Using report queues is one of the methods I employ to get information out of the system on a regular basis. I'm a fan of creating quality assurance reports that look for data inconsistencies, as well as AR reports, docket reports, and matter status reports that should be sent on a regular basis.
One issue is how to create report queues that are robust enough to be used long term with minimal oversight. Dynamic queues let you build report queues without hard-coding initials into the query. Instead, you use the professionals tab of a report shortcut to query the professionals, and then ProLaw® passes that professional list to the report shortcut query and runs the report for each of the professionals.
Example
Prof Query:
[(is Active? = 'Y') and (is Timekeeper? ='Y') and (office <> 'New Orleans, Louisiana', 'Mexico')
and (professional type <> 'IT Staff','Accounting Staff')
and Not having any(initials = 'PARA','TM','DRC','KMR','JB')]Report Query:
uncompleted docket and Date=today and (initials='{professional}')The '{professional}' is the key to making it work — ProLaw® substitutes each professional's initials at runtime.
To further automate the report, set the report queue to E-mail to professionals. This queue type uses the email from each professional record to send the report directly to them.
Recommendations
- Test your professional query under professionals first — often additional fields need to be completed to make querying more efficient.
- In some versions of ProLaw® you need to add the report queue to the system queue and run it from the ProLaw® Agent. In recent versions you can test in each stage: report shortcut, queue, system queue.