New Features - Spring 2023
You've submitted requests for new features and we've listened. The following features have been added in the past few months. Click the various hyperlinks to see more details:
• Restricted access - Restricted Access is a feature in AppColl that limits the matters that can be viewed by a user. This feature has been significantly upgraded to allow complete customization of the set of matters a user can access. You can now effectively create client "firewalls".
• Form field explorer + template preview - Form fields are used to insert information from your AppColl account into emails or documents. The purpose of this explorer is to list all available form fields, allow previewing of their values, and easy insertion of the correct field name into email templates. You can also preview exactly how an email will look with form fields populated.
• Form letters in TXT and XML formats - We've expanded to file types that can used for form letters to include TXT and XML files in addition to the current RTF and DOCX formats.
• Matter Continuity Chains in text format - When you are in the matter details page, you can see the Continuity Chain, which illustrates how an Application Data Sheet's priority section will be populated. This feature now allows the chain to be shown in text format, which can be easily cut and pasted into documents.
• Invoice number generation - The way invoice numbers are generated and stored was completely reworked to stop the numbers changing when invoices are modified. Also, the time taken to generate an invoice was greatly shortened.
• Added searchable discussion text as a column in module tables - AppColl users now have the ability to add discussion comments to most records in AppColl. You may add the discussions column to your summary view table and filter on those discussions.
• Inventions home page - AppColl's Invention Manager (IM) product has an Inventions Home page which provides a dashboard for viewing a summary of your inventions information. This page is accessed by clicking on the Inventions module button or selecting Inventions Home from the menu.
• PTO Form Changes - Added PTO-1390, SB/460, PTO/AIA/47, PTOL-85 Part B and updated AIA/22, SB/20GLBL, PTO/SB/64, PTO-2326.
• Trademark rule update - Starting December 3, 2022, trademark applicants now have three months (with an optional three-month extension), instead of the previous six months, to respond to office actions subject to the new deadline. AppColl updated all accounts with these changes on December 02, 2022.
• Sync updates – column configuration mapping & disabling (PM Plus) - AppColl supports automatic syncing of data between accounts. We updated this feature to allow more customization of how the syncing occurs, including mapping of field names between source and destination and blocking particular fields at the destination.
• Reassign open matter tasks automatically - Occasionally the attorney or paralegal assigned to work on a particular matter changes. AppColl has a command in the Matters module to quickly change the owner of all open tasks for a matter to the newly assigned people.
• Report usage statistics - For AppColl PM Plus users, the Reports module can show when and how often a report is being viewed. You may find this useful to determine if a report can be deleted due to lack of use to reduce clutter.