Time Matters Tips & Tricks

It happen on a client. Every time they opened Internet Explorer or Outlook, they would get a Time Matters error and it would attempt to run a setup file.  It was looking for a file called infoent.msi. No matter what you did, click Cancel, OK, the problem would keep recycling.  A reboot didn’t solve the problem.  Nothing would make the darn thing go away.  I thought this was isolated to my client, until I started discussing it with other CIC’s.  Marc Wexler had seen it and had a solution.  The best solution came from Wells Anderson.  Read on for the solution.

Our new Legal Technology portal is live.  To try it out, please bookmark http://legaltechnology.bashasys.net/.  If you have a “RSS feed” or a “twitter” that relates to “Case Management Software”, “Document Assembly Software” that you want included, please go to the website and suggest a link.  There is a wealth of information coming from Vendors in these areas.  Rather than “surfing”, use our website to do your research or to keep up on developments.  You will find my “Time Matters Tips” blog there.  At the moment, there is no feed from LexisNexis on Time Matters, PCLaw or Billing Matters, but that should change with time.

Time Matters has a very advanced and sophisticated import system.  There are many reasons one would wish to import data into Time Matters.  The most common is for new users of Time Matters who are converting from other systems.  If they are using Outlook, you can use “synchronization”.  For other practice management system or contact management systems there are pre-set import routines.  But there are other circumstances where you will need to use the Custom Import.  It is for those circumstances that I offer a few tips or best practices.

Circumstances where Custom Import is Required

(1) Your data source is Outlook, but you have used custom fields.
(2) Your have worked with Seibel CRM On Demand, and only have CSV (Comma Separated Value) Files.
(3) The built-in import doesn’t support the record type you want to bring in, such as “Notes”
(4) You are doing a “mass” export and cleanup and reimport
(5) You are enabling User Defined Records from a custom database or spreadsheet.

We are going to try an experiment.  We are going to use Wiki technology - MediaWiki (the same used by Wikipedia) to create an open-source manual for Time Matters.  We will start out the core of it with our current knowledge of Time Matters.  We will require contributors to “register” in order to make contributions and revisions to the manual.  The hope is that this Wiki will fill the void between what is in the “help text” and what constitute “best practices”. 

Have you ever wished to unlock the power of Time Matters so that any item of data you enter on a case can be retrieved in Three-Clicks of a Mouse.  For you, we have developed OMS - The Basha Systems Office Management System for Time Matters.  It takes just a few minutes to install, and will save you at least 30 minutes a day hunting for information that you have already entered.  It will make Time Matters eminently more user friendly.  Here is the basics.  Step 1: Choose your record, whether it be a matter, contact, event, todo, or UDR.  Step 2: Choose your Powerview.  There are over 80 customized Power Views in the package. Step 3: Click on PRINT or on EXPAND ALL.  It’s that easy.

The Time Matters indexer may get stuck or corrupted.  This article steps you through solution to that problem.

The Time Matters indexer, on occasion can get corrupted.  This abstract explains how to purge and restart the indexer.  The text is courtesy of Matt Stone.

Basha Systems has recently launched an Estate Planning Feature Package for Time Matters. With the launch of EPMS, Estate Planning Management System for Time Matter (aka LexisNexis Front Office powered by Time Matters), we will be using this space as a support forum. Many of the techniques and approaches used for EPMS apply generally to Time Matters. So add this to your newsreader in Time Matters and you will be able to keep abreast on new developments.

When you open your Inbox it may appear to take up to several minutes to load. Time Matters will seem like it is not responding.  Time Matters inbox is “personal” to each user. The inbox contains both Internet Email and Time Matters emails, as well as attachments. The mailbox can quick get overloaded, even when you appear to have been keeping the list of items in your inbox to a manageable roar. In fact, your mailbox is most likely overloaded. There could be hundreds of emails in the Deleted Items folder. There could be emails in subfolders. All take time to load. 

Auto entry forms are a hybrid between chains and notes. They allow you to structure your tasks and events, much like a chain. And they also allow you to take notes on your tasks. However, if you convert an outline to an Auto entry form, the tasks associated with the underlying record (not the new record) are link to the outline topics.  It is simple to save an outline as an auto entry form. However, before you do that you should make a copy of the form and then remove the links to any associated records.