The ability to assign tasks and create events for a wide range of activities can go a long way to managing your workflow in Merus, but there are times that, without automation, the same task would need to be entered repeatedly by hand. The workflow automation tool allows you to set up automatically generated tasks and events tied to activity tags. Each time a tag is used in a given case, the workflow automation tool can spawn a series of items tied to that case, and assigned to the appropriate staff.

One way to implement an automated workflow in Merus is to create a series of tasks and events that are automatically generated every time a new case file is opened. Every case which gets created in Merus is assigned an activity indicating when the case file was opened, and that activity is tagged Case Created. Actions can be set in your firm's workflow settings to assign a task to have the attorney handling the case to prepare for an upcoming deposition, or to prompt a specific staff member to schedule a medical appointment.

To keep your firm functional and punctual, MerusCase keeps track of just about every activity with an exact timestamp. You can see exactly when messages were sent and received, when activities were created, when events are scheduled, and when billable time was recorded. 

Accurate timestamps are essential for everyday tasks. If, for example, your system clock is an hour behind and you have a depo scheduled in the MerusCase calendar for 10:30, you might miss it when your event reminder pops up an hour late. Clocks that are off by many hours or even days can cause trouble when making invoices and ledger items, where wrong invoice dates and billing periods could cost the firm hundreds or even thousands of dollars if rejected for inaccuracy. 

MerusCase's servers update their time automatically from dedicated time servers linked to atomic clocks and GPS satellites. Modern operating systems (Windows, Mac OSX, most distributions of Linux) periodically update their clocks from the same servers, so it's pretty rare for our users to see this error message. 

Some computers, however, may have time syncing turned off, or have an internet connectivity problem which prevents the computer from reaching these time servers. Computers have their own internal clocks, but when Daylight Savings Time rolls around, these instantly become an hour early or an hour late.