Creating Matters in Bulk: for Brightflag Customers (Clients)

Creating matters in bulk saves you time when you have many matters that need adding. If this functionality is enabled in your background settings, anyone on your team can bulk-add matters. 

To bulk create your matters:

1. Navigate to Menu > Matter Management > Search/Add Matters.
   
   
2. Click Add Matter and select Bulk Upload (again, this will only appear if you have it enabled)
   
3. If you have more than one template, select the option related to the matters you're uploading. There will be one bulk-creation template per matter template you have.
   
4. Click Download to get the spreadsheet template on your device.
   
   
5. Populate the spreadsheet in excel. Ensure you fill in all the required fields.
   • The format of your entries must be an exact match of how the value appears in Brightflag.
   • We suggest you export a list of all values from Brightflag so that the values can be easily copied and pasted into your spreadsheet.
     
     • The Internal Matter Lead must be the user’s email address.
     • The Currency must be in the 3-letter currency code e.g. USD, GBP, EUR, etc.
     • The Entity, Department, Matter Category, and Country must be exactly as they appear in Brightflag.
     • The Lead Outside Counsel must be the user's email address. The LOC must also be a vendor user with access to the matter. For more information, see this Help Center article: Timekeepers compared to Vendor Users - FAQ (Clients)
     • All cells with Dates in them need to be formatted to type “Date” within your spreadsheet management software (MicroSoft Excel, Google Sheets, etc). This will then choose the correct localised format which may be mm/dd/yyyy on some machines, and vary on others (e.g. dd/mm/yyyy)
   • Duplicate entries in the Customer Matter ID and Matter Ref fields will cause an error.
   • Fields/columns cannot be removed or rearranged.
     
     
6. Once you have completed the file, return to the Bulk Upload page in-app, select your file and click Open.
   
   
7. Click Upload Matters to upload your populated spreadsheet.
   
   
8. If your upload was successful, a confirmation pop-up will appear on your screen. You can double-check this by finding the matter on the Search/Add Matters page.
   
   
9. If the upload has not been successful, a list of errors will appear on the bulk upload page. The error message will give you the line and column of the incorrect data.

To fix errors on the template:

• If the error relates to duplicate entries:
  • Check the fields Customer Matter ID and Matter Ref in your spreadsheet. Use your spreadsheet tool (e.g. Microsoft Excel) to highlight duplicates.
  • From there, remove the duplicate values.
    
    
• If the error relates to missing fields/columns:
  • Check your file against the original template. Ensure you have not rearranged or removed any fields.
    
    
• If the error relates to values not found:
  • Compare your entry with the value as it appears in-app
    • In a separate tab, navigate to Menu > Matter Management > Search/Add matters > Add Matter > Single Matter.
    • On the matter form, click on the field that corresponds to the field in the error message.
    • Search the value you are trying to input.
    • Amend the template values to match the value in the dropdown (it must be an exact match, aside from the currency, which uses the 3-letter ISO code only). 
    • Repeat steps 5-7 to re-upload the file.