Reproductions in DISCO

This feature is in Crawl as of December 9, 2024. The Document-level Bates numbering feature must be enabled on a database to be eligible for the Reproductions capabilities. 

DISCO Reproductions will now allow users to make changes to completed productions while maintaining already-existing Bates numbers on documents. Reproductions utilizes the current metadata, images, and redactions on a document at the time the reproduction job is run, which will allow users to make the necessary updates to a production that has already completed.

There are a few important things to note when running a reproduction:

• Users can choose to reproduce an entire original production, or a subset of documents from the original production. Determine the document subset by utilizing a tag, saved search, or search history. If a document or instance was not included in the original production, then it cannot be added to a reproduction at this time.
• While we do not systematically force family completion, we strongly encourage that reproductions are family complete. This is to ensure that the family fields calculated at runtime take into account all family members when determining family ranges.
• Migrated productions cannot be reproduced at this time.

Steps to Run a Reproduction

1. Find the original production from the Productions list page that contains the documents that need to be reproduced.
2. Click the Reproduce button
3. Give your reproduction a unique name
4. Define the body of documents to be reproduced, whether it is the entire original production or just a subset
5. Modify the necessary settings for the things you need to update in the reproduction. There are some things, such as Bates numbering schema or deduplication level, that cannot be changed. The settings from the original production will be populated as a starting point.
6. Click Run Reproduction 
7. The Reproduction card will appear nested underneath the corresponding original production. Reproductions appear in descending chronological order, meaning the most recent reproduction will be at the top. While you cannot reproduce a reproduction, an original production can be reproduced any number of times. 
8. Download the reproduction file  

Working with Reproduced Versions

When looking at a document in the document viewer that has been reproduced, there are visual indicators organizing reproduced versions underneath the originals. This can be seen when navigating to view or download a produced version.

Reproduced versions can be utilized in batch print output. Batch print has a new option to select the most recently produced version of a given Bates prefix - this is especially helpful to select reproduced versions, because the reproduced version was created chronologically after the original version.

Reproduced versions will return in search results when utilizing the existing BatesPrefix() and BatesNumber() search syntax. 

Best Practices

• Ensure that the reproduction body of documents is family complete
• If you would like one final deliverable of all documents, choose to reproduce the entire original production. If you would like an addendum of just a few updated documents and their metadata, choose to reproduce a subset of documents.
• Utilize the withheld rules and custom slipsheets for documents that need to be clawed back. Tag the documents from the original production that need to be clawed back, and then select to reproduce your entire original production with a tag rule pointing to the clawed back document tag. This will output one final updated zip deliverable with the custom clawback slipsheets.

Family Completeness

We strongly encourage that all reproductions are family complete. When determining the starting Bates, ending Bates, and family Bates ranges for metadata files, the productions module can only be aware of the documents contained in the production or reproduction job. This means that if you would like accurate and complete family fields, you should ensure the body of documents chosen for reproduction is family complete.

There are a few other scenarios in which family information could change between the original production and the reproduction. We have implemented the following two checks:

1. Check if the parent has the lowest Bates
2. Check that there is no gap in the Bates allocation for all documents with a given Family ID

If either of these checks does not pass, DISCO will automatically exclude family Bates fields in the final reproduction output. This means that even if the user chose the starting Bates, ending Bates, and family Bates range fields during reproduction creation, they may not be in the output. This is to ensure DISCO does not populate incorrect family information and a user does not inadvertently overwrite the desired or correct family fields from the original production.

Error States on Reproductions cards

After a reproduction job has started, DISCO will evaluate the instances or documents selected and compare these to the original production. If something has changed that would result in changing the number of rows in a metadata load file (such as deduplicating by custodian in an original production, then overlaying custodian information before running a reproduction on those same documents) we will block the reproduction. The two scenarios that will error are:

1. If a row in the Reproduce metadata load file maps to more than one row in the original production’s metadata load file (raising the question of which Bates to allocate)
2. If two rows in the Reproduce metadata load file map to one row in the original production’s metadata load file (would cause duplicate Bates)

There will be an error on the Reproductions card directing you to contact support. Please email discodesk@csdisco.com for further assistance and ideas on how to remediate, such as rerun the reproduction without problematic documents or delete and rerun original productions with updated information.