External redaction workflow

Download Quick Guide

Before you begin

Occasionally reviewers encounter documents that can't be redacted with Blackout or are too large to be displayed in the Relativity viewer. Blackout allows Excel and PDFs that are redacted outside of Relativity to be associated with the native markup set in Blackout and subsequently produced alongside all of the work product created with Blackout.

Preparing for external markups

  • External markups can be found by navigating to Blackout | External Markups within the workspace.
  • Refer to the Workspace tabs page for granting access to this tab.
  • To tag a document for use with the external markups tab, the Blackout Document Warnings field needs to be edited
  • The external markups give users the ability to download and upload Excel and PDF documents.
  • The uploaded file will be added to Relativity and associated with the markup set
  • Externally redacted documents can be included in Production Preparation projects and native productions as if they were redacted with Blackout
  • Uploading an externally redacted document will clear failed markups from the document.

External Markup with Failure Message

Example workflow

A sample real-world workflow could look something like this.

  1. The case team identifies a set of PDFs and Excels that are too big to display in the Relativity viewer
  2. These documents are separated with a Relativity search
  3. The Blackout Document Warnings document field is added to an admin layout
  4. A mass edit is run to set this field to have "Cannot be Redacted in Native Viewer" checked
  5. Reviewers are granted access to the External Redaction page
  6. Reviewers pick the markup set they are working with
  7. Reviewers download documents to redact externally
  8. Redactions are placed using the tool of choice such as Microsoft Excel or Adobe Acrobat
  9. The redacted document is uploaded back to Relativity using the upload button

This workflow provides a great way to prevent reviewers from being disrupted while performing manual redaction using Blackout on the Relativity reviewer.

Note: The Active Markup Set selection within the Blackout | External Markups subtab indicates the markup set where documents will be downloaded from and uploaded to upon document re-upload.

Tips for identifying documents

These tips are ways to potentially identify documents for external markups.

Before review begins

The Relativity viewer, depending on the version of Relativity, instance settings, and infrastructure, has a maximum file size that it is able to display in the viewer. These documents are candidates for external markups.

  • Identify and set aside these documents for external markups by creating a saved search. Most commonly, the search is created to filter on file size.
  • Using this search, the documents can be flagged for external review using the 'Edit' mass action.

Tagging documents for external redaction

  1. Run the saved search from the previous step
  2. Select the documents and pick Edit from the mass action menu
  3. Add the Blackout Document Warnings field to a layout.
  4. The specific field that needs to be checked is the Cannot Be Redacted in Native Viewer field.

During review

While a review is taking place, some users may have the ability to update the Blackout Document Warnings field. They may identify documents as they progress that can't be redacted via the viewer. By providing access to update the Blackout Document Warnings field in a coding layout in Relativity, reviewers can tag these documents for external redaction and continue to the next document.

Mass uploading externally redacted documents

What to Know

Mass upload will only work for documents already visible in the Blackout External Markups tab. The file extensions of the file you are uploading and the file on the document must match. Mass upload uses the following cascading rule set to map uploaded documents to control numbers:

  1. File name exactly matches the control number.
  2. File name exactly matches file name.
  3. File name starts with control number.
  4. File name starts with file name.

How to do it

  1. Navigate to the Blackout | Blackout External Markups tab.
  2. Click the Mass Upload button.
  3. Choose the redacted files you want to upload and click Open.
    • Blackout will automatically attempt to match each file to an existing control number using the cascading rule set.
  4. Review the results and make any necessary adjustments.
  5. Click the Upload button to complete the process.

External Redaction Mass Upload Screenshot

Reviewing documents

What to know

  • Once documents have been tagged as for external markups, they will automatically show up on the External Redactions tab.
  • If the number of documents is high, the reviewer can set the 'Externally Redacted' filter to “No” to filter out documents that have had a redacted copy uploaded
  • The external redactions page consists of the following columns:
ColumnDescription
Control Numberthe default sorting is by control number alphabetically. Clicking on the control number allows quick access to the document viewer.
File Namethe name of the document file; can be clicked to download the file
Externally Redactedindicates if the document has already been externally redacted
DownloadAn easy to identify the download button
UploadA two-stage upload process; click upload to select a file, click the up arrow to upload the file

Auditing external markups

Each download and upload action is logged as manual native markup action automatically. Additionally, each document that is externally redacted will also appear on the Blackout Quality Control panel as a single markup.

Use the following steps to view the audit entries.

  1. Navigate to the Blackout tab and click on the "Review Manual Native Markups" button at the top of the page.
  2. Click on the Audits tab. Entries for the download and upload actions will display respectively:
    • External Redaction - Downloaded
    • External Redaction - Uploaded

External Audits Tab

Tips and tricks

Documents maintain history

  • The primary reason for setting the markup set at the top of the page is that the External Redaction workflow takes into account any redaction work that was previously done.
  • Already have redactions from an automated project? No problem. Make sure the same markup set is selected. The download will show all of those redactions on the downloaded document.

Documents don't need to be downloaded using the External Markup tab

  • While the External Redaction tab helps maintain state and history by making it foolproof, documents can also be exported in bulk using the RDC. Keeping the document history in mind, use the mass action to set the primary native markup set for the saved search and then export the document. Distribute the documents accordingly.
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