Automated Excel projects

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Mass marking-up of Excel documents

What to know

• Blackout provides the ability to redact and highlight Excel documents in bulk, utilizing terms, phrases, and regular expressions.
• Excel projects are a configurable way to target specific documents and locate content that must be marked up based on case needs.
• When setting the Word/Phrase rules for the project, either in the project itself or through a CSV template, wildcards and dtSearch are not supported.
• If redact all headers and footers, redact all objects, or redact all comments is selected, no other rules are needed to run the project. Additionally, when these options are selected, every document in the saved search will be checked and redacted for the selected markup set.
• CSV Support
  • CSVs included in a saved search will be processed by Spreadsheet projects using this saved search.
  • Any rules with unsupported markup styles (e.g., white redactions, black redactions) will use the configured fallback text to place a text redaction on the CSV. The fallback text can be modified when creating or editing a project.
  • CSV files do not support native highlights. If a Blackout Spreadsheet Project rule has a markup type of highlight and hits on content within a CSV, the CSV will appear in the document warnings, and remain unmodified.

How to do it

1. Log into Relativity as a System Administrator or a user who has access to the Blackout Projects tab.
2. Navigate to Blackout | Projects.
3. Click Create New Project.
4. Select Spreadsheet.
5. Fill out the project form using the details below.
6. Click Create.
   • A form will be displayed that is used to define how the project will function when running. The following fields make up the form:

Field	Description
Project Name	An identifier for the project making it easy to refer to or for others to find
Saved Search	The document source. All actions will be performed against these documents.
Markup Set	The markup set that the markups will be associated with.
Redact all headers and footers	Selecting this option will replace all content in all headers and footers with the default redaction text across a document set. This option is run accross all documents within the selected markup set. This option is useful when redacting a set of documents with sensitive information in the header and footer that must be redacted on every document. Note: This option can be selected and run through a project without the need to add any other rules to the project.
Redact all Excel objects	Selecting this option will place a black box redaction in front of all objects on the document set. This option is run accross all documents within the selected markup set. Note: This option can be selected and run through a project without the need to add any other rules to the project.
Redact all comments	Selecting this option will redact all comments in full or, if 'Replace comment text' is selected, will replace the comments with the desired redaction text. This option is run accross all documents within the selected markup set. Note: This option can be selected and run through a project without the need to add any other rules to the project.
Ignore certain rows or columns	When selecting this option, two additional fields are displayed where a comma-separated list of rows and columns can be identified that will remain unredacted throughout the project, even if there are matches or a rule that would include those locations. This is the easiest way to ensure that headers of columns or rows remain visible.
Rules	The rules are what drives the project. How they are configured will determine how the content will be located in a document. There are three different kinds of rule groups: redaction, highlight, and inverse. Every time the fields are filled out for a rule group, another section will appear below it, allowing the creation of multiple rule groups. Each of these can be independently configured, targeting different sets of content.
Redact	Redaction rules will result in removing the content from the document and replacing it with a black, white, or text redaction.
Highlight	Highlight rules will result in changing the foreground color of the matched content with a selected color.
Inverse	Inverse rules are similar to redaction rules. They search the content from the document like a redaction rule; however, instead of redacting it, it will redact all content not matched by that rule. When creating a project that will require inverse redactions, only a single inverse rule can be included.
Markup Reason	A simple message that can be associated with the markups made by the rule group. It can be reviewed using the Blackout reports. This field is not required to run the project.
Markup Scope	Defines the behavior of the project when placing a redaction, highlight, or inverse redaction. Cell: will place the markup on the specific cell match, replacing all the content in the cell Row: will place the markup on the entire row where a match is found Column: will place the markup on the entire column where a match is found Sheet: will redact the entire sheet where a match is found Word: will replace only the exact matched text inside the cell where a match is found--not available in highlight and inverse rule groups Character: will place a markup on selected characters where a match is located The Character scope option is not available for inverse redaction types.
Markup SubType	Specifies whether to place a Black , White , or Text markup. If text is selected, custom text can be input for the markup. Otherwise, the default text markup language will be used. If the highlight is selected, this option will be replaced with choices for yellow, blue, green, orange, pink, and purple.
Word/Phrase	'Word/Phrase' are the words, phrases, and text that will be marked up across the document set. Multiple words or phrases can be added to a single rule group. These rules are case insensitive.
Regex	Regular expressions can be used to identify important patterns like email addresses, social security numbers, credit card numbers, and any other content that may appear regularly throughout the document set that constitutes sensitive information. Regular expressions require a name and an expression. After saving the project, these regular expressions will be available to be selected by name on other projects within the same case. Rules do not need to be added to create a project. Rules may be uploaded afterward, or, the project can be edited later. Blackout uses the PCRE flavor of regular expression and runs with the global flag (/g), multi-line flag (/m), and case insensitive flag (/i) enabled by default. The case-insensitive flag can be modified inline by adding (?-i) to turn off and (?i) to enable.
dtSearch	dtSearch includes special characters and other operators that you can use to define search criteria. Noise words are not supported in Blackout Projects. Use the W/N operator for proximity matches in these instances. By default, all terms in a dtSearch rule will be redacted. The terms should be surrounded with (?<redact>{term}) to redact part of a dtSearch rule. To redact more than one term, multiple named groups must be defined. dtSearch rules automatically use cross-cell matching when identifying terms. If a rule has text that would span multiple cells, it will redact all cells containing parts of the matched term. Word/Phrase and regex rules continue to ignore cross-cell matches.
Fallback Text	When a markup style is configured to place a redaction in a location where that style is not supported the Fallback Text Will be Applied

Uploading rules from CSV

What to know

• After successfully creating the spreadsheet project, rules can be added via uploading a CSV template.
• Blackout can support up to 100,000 rules being created via CSV.
• Extra rules mean each doc takes a little longer to process as the Excel content needs to be checked for each rule.

The CSV template and explanation of the columns can be downloaded from the Milyli Support Center.

How to do it

1. From the project view screen, click the Upload rules CSV button.
2. Navigate to the completed CSV.
3. Click the upload icon.

Note: If the CSV file is valid, the rules will be created and the button will display how many rules are in the project.

Running a Spreadsheet project

What to know

• When a project is in a valid state to run, with a name, saved search, markup set, and rules, the status message of the project view screen will display that it is ready to run.

How to do it

1. After creating the project, click the Run button.
2. Once the project begins running, the project will be queued and then start being processed by Blackout.
3. After the project completes, a results page displays information about the completed work and provides a launchpad for further quality review.

While the project is running

Status	Description
Project queued	The project enters the queued state letting the Blackout agent know to start working on the documents
Documents prepared	The number of documents that have been distributed to the system as tasks for markup review
Documents completed	The number of documents that have completed markup review which can result in markups being placed if there are rules matches
Progress bar	Displays the number of actions completed for preparation and review. The light blue color represents document preparation and the dark blue represents markup review.
Time elapsed	The total time the project has processed
Current activity	The current activities that the Blackout agent is performing which include preparation, reviewing, and marking up. The most recent action is shown at the top along with when it began. Clicking the down arrow will display the currently active tasks and when the task began.
Stop	Begins the stop operation which will cancel all unfinished work for the project. Work completed to that point will remain and can be reverted.

When the project is completed

Title	Description
Documents marked up	The total number of documents that have had markups placed on them by Blackout using the rules from this run. Clicking this button will navigate to a saved search of all of the documents that have been marked up.
Markups placed	The total number of markups that have been placed, both redactions and highlights, by Blackout using the rules from this run. Clicking this button will navigate to a saved search of all of the documents that have been marked up.
Documents with warnings	The number of documents that encountered a non-project breaking warning. Clicking this button will download a CSV of the document warnings that includes information about what happened and any error messages. Providing this CSV to Milyli can greatly assist in diagnosing any issues that may have been encountered. Typical reasons for warnings include password-protected documents without a password in the password bank, corrupt files, and Excel 95 and earlier Excels.
History	Projects are, by design, incremental. After the project has run, clicking the Run button again will queue the project up again and process any new documents in the document source. As a result, the history section will show the work that the project has performed and the results of said work.

Reverting a Spreadsheet project

What to know

• Occasionally the markups created by a spreadsheet project may need to be reverted. This need may arise when rules need to be modified or a case settles.

How to do it

1. From the project view screen, click the Revert button.
2. A dialogue will appear; confirm reverting the project.
3. The project will be queued.
4. The Blackout agent will pick it up and begin reverting the documents marked up by the project.
5. A progress bar will display how many documents have been reverted.