Within the next few days, users can expect a flurry of new features and capabilities in MerusCase with our latest release, Thyone. Where does the name Thyone come from? It's one of 67 confirmed moons orbiting Jupiter. It's also the genus for a type of marine animal called the "sea cucumber," and the name of a mortal woman in Greek mythology, who bore a child with Zeus named Dionysus that became god of the grape harvest.
A few exciting developments in this latest release include new keyboard shortcuts, double-column address displays for templates and enhancements to our email/messaging and invoice capabilities. Please scroll down for more details.
Activities
- Including the file name of documents in the activity's description
- If the name and activity description are identical, the file's name is not displayed
- New Rename control for renaming files in the activity's details
- Forwarding a document from the Activities list will no longer create a new activity entry for that document. An activity entry for the message is still created, however.
Browse Firm PDFs
- Can now set the priority of the message sent when choosing to Notify Attorney Responsible
- Can now add and remove any number of Activity Tags from a document
- Can now edit the document's Description after it has been attached to a case
- Editing the Description creates a new activity in the case's Activity feed
- Better filtering for unattached documents
Calendar
- Improved filtering when a case name contains accented characters
- QuickLinks for filtering by Firm Branch Office are now available
Cases
- Citation Number for Malpractice cases is now saved and retrieved properly
- Venue selector no longer disappears for users with non-California jurisdictions set
Companies
- The list of people types is now ordered alphabetically
Contacts
- Staff Responsible added to the Cases table
- Ability to filter on the newly added Staff Responsible
Events
- Events' Where data is now shown in the Events table
- Filtering on Where data is now possible
- Filtering on Firm Office is now possible
- OR filters on Assignees now work properly
Exporting
- Timeslips, BCS, and Tabs3 exporting improved for moderately-sized datasets (400 - 1000+ entries)
- Better behavior for all formats when exporting large datasets (8000+ items)
- Expense Code E101 amounts now placed in the Photocopy column of Timeslips exports rather than the Misc column
Firm Branch Offices
- Changing the Default Venue after creating the Firm Branch Office is now possible
Forms
- Improved behavior when working with forms that use descriptions no longer used by the court
Invoices
- Better behavior of the Save button so extra clicks do not cause unnecessary saves
- Attorney (Atty) column on PDF Invoices relabeled Billed By (By) to reflect that not only attorneys' entries appear on invoices
- User column in summary box on PDF Invoices relabeled Billed By to reflect the change to the column in invoice line items
Ledgers
- Improved sorting and filtering by the Amount column
Messages
- Improved handling of recipients when performing a Reply to All
- Now able to attach documents from a case's Activities without first downloading them
- Attaching a document from a case's Activities list will not create a new activity entry for that document. An activity entry for the message is still created, however.
- Sender name is included in default Description text when linking a message to a case
- From: . Subject:
- Removed automatic double-dash (--) from signature blocks; it can be added manually if needed
- Print Full Body now includes a list of attachments
- Improved behavior when linking messages to cases when using the Preview Pane (aka, widescreen mode)
Parties
- Insurance fields now have placeholder text
- When adding parties, searching now also checks a contact's Uniform Assigned Name (UAN), if present, to determine a match
Preferences
- User preferences
- Start of Week is now settable
- Sunday or Monday can be chosen for the start of the week
- Setting affects both the Event Calendar and the date picker calendars that are shown when choosing a date
- The default is Sunday
- Audible notifications for messages can now be turned off; the default is ON
- Age of items shown in My Billable Time is no longer hard-capped at 90 days, and can be set to one of the following:
- Since the 1st of the Year
- 30 Days
- 90 Days (default)
- 180 Days
- Firm preferences
- Limit the length of Case Ledger Descriptions to a desired number of characters
Receivables
- Now able to unlink a receivable from an invoice without deleting the entire receivable
- Better behavior of the Save button so that extra clicks do not cause unnecessary saves
Reports
- Billable Time: Full Detail now shows the Invoice Reference Number as indicated in its description
- Stale Cases now allows selection of users for Attorney Responsible filtering
- Improved Cases List report
Tasks
- Case links in the Browse Tasks table now give a proper right-click menu
Templates
- Merge fields for the new Personal Injury case types are now available
- Updated Merge Field Reference Guide now available (version 4.1)
- Address Block merge fields now have a two-column option
- MULTIPARTY:addressblock_two_column
- MULTIPARTY:addressblock_with_phone_two_column
- MULTIPARTY:addressblock_with_email_two_column
- MULTIPARTY:addressblock_with_phone_and_email_two_column
Workflows
- Tasks created by subsequent workflows are no longer created as sub-tasks of the task created by the first workflow that gets triggered.
- Example:
- Workflow 1: create a task: My Task when an activity of type Email Received is created
- Workflow 2: create a task: Your Task when an activity of type Email Received is created
- These workflows will now create two separate tasks, rather than a task (My Task) with a sub-task (Your Task)
Miscellaneous
- Count of injuries in the Left Panel Navigation no longer disappears
- Improved behavior when using a right-click to open a new tab when viewing a case
- Improved display of text with accented characters
- Timer now shown in global Time Tracker dialog
- Downloaded documents now respect any renaming done in Message Compose, Activities, or Browse Firm PDFs.
- When filtering, using double-quotes around the filter term will force an exact match, i.e. "AC" will match AC, but not ACE or RAC
- Keyboard Shortcuts
- Esc - triggers a box's Cancel button
- Ctrl-Enter - triggers a box's Save button
- Ctrl-Shift-Enter - triggers the Save and Add Another (green plus) button when adding Ledger items
- Ctrl-\ - opens the global time tracker window
- '\' is the key above the Return/Enter key
Our engineers also toiled in the trenches of "coding land" to optimize other technical aspects of the software to make for a faster, better experience when using MerusCase.
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