Chronologies are tools frequently created and used as an aid in disseminating facts easily. They help track information gathered during the discovery process of a litigation matter, support witness interviews and deposition preparation, and demonstrate how evidence weaves into a story in the courtroom. The applications are many.

Because much of the evidence collected during discovery is hosted in an eDiscovery platform, it makes sense to build chronologies within that same environment. Doing so enables a collaborative approach to tracking key facts across produced documents.

Supporting this need, OpenText™ eDiscovery’s latest release of 25.2 CE includes a fully functional Chronology feature. This version of OpenText eDiscovery is now available to Cloud customers, and I’m here to give you a peek at what is included. 

Chronology events

Adding chronology events is simple within the Analysis page of OT eDiscovery. Switch the Tagging panel to Chronology, then click Add a new entry for any selected document. Multiple events can be linked to each key document as needed.

Each chronological event can be grouped by topic and topic groups, making it easy to maintain different chronology lists (for example, witness names organized under a "Witnesses" group). Dates and key players can also be quickly pulled from document metadata.

Chronology page

Once events are added to key documents, they can then be viewed on the new Chronology page. Within this page, new chronology events that are not associated with a document can be added by clicking on the plus (+) icon. Details to an existing event can be quickly edited by selecting the event and clicking on the pencil icon within the Details panel. 

What’s next?

OpenText's planned continued expansion of this new feature will include: 

• Spotlights: Color-coded document highlights tied to one or more chronological events 

Comments can then be associated with each color-coded highlight:

• Bulk tagging: Add multiple documents to one chronological event 
• Topics: Add color coding to topics for easier identification 
• Time: Add time to chronology dates 
• Exports/reports: Generate detailed reports and exports 
• Aviator: Integration with Aviator to provide additional context with AI and build chronologies automatically 

Learn more about the Chronology feature and other capabilities in OpenText eDiscovery.

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