Track who was involved in each event

The same names keep coming back in a dispute: the managing director who signed the guarantee, the project manager who sent the notices, the counterparty's lawyer. When you prepare a witness statement or a cross-examination, you need every event that one person was part of, in order, and nothing else.

Link people to events as you build the chronology, and the list of who did what builds itself. Two questions decide how far to take it: who will the team need to look up later? And will the reader of the export need to see who was there?

Add people to the events

1. Open an event. Under People, click Add and type a name. Pick the person if they are already on the list; if not, choose Add "Anna Lambda" to create them.

   

2. Click the person's name on the event to open Information About Person. Fill in Company and Affiliation, so a colleague can tell the counterparty's Anna Lambda from the client's, then click Save.

3. Save the event. The person's initials now show on the event on the timeline.

   

Once a person exists, they are offered by name on every other event in the matter, so you add them once and pick them after that. In the table view, the People column takes the same names, and to add a person to many events at once, select the events and use Bulk edit: it adds the people you choose without removing the ones already there (see change many events at once).

See everything one person was part of

1. Click the people icon in the timeline toolbar. People lists everyone linked to an event on this timeline, with company and affiliation and the number of events each appears on, most-used first.

   

2. Click a person to expand them. Below their details, a table lists the events they are referenced in, with the date of each and Open to open the event.

3. To correct a person's details, click the pencil (Edit) beside them, then the pencil on their card, and click Save. The person is one entry, so the change shows on every event they are linked to.

You can also click a person's initials on an event, or find them with Search in the toolbar, to open their details and their events.

Keep a story for each witness

1. Click Filters in the toolbar to open Filter events.

2. Under People, pick the witness. Only their events stay on the timeline, and the top of the panel shows how many of the total are left.

   

3. Click Save as a story and name it after the witness, for example "Anna Lambda: witness statement". The story keeps the filter, so anyone on the case team can come back to the same set of events. See save the events for each issue as a story.

Pick two people and choose All to see only the events where both were involved, such as the meetings between the two managing directors. Any shows the events of either.

Print who was there

When you export to PDF, Include people under Event details prints each linked person's initials beside the event. It is on by default. On a landscape print, Per page legend puts the initials in the legend on each page instead. See present the case chronology.

Tips from practice

• One person, one entry. Before typing a new name, check the list: "A. Lambda" and "Anna Lambda" become two people with half the events each.
• Use affiliation for the side. Claimant, respondent, the client, a third party: it is what the reader needs when the names are unfamiliar.
• Deleting a person removes them from every event. Delete in People asks first and tells you how many events they are on. To correct a name, edit the person instead.

Next, link the documents behind the events with link each event to its evidence, or tag them by issue with tag events by issue.