GoldFynch Documentation
GoldFynch User Manual
Welcome to GoldFynch's User Manual! Are you looking for an affordable eDiscovery service that is easy to set up and use? GoldFynch is your solution!
If you're new, check out GoldFynch 101: it'll walk you through setting up your account, creating a case, and give you a quick overview of GoldFynch's core systems.
If you’re new, check out our free GoldFynch 101 Course: it’ll walk you through setting up your account, creating a case, and give you a quick overview of GoldFynch’s core systems. Once you’re done with the course, we recommend taking the GoldFynch 101 Certification Test - it will certify your proficiency with GoldFynch’s most important features, and you’ll be given a certificate that you can download and easily share with your professional network through sites like LinkedIn.
Looking for something specific? Scroll down to find it, or run a search from the top-right corner of your browser window. You can get a closer look at many tools and systems by following links to their dedicated pages.
Case and account admin
Getting started
Start using GoldFynch by signing up.
Next, either create your own case, or join a case that someone has shared with you. If you plan on having multiple cases, you may want to create an organization first.
What is a case?
A 'case' is a virtual storage container for all your project's files. You can create as many cases as you want and they'll each appear as folders in your GoldFynch dashboard.
Learn how to manage your cases here:
What are organizations?
Organizations allow you to group cases together, helping keep track of the users, permissions, billing methods, clients, and invoicing. This is useful when dealing with the same sets of users or clients across multiple cases.
Learn more about organizations here
File management
Once you have created your account, you will need files in your GoldFynch case to review. Apart from the 'Reviewer' user role, all other users who have access to the case will be able to upload, move, rename and delete files. Learn how to perform these actions, as well as how to navigate between your files, below.
The Files view
The 'Files' view, accessed by clicking on the 'Files' button in the left panel, displays all of your case's files in one place, according to their folder structure. From here, you can:
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Upload files (see the next section)
Uploading and importing files
To access your case files on GoldFynch, they first need to be uploaded to the platform. Learn how to below.
GoldFynch automatically processes uploaded files. Some of the features of the upload system include:
- It identifies many types of files including zipped files, multi-part zips, PDFs, word documents, DXF & DWG, emails (PST, MBOX), etc.
- It allows you to upload files in bulk - just zip your files together and upload the zipped file
- When zipped and compressed files (and even zips within zips!) are extracted, their original folder structure is maintained
- Images and scans of text are converted to machine-readable information, so you can search through your documents
- The connection between emails and their attachments are maintained as 'file families'
- Keywords, dates, email addresses, etc. are identified to be listed in the Document Viewer
- Zero-byte and corrupted files are detected and flagged
- You can enter information about the source and custodians of the files when you upload them
- Once your files are done processing, though we don't recommend doing so, you may want to delete the container file
Importing productions
If you wish to import a production to GoldFynch, take a look at the guidelines for doing so.
Learn how to:
Additional file management features
- Password List
- Issues View
- Viewing processing errors for container files
- Reclaiming case space
- Running de-duplication
Document Review
The Document Viewer (i.e. the 'Docs' view)
The Document Viewer is at the heart of file review on GoldFynch. From here you can:
- View the content of a document
- View an file overview (if one is available)
- View the metadata of a file
- Quickly cycle through files in the folder
- View the productions that the file is a part of
- See other files in the file's family using Context view
- See duplicates of the file that are present in the case
- View dates found in the file's content
- View the file's Ingestion Date, and view and set the file's Primary Date
- View extracted entities like keywords
- Add and remove tags to the file
- Redact information
- Download the originally-uploaded file as well as the processed, PDF version of the file (without having to download the whole production) - allowing you to download and view the produced version of a file
Take an in-depth look at the Document Viewer here.
Learn more about:
Searching for files
Search through your documents for keywords, dates, email tags, file types, and many other parameters. Searches can be carried out from either the Search Bar, which is available at the top of your screen across all of GoldFynch's pages, or the dedicated 'Advanced Search' view that provides a simple drag-and-drop interface for creating more refined searches.
There are two main kinds of searches you can perform:
- Quick Searches - e.g. finding all PDF files
- Advanced Searches - e.g. searching for all PDF files in the folder “Invoices” that were created in 2014 and are flagged as “Important”
Quick Searches and the Suggestions tab
To perform a Quick Search, type a phrase into the Search Bar while the 'suggestions' tab of the search bar is open, then hit the 'return' button. While you are typing, a number of suggested searches will be displayed in a drop-down menu. If you want to one of the suggestions, simply click on that line of text.
Search by:
The process to execute searches for some commonly used fields has been described below:
Search bar history
GoldFynch stores recent searches made in the search bar for easy access. You can retrieve these searches by clicking on the search bar from any screen in your case (as long as there is no text entered into the search bar at the time.) If there is already text entered into the search bar, then click on the "History" tab.
Learn more about retrieving recent searches
Advanced Searches
The Advanced Search system allow for more complex searches to be performed, from which highly-refined results can be obtained. Advanced Searches can be carried out from both the 'Advanced Search' tab of the search bar and the 'Advanced Search' view.
Carrying out Advanced Searches
The Search View
When you perform a search your search results are displayed in the 'Search' view. There is a wealth of information about each result that is displayed, including the tags attached to it, its file type and file path in your case, text snippets, etc. On the right of your screen you'll see a panel that lets you sort your results, and filter your results further. The filters include document type, tags, Primary and Ingestion Dates, and Custodians and Sources.
Learn more about the 'Search' view
Slop searches
It is sometimes useful to have a degree of flexibility while performing searches; you might not always require a document to match your search query exactly, and only getting 1:1 results can sometimes slow you down. GoldFynch's 'slop' feature helps with this.
Slop works similarly to the 'W/N' operator used in the dtSearch of Relativity, and looks for words or phrases of words that are in a certain proximity of each other, ignoring up to a certain number of words in between the words in the search query.
Find out more about slop in searches
Word stemming
GoldFynch's search database has English word stemming enabled by default; it normalizes the tense and plurality of words before searching so that it can cast a wider net and return potentially relevant results.
So searching for "terminate," "terminating," and "terminated" are considered equivalent.
Stop words
GoldFynch also automatically removes stop words like “the,” “an,” “they,” etc. Such words are generally considered irrelevant for searching purposes because of how frequently they appear in the English language, and since the majority of stop words don't have much contextual meaning. This increases indexing and searching speed, and improves search ranking by focusing on key words/terms.
Tags and tag management
Tags are virtual 'sticky notes' that you can attach to documents in GoldFynch to help you easily categorize and find files. They can be easily created, added and removed, and do not affect the files themselves, or the way GoldFynch uses the files. This is very helpful during the document review and production processes.
Adding, removing, and reviewing tags
Tags are used for numerous purposes in GoldFynch, including labeling files and selecting documents to be processed into productions. Using them can save a lot of time, so it is helpful to familiarize yourself with how they work.
Learn more about attaching, removing and reviewing tags
NOTE:
- Tags can be created, edited, and deleted by accounts with the 'User' permission level and higher. Reviewer accounts can add and remove tags from files
- On some pages like the 'Files' view, tag names are abbreviated next to the names of the files they are attached to. You can expand the tag names by hovering the mouse over the abbreviated box. There is also a setting in the top-right corner (gear icon) that allows you to toggle abbreviated tags on and off
Creating and Maintaining Tags
When you create a new GoldFynch case some default tags such as Privileged, Non-Responsive, Irrelevant, Important, and Confidential are set up. All other tags that you wish to create can be done through the Tag View Screen. Maintenance of tags and tag preferences can also be done from the Tag View screen.
Learn how to create and maintain tags
Quick Tags
GoldFynch cases also start with a set of automatically-generated tags known as 'quick tags' that are highlighted for frequent use (e.g. the 'confidential' tag.) They are always visible and accessible on screens that let you add tags, and you can tell them by their grey color.
You can also easily convert tags to quick tags and vice versa to make sure you have relevant ones accessible on your interface (e.g. you can create an "ACP" or “Attorney-Client Privilege” tag and change it to a quick tag.)
Learn how to create and assign quick tags
Privilege Tags
GoldFynch gives you the ability to set tags as privileged. Setting tags as privileged gives you the flexibility to retrieve and perform various actions such as searches, reports, etc., on these files in bulk. The privilege tag also helps you to invert files in bulk from your productions and can be used to generate privilege logs.
Find out more about creating privilege tags
Hidden Tags
GoldFynch lets you create hidden tags. They help reduce the clutter around files with multiple tags without impacting functionality. To be specific, the places where hidden tags don't appear are the files view, docs view, search view, and production load files. However, they can be used to perform searches, create reports, review sets, productions, etc.
System Tags
There are a number of special 'system' tags that GoldFynch adds to files in various situations, usually while files are being processed after you upload them.
Tagging file families
When tagging files in GoldFynch you can choose to either tag an individual file, or tag the file along with its entire family. A file 'family' is a group of associated files, like how an email (a 'parent' file) would be associated with its attachments--its 'children'. So if you tag an email and its family as 'confidential,' its attachments would get tagged as well. GoldFynch also lets you set each tag's default behavior for tagging file families.
TIP: You can easily tell whether a tag will always assign itself to the rest of a file's family: they appear as hollowed-out tag boxes with colored text. Tags that always raise prompts (the default tag behavior) and 'tag just the item' tags are shown as filled-out boxes with white text.
Learn how to tag files of families, and set the default family tagging behavior of tags
Tag application notes
When you tag a file (or files) GoldFynch gives you the option of attaching 'notes' to the tag(s). This allows you to provide context for why you attached that tag to a file, but can also be used to convey any other information you feel is relevant.
When a file's tag has a note attached to it, it has an icon next to the tag's name. If you hover the mouse cursor over such a tag, the note's contents will be displayed.
Learn more about tag application notes
Review Macros
GoldFynch lets you setup 'macros' to help you and your collaborators quickly assign and unassign tags to a document as you view them in the Document Viewer.
Click here to learn more about creating review macros and using them
Tags in productions
Tags are integral to the production feature of GoldFynch. When you are creating a production, you select tags, and all files assigned to these tags are shortlisted to be included in the production. Tags can also be used to exclude files from productions using the 'invert' function.
Learn more about the production process here, how tags are used in it, and how 'inverted' tags work
Reports and Document Kits
GoldFynch lets you export various file lists from your case in the form of reports and also documents and their produced versions in the form of Document kits
Reports
GoldFynch lets you export various types of file lists from your case in a number of different formats. The types of list you can generate are of:
- All files in your case
- All files with a particular tag
- Files that are the results of a saved Advanced Search
And the formats you can export them in are:
- Microsoft Excel Open XML Format Spreadsheet (.xlsx)
- Microsoft Excel Binary Workbook (.xlsb)
- Microsoft Excel 97-2003 Spreadsheet (.xls)
- OpenOffice/StarOffice Spreadsheet (.ods)
- HTML (.html)
- Rich Text Format (.rtf)
Learn how to generate, download, view and delete reports here
Learn how to generate privilege logs here
Document Kits
The Document kit function in allows you to download the produced version of the files in your case based on different criteria such as:
- Bates number ranges
- Tags
- Saved searches
- All files in your case
The system also lets you choose which production version you would like to include
Learn more about Document kits and how to generate them here
Productions
Production is the final step of eDiscovery. It's when you format your documents uniformly to present to opposing counsel. GoldFynch handles the commonly accepted production formats, and its Production Wizard will walk you through the process.
Click here to learn how to make productions with GoldFynch.
Alternatively, make use of GoldFynch's custom production help add-on service if you have custom production requirements.
Some of the features you will come across in the production process are:
Types of production
GoldFynch lets you produce your files in a number of formats:
Production formats without load files
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Natives only: Produces files with the same content and formatting they had when uploaded. So, Word documents will be Word Documents, emails will be emails, etc. Also useful when you need to produce unsupported files
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PDF only: All the files are produced as PDFs, the available options are -
- One PDF per page: Each page in a file will be produced as an individual PDF document
- One PDF per document: Each document (email, Word, Excel, etc.) will be produced as a PDF document
- One PDF Per family: All documents marked for production that belong to the same file family will be produced together in a single PDF file
- Single, bulk PDF: All documents will be produced into a single PDF file
Note that:
- Produced documents are renamed to match their Bates number assignment
- Documents that cannot be processed in the selected format are produced as native files (also renamed with their Bates numbers)
- Produced documents are placed in a flat directory structure
Production formats with load files
GoldFynch also allows for Concordance/Relativity-style load file formats:
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Load file formats with minimal or user-specified natives
- TIFF G4: Documents producible as TIFF files are produced as single-page black & white TIFF images
- JPEG: Documents producible as JPEG files are produced as single-page color images
- PDF Documents: Each document is converted into a PDF file
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Load file formats with natives
- No Images: Documents will be added as they were when they were uploaded (native files)
- TIFF G4: Documents are produced as both TIFF and native files
- JPEG: Documents are produced as both JPEG and native files
- PDF Documents: Each document will be produced in both PDF and native formats
Note that:
- Produced native files are placed in the "NATIVES" directory
- Text that is extracted from supported files is found in the "TEXTS" directory
- Produced TIFF files (which are single-page and black & white images) are placed under the "IMAGES" directory
- Produced JPEG files (which are single-page color images) are placed under the "IMAGES" directory
- When only PDFs are produced as part of the load file formats without natives option the PDF files are placed in the "NATIVES" directory
- When PDFs and natives are produced as part of the load file with natives option the PDF files will be placed under the "IMAGES" directory and the native files under the "NATIVES" directory
- Load files are placed in the "DATA" directory
The load file metadata parameters are set using Control Parameter profiles. You can either use a preset profile, or customize the parameters used.
Productions with their original file names
GoldFynch lets you to create productions in which files have their original file names.
Note: Only non-load file productions with either the "Native files" or "Document-based PDFs" formats can be used for this.
Learn how to create and download productions containing files with their original file names.
Downloading productions
You can easily download productions you create.
Downloading the production load file
GoldFynch gives you the ability to download just the production load file without having to download the entire production. Learn how to here.
Sharing productions
Learn how to share your productions directly through GoldFynch, via email, or through a sharing link.
Re-use production settings
Create a new production based on a similar older production by using GoldFynch's re-use production settings feature. Click here to learn more about this feature
Deleting productions
Learn how to delete your productions.
Production parameter summaries
Once you have submitted a production, GoldFynch gives you the ability to view the parameters used in its generation. Find out how to view production parameter summaries here.
Production Logs
GoldFynch generates logs for each of your productions. Find out more about them here.
Production Exceptions
Any exceptions that are encountered while processing a production can be viewed using the Production exceptions screen. Click to learn more about viewing them
Custom control parameter profiles
If you want to customize the fields of the load files you use in your productions, learn about custom parameter profiles here.
Add-on Services
GoldFynch offers a number of additional services outside of the regular functioning of the platform. Many of these, like directly sourcing information from your clients (email imports, FTP uploads, etc.,) are provided by GoldFynch itself. Others are facilitated by GoldFynch and are carried out by world-class experts; these include services like outsourced managed document reviews.
Click here to learn more about the various add-on services. Some of these services are provided by GoldFynch itself, while the remaining are through experts in the industry.
Support
General support
Known issues
Size limitations on uploading files zipped with OSX
Browser-based issues when uploading files with long path names on Windows