An enterprise work management deployment will often contain hundreds of different work types. These typically vary from large work items, such as matters or cases, to smaller items, such as contract approvals or tasks.

Each work type may have its own set of unique attributes, such as the captured data that supports it, stages or phases it goes through, types of people involved, and associated workflows. If not managed correctly, there can be a huge number of configuration settings to implement and test.

ShareDo differs from the majority, if not all, work management systems because it allows you to define base work types and specialise them for specific processing requirements. We term these as work type trees. The net result is that the enterprise deployment is significantly more straightforward to configure, test and update.

When planning your implementation, you have the choice of the following:

• Extending existing work types - ShareDo supplies many pre-configured work types for common legal, claims, and incident management scenarios. These pre-configured work types can be modified as necessary to represent how the firm wishes to work. Having these pre-configured ones available dramatically reduces the initial delivery timetable and cost.
• Create new work types – alternatively, you can create entirely new work types to supplement those supplied out-of-the-box.

To understand more about creating work types, please see the article Work Types‍. 

Introductory video on modelling work types.

View the Platform Deep Dive - ShareDoShow playlist.

The Work Type Container

Fundamentally, users work with electronic “containers” or files for the types of work managed by ShareDo. For example, there is a ShareDo container for each managed matter.

The major elements of each matter (or indeed any other work type container) include:

Portal And Blade Definitions

When users view a work item, they will either open the blade view or the portal view of the item in question. The blade view is designed to facilitate quick interaction with the work item, and the portal view’s purpose is to support more knowledge-centric processes.

These views are managed through the blade and portal editors in the modeller.

A portal definition is comprised of the following elements:

• The navigation and pages that it comprises.
• The layout of the pages.
• The configured widgets for each of these pages – ShareDo has over 100 widgets for you to choose from when designing your portals.

See Guide to modeling ShareDo Portals‍.

Phase Plan

Each work type is managed according to a phase plan. This represents the high-level journey the matter will take from start to finish. Commonly seen phases include File Opening, Allocation, Drafting, Negotiation, Investigation, Settlement, Closing and more.

A matter will always be in one of its phases at any point in time. This is immediately viewable by the user when accessing the matter and also forms a common reporting point both within the firm and to clients. For example, how many matters are in which phase, how long have they been there, what is the average duration of each phase, etc.

See Understanding Phase Plans‍.

Work Item Lists

All tasks and activities performed on a matter will appear in its ShareDo container. This includes both completed tasks and those planned for the future. As we will see later, tasks/activities planned for the future can be created manually by the user (e.g. they add a task to call the client in a week’s time) or electronically by ShareDo's automation engine.

 Keeping all of the tasks within ShareDo matters provides two major benefits:

1. Anyone accessing the matter can immediately acquaint themselves with outstanding/forthcoming activities even if they have never seen the file before.
2. The tasks can be displayed in managers', team leaders', and even clients' workbenches, providing extrapolated overviews of work levels matched to the viewer's role—these workbenches are described in more detail in a later part of this overview.

See Understanding list views‍.

External Actions (Integrations)

ShareDo is not just a to-do list/task manager that tells people what they need to do so they can use other applications to then do those tasks (and then subsequently mark them as done in their ShareDo task list). 

ShareDo tells them what needs to be done and allows them to do it from within ShareDo itself.

For example, if a task is ‘prepare draft contract’, the user will click on the task, enter some relevant details and press a ‘prepare’ button, and the document will be prepared. If the task is ‘call client’, then they can record the attendance note of the conversation directly against the task (to become part of the matter chronology)—indeed, subject to having an appropriate telephone system ShareDo can automatically dial the appropriate number.

So that you lose none of your investment in existing software, ShareDo can integrate with any piece of software or external service with an accessible API. This is made possible by ShareDo being constructed on an ‘API first’ basis. Put simply, when new functionality is developed for ShareDo, the code is written on the assumption that the necessary data will be captured from another piece of software or service, and any output is also provided to a software application and/or service. Only after the function has been written in that way, do our software engineers write a ShareDo ‘human’ interface for those instances where the input/output is not to/from other software.

So taking our example of preparing a document, if you already have investments in document assembly products (ContractExpress and HotDocs being popular examples) that you wish to retain, these can be seamlessly integrated into ShareDo. The user still presses the ‘prepare document’ button in ShareDo, and ShareDo then initiates the preparation within the document assembly software, before returning the finished document to the user. That whole process is seamless to the user who has never left the ShareDo operating interface.

We have already integrated ShareDo with numerous 3^rd party products, including PMS, DMS, document assembly, eSignature, CRM, digital dictation, telephony and others.

In short, ShareDo task lists become the starting point for both reviewing what needs to be done, and doing that, either just using native ShareDo functions or behind the scenes calling on the power of other best-of-breed applications.

See Application Integration‍.

Key Dates

When configuring work types, you can specify the key-date types associated with those work types. Whenever a matter is accessed ShareDo will prominently display all key dates ensuring they are given appropriate focus.

While key dates are typically captured within the context of a matter or proceedings, they can also be viewed from a user’s or their team’s calendar.

Subject to a user granting access to their calendar, these dates can then be synchronised to Outlook calendars.

In addition, key dates can have reminders configured against them. These reminders will then alert users of upcoming or missed key dates.

See Understanding Key Dates‍.

Participants

When you configure work types, you will also describe the types of participants involved. These may be people within your organisation, the client, or other 3^rd parties. Participants can also be ‘objects’, for example, vehicles in the case of motor-related work types.

When accessing a ShareDo matter, it displays all the participants and their role(s) on the matter, making it really simple for the user to determine who the key parties are. ShareDo can also control activities based on participant roles such that, for example, a document based on a defendant template could never be addressed to the claimant.

It should also be noted that ShareDo’s participant model supports the concepts of teams and organisations. ShareDo can handle allocating work to your teams and even teams belonging to your 3rd parties. Organisations are usually referenced as the places that people/teams belong to (e.g. the client is Acme PLC, the client instructor is J. Smith, who is an employee of Acme).

ShareDo holds all of this participant data within its Operational Data Store, or ODS. To ensure you are only ever dealing with a ‘single version of the truth’, ShareDo's ODS can be synchronised with one or more other data sources, most typically PMS, CRM and/or HR systems. Alternatively, ShareDo provides facilities to merge duplicate records.

See Create a Participant Role.

Scorecards

ShareDo scorecards are an extremely powerful part of the platform. In very simple terms a scorecard is a way of measuring a matter characteristic based on any number of (weighted) input variables.

As an example: Consider these two litigious cases from a claimant perspective:

• Case 1: The defendant does not deny liability, there are witnesses (albeit not overly persuasive/credible) and good documentary evidence.
• Case 2: The defendant denies liability but there are credible witnesses and no supporting documentary evidence.

An experienced lawyer reviewing these files would make an assessment on the likelihood of winning by combining the facts—but would almost certainly give higher weighting to the availability of credible witnesses and/or supporting documentary evidence than the defendants’ admission of liability.

If we wanted to estimate and display ‘Success Likelihood’ as an attribute of a ShareDo matter we would create a scorecard for this in the following way:

1. We define a list of questions that we consider as material to assessing the outcome (e.g. as above: witness availability, witness credibility, documentation, etc.)
2. To each of these questions, we would apply a relative weighting number.
3. We would establish what the best, worst, and average scores are based on modelling a number of different combinations of answers. As a simple example, we might find that a score of 100 equates to a great chance of success, 1 is an almost certain loss, and 50 could go either way.

Once the scorecard has been configured, as the matter’s data is captured (or more specifically, as the data that makes up the scorecard criteria is captured), so the scorecard will start to calculate a score.

If and when data changes during the lifetime of a matter, the scorecard’s score might change. A full chronology and audit of any changes to the scorecard is maintained by ShareDo so that users can see why and when scores changed.

There are a number of uses for the output of scorecards:

1. As a visual indicator when someone opens the matter within ShareDo.
2. As a trigger for automation. You could, for example, set automation rules that escalate matters to senior staff when scores exceed (or fall below) certain values.
3. As an analytics tool. At what point, and why, do scorecard values change? Can we use this knowledge to our advantage going forward?

Anything that can be assessed based on a number of weighted attributes can be represented by a scorecard—success likelihood, risk profile, importance to you, etc. It is an extremely powerful part of the ShareDo platform.

See Scorecards‍.

Documents And Emails

Every matter will generate a substantial number of documents and emails, both sent and received. These will all be tracked by ShareDo and directly accessible from within the ShareDo electronic file.

ShareDo has a host of its own specific features for creating and dealing with documents and emails. 

These are expanded upon in articles Document Management, Email Management and Document Production and Assembly.

Matter Chronology

The ‘front page’, or dashboard, of a ShareDo matter will provide the user with an immediate overview of its key facts and status. The user can see the timeline of the matter’s progression using the matter chronology. 

The chronology is a visual timeline-based view of every action on the matter. From here the user can see the entire history including telephone calls, meetings, documents, emails, tasks, etc.

Extensive filters are available to the extent that the user could request to see, say, just documents issued in the month of July where Acme PLC was one of the addresses.

Users can click on any item displayed in the chronology to reveal its full details.

The chronology presents an electronic equivalent of a traditional paper-based matter file with the advantage that it can be quickly and easily sorted and reviewed. It is also available anytime and any place via any computer or tablet with a browser. The need to physically transport paper files for remote working has become a thing of the past with ShareDo.

Within the ShareDo modeller chronology feature you will see an expanded set of options for Point of Interest (POI) configuration enabling you to :

• Configure all chronology POI.
• Disable handlers.
• Create private chronology POI so that some POI can be hidden from external parties (if the chronology widget is present on their portals).
• Derive your own POI handlers enabling you to express business audit entries in your own language.

See Chronology.

Linking Cases Together

ShareDo enables you to create a network of work with cases and other work items being linked together. These links can either be automatically maintained or added by users.

Collaboration Features

You will rarely work in isolation of a particular piece of work within ShareDo, and therefore it is essential that you can collaborate digitally, effectively. Within the work type container, you can configure a number of collaboration features to assist you in this, including comments, wikis, and the ability to share with external applications. 

For more details, see Work Collaboration‍.

Financial Details

ShareDo has its own financial framework that supports, inter alia, the recording of time, the handling and recording of payment requests, the recording and handling of offers, budgets, fees, settlements etc. In short, any financial aspect that needs to be recorded against a matter is likely a standard capability of ShareDo.

Furthermore, via appropriate APIs, ShareDo can integrate with your PMS so that financial data is only ever recorded once in a primary system and then shared with the appropriate other system. As part of the implementation, we will define which system(s) act as primary or secondary for each piece of financial data in order to avoid any duplicate data entry.

Note that ShareDo can overlay financial data from the PMS within its own screens. Accordingly, if users also require things like billing history, AR, and other PMS-held financial metrics to be available within their ShareDo files, this can be facilitated.

A full description of the financial functionality provided is in the section Financial Management.

ShareDo makes it simple for users to understand and work with matters.

Work Item Data Capture

Configuring Data Capture

Any work item in ShareDo can be extended with additional data capture.

The components of work item data capture include:

• Pages and Blades: ShareDo supports 2 different styles of data capture. Portals and their associated pages represent a 'traditional' web page view of application information, whereas blades provide a view optimized for quick actions or data previewing. Specifying the pages for a Matter work type: 
  
• Aspects and Widgets:  Aspects and widgets are configurable display elements that leverage existing work item functionality to meet your display concerns. Examples of aspects include comments, reports, chronology, forms etc.
• Data Forms: Forms are typically used to display a set of controls or fields related to a single entity. Forms can be reused across multiple portal views enabling different displays for different personas.
• Controls: Examples of controls include text boxes, labels, drop-down lists and buttons.
• Rules: forms, aspects, optionsets, and controls can have business rules associated with them to enable their display to be controlled for different business circumstances.
• Calculated Fields: The canonical data model can be extended with calculated fields which are then available for use in forms, rules or document assembly.

See Guide to modeling ShareDo Portals‍.

Tracking Data Quality

Maintaining overall data quality has historically been a challenging problem to solve. Even more so in a large-scale B2B environment where different clients have differing data capture needs. Case handlers are often motivated to complete their work rather than complete the data capture, and the required data at any given moment often resides in many different places. With this backdrop, data quality has often suffered, leading to inaccurate client and internal reporting and increasingly a reduced ability to leverage this information for machine learning and other A.I. techniques.

To address these challenges, ShareDo has a data quality framework within which you:

• Define a set of data quality measures for your work items.
• Track data entry against these rules and enable visualisation and reporting of your data quality at both a work item and rollup levels. 
   
  Visualising data completeness for a case
• Configure the enforcement of these data quality rules at key milestones, enabling your users to capture data only at critical junctions.

See Data Quality Rules and Guards‍.

Phase Model

So far, in our description of work items, we have used the example of a case or a matter. This concept extends to all types of work, including tasks, contracts, document preparation, and even finance items.

All work items have the concept of a phase model. These phase models may be simple. For example, we could mark a task as having been done.

However, many tasks will not necessarily be completed as a single operation. For example, our document preparation task might be accomplished in the following way:

• document is drafted,
• draft is internally reviewed and approved,
• draft is sent to client/3^rd party for approval,
• client approval is received,
• engrossed copy is prepared,
• engrossed copy is sent to client for (e.g.) DocuSign,
• signed copy is returned,
• document is filed.

As you will see each of these is a mini-task in its own right. Furthermore, each of these mini-tasks could be dealt with by different people. For example, the client will be responsible for the signature and return of the engrossed document; we may have a paralegal do the initial drafting and have an associate review that draft, and so on.

ShareDo allows any task to be subdivided into as many parts as are required. It is these mini-tasks that people complete, and these are referred to within ShareDo as work items. A work item is owned by a parent task, and you can always view the progress of a parent task, but it is work items that end up in matters’ and users’ workbenches for actioning.

There are two major benefits to the breakdown of tasks into work items:

1. It will allow you to use your resources in the most optimal way, matching skill levels and resources to each component part of a bigger task; and
2. It will provide management (and clients where such transparency is appropriate) with a much clearer picture of the exact status of work. Instead of simply seeing that a prepare document task is incomplete, they can see exactly what stage it is at and who is responsible for the currently due work item.

See Understanding Phase Plans‍.

Work Participants

In ShareDo, a participant is any person, user, team or organisation that plays a role in a piece of work. Examples of this include:

• Matter Owner – the user responsible for owning a matter.
• Task Owner – the user responsible for owning the task.
• Insurer – the insurer on a defendant matter.

Within ShareDo, you model the participants that are involved in your work; defining:

• Role Specific data capture – e.g. injured party details, bank details.
• Connections between participants – e.g. employed by.
• Related contact details and addresses.
  Each work item will, more often than not, have an owner assigned to them. This is the party responsible for doing that piece of work.

Work item owners can be:

• References to roles on the matter, for example: matter owner, matter fee earner, matter partner, etc.
• Specific named individuals (usually where specific expertise is needed).
• ShareDo allows the creation of unlimited teams (e.g. pools of people either within one or across many locations) and work items can be selected by any team member.
• Owners are not limited to people/teams within the organisation; they can also reference the client and their organisational structure or other third parties.

Work items can, subject to security, be moved between users/teams in one of two ways:

1. By reassigning them. This is the equivalent of permanently changing ownership—although tracked in the audit log, it’s as though the work item has always belonged to the assignee.
2. By delegating them. In this case, the work item is still tracked by the original owner who has passed its completion elsewhere. This is usually where a senior member of staff passes a task to someone more junior but who wants to retain control over its completion.

Master Data

Participants are sourced from a master list of users, organisations, people and teams; and in doing so you are able to maintain the overall quality of this information and gain a better 360-degree perspective of your interactions with a given entity.

Recognising that this information is often mastered elsewhere, this information is maintained in a separate logical database described as the Operational Data Store (ODS). Within ShareDo you can then configure whether this data (or a subset of it) is mastered within the system or synchronised from external systems.

Managing Specialist Types of Work Participants

A common requirement across many solutions is the ability to manage specialist work participants. Examples of this include:

• Instruction of medical experts or barristers.
• Restricting payment participants to only approved suppliers.

ShareDo enables you to configure these scenarios via:

• Modelling unlimited party types e.g. Medical expert.
• Configuring specialism sets for these party types or, more broadly, for users. Once specialisms are configured you are then able to:
  • Search for party types with a specific specialism.
  • And narrow this down by location. E.g. you could search for the oncology expert within 50 km of the claimant's location.
  • Add other data capture such as rates, lead time, supplier ratings etc which are only required for these party types.
  • Initiate workflows relevant to the instruction of these work participants.

See Understanding Participant Types‍.

Managing Participant Connections

Within the ShareDo modelling environment, you can define any number of participant relationships enabling you to relate entities together. Described as connections these enable you to maintain a full 360-degree view of who is related to who and what.

Work Types And SLAs

While SLAs can be configured for individual work types, this approach is often too simplistic when working in a multiple B2B client environment.

In this case we need to be able to support both a standardised set of SLAs for our work types together with the ability to vary these by client. ShareDo supports this variation through its contract and statements of work work types.

Think of the contract as the overall engagement document between the legal service provider and their end clients or business units, with each statement of work representing a sub-arrangement for, say, different work types, or different periods of engagement, etc.

Within a Statement of Work, you can then configure the individual client engagements SLAs. These SLAs may include response times, fee-charging structures, specific reports, and so on.

Work types can be configured such that they take dynamic input from contracts and statements of work as they progress. What this means is that you will not have to create many multiple variations of each work type specifically configured to reflect different SLAs between clients or business units. Instead, they can configure single work types that operate against any number of clients with unique SLAs. This greatly reduces both the initial configuration time with respect to the work types and their subsequent ongoing maintenance.

Work Item Data Model

The ShareDo data model extends automatically as you turn on features, define participant roles or relationships or add forms to the solution - it is a dynamic data model. To help you both understand the data model and leverage it in items such as rules and document assembly the Data Composer feature provides a user interface on top of this dynamic model.

Through this interface, you can:

• Browse the dynamic data model.
• Extend the model with calculated fields.

The Data Composer feature is available for both work items and ODS Entities.