 11/18/2022
Tags work, updated Outlook Add-In API released everywhere, and bug fixes!
Tags
- Address Book now uses a tag picker, rather than a dropdown list of tags
- Tag pickers through Filevine now have a loading icon to indicate when they are doing work (instead of “no results”).
- If there are no tags on a note or comment, the option is now to “Add Tags” rather than “Edit Tags.”
- The “Edit Tags” text on a comment is now indented to better preserve the visual hierarchy of the vine.
- The term “hashtags” is being replaced with the word “tags” in the UI. Text updated this week includes contact cards, the dialog title when adding a tag to a document, and the Advanced tool, which is now called "Auto-tags."
Bug Fixes
- FIXED: The result highlighting in project search has been improved; for example, if the search phrase does not contain a middle initial but the project name does, elements of the search phrase are highlighted.
- FIXED: It is now possible to remove all tags from a project contact card.
- FIXED: If there are automatic tags associated with custom field widgets (i.e., doc gen, report fusion, or file upload), hovering over the (i) icon in the project section again lists the names of those automatic tags. This happens even if the tags were not properly indexed into OpenSearch originally.
- FIXED: In the project Activity page, if you had selected a tag filter pill, clicking it again caused the page to spin; it doesn’t do that any more.
- FIXED: If a note, comment, or document is tagged with an archived tag and that item is moved to another Org, the archived tag is no longer copied over.
- FIXED: The Search Deeper functionality will now find notes and comments by tag even if the name of the tag is not included in the body of the note or comment.
- FIXED: When attaching a document to a note or comment, the Upload icon is now correct; it previously featured an arrow pointing down.
- FIXED: After selecting the Edit icon for a note, clicking inside the note field no longer toggles whether the note was expanded or collapsed.
- FIXED: It is now possible to change a project with unbilled items to a new rate schedule if the current rate schedule has been deleted.
- FIXED: Errors with Document Signed URL when visited directly without parameters.
- FIXED: When 'Multisign off' is enabled, users cannot add or manage signers. The ability to add or manage signers is now only possible when 'Multisign on' is enabled.
- FIXED: Color Template converter ran on all Org documents to show new enhanced colors for previous UI created documents.
- FIXED: A2P new registration guidelines for character count, changing from 38 to 40.
- FIXED: FV upload issue when assigning roles from Lead Docket. It now assigns the proper party upon sending to Filevine.
11/7/22 – 11/11/2022
This week’s release notes include Advanced Permissions updates, tag creation and searchability updates, Outlook Add-In authentication changes, API Documentation, and Bug Fixes!
Advanced Permissions
- An Org Admin is no longer required for the majority of Advanced Permissions. The only permissions that still require a user to be org admin are as follows:
- Clear Feed
- Fax Usage
- Mass Doc Generation
- Mass Update
- Mass Update Permissions
- Task Utilities
Read more about these changes.
Tags
- Project Hub now uses a tag picker, rather than a dropdown list of tags. This change makes Project Hub faster to load. It also makes it easier to find the desired tag, because the user can search for it, rather than scrolling through a list ordered by highest usage.
- When searching, the tag picker will automatically display a “-” when you type a space, ensuring that the “Create Tag” option is accurate.
- If a document is attached to an activity item and the document is not used elsewhere in the project, then when the activity item is moved, the document in the destination project will have the same tags that it did in the original project.
Activity
- When you attach a project document to a note or task, it is again possible to preview or download that document before you create the note.
Outlook Add-In
- Microsoft authorization is now required to access the Outlook Add-in. (This was previously optional.)
- Users can now select the correct Microsoft account when authorizing our add-in's use of their data.
API
The public APIs for the completed initializer work are now published:
- Get a Core Initializer Saved Report
- Create a Core Initializer Saved Report
- Get a Core Initializer Chain
- Create a Core Initializer Chain
- List Core Initializer Custom Project Type
- Create a Core Initializer Custom Project Type
- Get a Core Initializer Custom Project Type
- Create a Core Initializer Custom Project Type Custom Section
- Get a Core Initializer Custom Project Type Custom Section
Bug Fixes
- FIXED: Issue in which setting tags on a comment incorrectly set tags on the parent note instead
- FIXED: The dialog when turning on automatic payment application now accurately describes the behavior being enabled
- FIXED: Issue in which state abbreviations with wider letters (e.g., NM or WA) were cut off in contact cards
- FIXED: Issue causing an error when attaching an email to a FV project by ensuring the Microsoft token was refreshed correctly
- FIXED: Bug related to failed doc uploads
10/31/2022 – 11/4/2022
The ability to merge and delete tags has been added, along with bug fixes!
Tags
- The ability to merge tags and delete multiple tags at once is released in the Tag Manager Advanced tool.
- The Edit Tags option will now only show when Activity Items are selected.
Bug Fixes
- FIXED: The “Attach a project document” list now excludes any documents already attached to the note or comment
- FIXED: Removing a tagged document will now also decrease the count of document tags
- FIXED: Deleting a contact will now also decrease the count of contact tags
- FIXED: Editing time entries in bulk in Timesheet no longer removes the time codes
- FIXED: Issue in which, upon occasion, the billing timer could create a time entry without a date
- FIXED: When using the “Search Deeper” functionality, spaces are no longer replaced with %20
- FIXED: In some situations, the calendar pop-up menu for a date field in a custom section would appear behind the left side menu; it now appears in front of it.
- FIXED: The Feed icon in the menu now remains highlighted even when the Recent button is selected.
- FIXED: Multi-select now updates when the list of tags changes in the Tag Manager.
- FIXED: Documents or templates no longer disappear in the Vinesign library.
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