Intella Connect comments

[AdamS]

Okay, have literally just started playing with this and the first thing that jumps out at me is the speed, virtually no delay at all running searches etc very nice. Granted I'm on an internal network but still it's very smooth and I like the look and feel as well.

 

One small thing that I've noticed is that when you do a search in Intella normally, then view the search results, your keyword is highlighted in the body of the email and also there is a line in the scroll bar to indicate where the hit is located for the long documents. This doesn't appear to happen when using Connect, not sure if this is HTML related but if it's possible that would be worth keeping.

 

I'll post more thoughts/feedback as I think of them, but so far looks fantastic.

 

Edit :

I don't appear to be able to preview attachments of any kind so far (testing .gif, .pdf, .doc, .xls), I'm not sure if clicking the preview button or double clicking the item should launch MS Word or some sort of web viewer but at this point I can see the attachment and it's properties, however I can't figure out a way to view the attachment itself.

[AdamS]

On the host Intella Connect dashboard it would be great to be able to see active/past connections, maybe another two fields with one showing the active connections and one showing connection history for the shared cases. Depending on needs and practicality even a live scrolling log of actions that are happening as with happens on TEAM now when you share a case internally.

 

Also the ability to have Connect auto generate a complete activity log for any shared case (and option to disable).

[ŁukaszBachman]

Hi Adam!

 

Thank you very much for the early feedback. Let me quickly address each of the points you made in your post.

 

Speed improvements

 

Performance of Connect is very important to us, so we have been focusing on that from the very beginning. Various improvements in this regard have been finished already and we are planning to add even more in the final releases. So we are extremely happy to hear that the speed is up to your expectations

 

"when you do a search in Intella normally (...) keyword is highlighted in the body of the email"

 

That is correct. The feature you are referring to is called "Hit highlighting". You will be probably happy to hear that this is one of ours top priorities for the next release of Connect. The implementation is under way as we speak.

 

Previewing of the attachments

 

Currently, when you click on the "Attachments" tab you should be able to see the list of attachments for given Item. You can further click on them and press the "View" button in order to open another instance of Previewer. Then you should go to either "Thumbnails" tab (for images) or "Preview" tab (for PDFs and Ms Office documents) in order to see the contents of this attachments.

I can understand that this is a bit misleading as there are some differences in how standalone version of Intella does that. We are planning to make the "Contents" tab more flexible (to let it handle more media types, rather than plain text only). We will also hide empty tabs where there is no meaningful content to be displayed there, just like Intella does.

All together, we are aiming to make Previewer in Connect to work exactly the same as it does in standalone Intella.

 

Admin panel

 

We will add possibility to monitor active connections in one of the next releases of Connect. We are in process of gathering requirements for this feature, so thanks again for your feedback!

 

We do have "Activity stream" feature, showing pretty much the same list of activities that TEAM does (with extensions like clickable links to previewer). Did you see that one before? It's located in the top menu bar, right next to the "View" label.

It is possible there to see the live log of events handled by Connect, so it might be exactly what you are looking for. It does, however, clean itself with each page refresh. We were thinking about adding some sort of "show more" button which would fetch additional activities from the server, when user desires. We might also consider adding "download activity stream log" button, which would contain all the activities from the beginning of case sharing. Priority of that feature depends on users feedback, as we are currently focused on implementing features bringing the most power to the Reviewers and Investigators.

 

Again, thank you very much for your feedback. We appreciate it a lot!

 

Best regards,

Łukasz

[dlast]

First off, this product is fantastic; nice work.

 

I did have one quick issue for which I can't seem to find a workaround: is there a way to save keyword search queries like in the desktop version? Usually, I would right click the top right search box and select "save queries" to get a CSV of the hit counts for each keyword. A client wanted to do this, but I cannot find if that functionality is included.

 

Again, this product is great. Saves lots of time.

 

Regards,

[Chris]

is there a way to save keyword search queries like in the desktop version? Usually, I would right click the top right search box and select "save queries" to get a CSV of the hit counts for each keyword. A client wanted to do this, but I cannot find if that functionality is included.

 

That functionality is indeed not yet available.

 

Note that you can already save a query by clicking on the Save button in the Searches Navigator. It will store it on the server and will immediately be available to other investigators connected to the same case.

[dlast]

Thanks for the prompt reply, Chris.

 

I've got one other question: will the ability to limit the amount of data that is shown to the user come to light in the future?

 

Love it so far!

[ŁukaszBachman]

dlast, indeed we will be working on introducing some restrictions to user actions depending on the role/group to which this particular user is assigned to. Having that, admin could restrict access to certain actions and/or items in Case. Is this what you were referring to? If you have any other use case of interest in mind, then please let us know. We appreciate users' ideas!

[tufelkinder]

Okay, definitely impressed with Intella Connect for a beta!

 

Two questions:

 

1) SSL? Is it possible for users to "hack" the http server and add SSL even if Intella doesn't/won't officially support it?

2) Facets: whenever there's a long list (such as a few dozen tags) , scrolling scrolls the entire screen instead of just the facets panel.

 

More generally, it would be great if we could create a proper tree structure for tagging...

 

Thanks! Keep up the good work!

 

-~

[ŁukaszBachman]

Hi Walt!

 

To address your questions:

1. SSL support is under way. It should be available with next release of Connect (Beta 2)
   
2. Facets scrolling indeed works as you have described. This is by design, but we could think about changing that if it proves to be annoying.
   

Could you elaborate more about tree structure for tags? What is the particular use case for this feature?

[tufelkinder]

Awesome about SSL. Really looking forward to that!

 

The trouble with the facet scrolling is that when you have very many, you have to scroll down to click Search/Include/Exclude and it scrolls the preview and content area past the top of the screen.

 

Having a tree structure for tags would enable you to organize your tags by overall categories, so for example, in a large investigation you might have topics like this:

 

• Individuals

• John Doe

• Joe Smith

• Jane Doe

• Executives

• Raymond Reynolds

• John Xavier

• Ralph Lauren

• Violations

• IP Theft

• Collusion

• FCPA

• Money Laundering

• Locations

• New York, NY

• London, UK

• San Francisco, CA

 

and each one could expand with many different sub-topics throughout the investigation without causing the overall Tags palette to become thoroughly unwieldy.

 

Plus, when you attempt to apply a tag to a new item, you can browse directly to it by overall topic instead of scrolling through a long alphabetized list, which currently puts Ralph Lauren next to San Francisco and Money Laundering next to New York.

 

The next best thing would be to have a Filter text field so that you could quickly narrow down the tags list by typing in all or part of the tag name...

[ŁukaszBachman]

Hi Walt!

 

I understand your problem with Facet scrolling now. I've never noticed this before, as the problem surfaces only in just few web browsers (Firefox and IE). Definitely this is undesired behavior and we will make it consistent across all supported browsers.

 

Thanks for the concrete use case of tags hierarchy. That sheds some light on the issue. Indeed, your proposal makes a lot of sense, but of course it is specific to organisations and their particular work flows. I will bring up this topic with the rest of the organisation and see if there will be a room for it in future releases of Intella and Intella Connect.

 

Best regards,

Łukasz

[E-Hounds]

I got it installed, launched for the first time, using the default password admin/admin. Closed the admin panel (didn't share or change anything), opened again and can't get past the "authentication required". doesn't seem to accept admin/admin any longer. Uninstalled, reinstalled - still no joy.

 

UPDATE: Tried on a second machine. Same problem. Running 1.6.4 x64 Windows 7.

[E-Hounds]

As a secondary issue, the IP address grabbed when sharing is activated seems rather random. It automatically assigns one of my secondary IP addresses (assign to VM Workstation adapters).

[ŁukaszBachman]

Hi E-Hounds!

 

I can confirm that the process of resolving IP addresses in "Case URL" parameter could suffer from randomization. This is something we will fix in upcoming release. We will also allow for overriding this parameter with domain name or computer's network name.

 

As to the "authentication loop", I believe we have seen this before on Chrome browser. Firefox and Internet Explorer (9+) shouldn't have this issue. Despite this, we have already changed authentication scheme for Connect and that should eliminate the problem. This change will be available for Beta 2 (coming out soon!).

 

In the meantime, here is what you can use for interim solution (I'm assuming you are using Chrome):

1. The best option is to clear the browser cache while any of the Connect's tabs are closed. This action is available in Chrome options or by using CTRL + SHIFT + DELETE. It would be the best if you could clean the whole cache, but that might not be appropriate for some users, as this would remove all the cookies and stored passwords for all the pages. Please use your own best judgment here.
   After doing this, when you open up admin page again, you should be asked for credentials just once.
   
2. You can always use Incognito Mode (CTRL + SHIFT + N) in order to start new browser window without any cached data. This should help you to get pass the authentication dialog.
   
3. You can try to use different browser (like Firefox) to only run the admin page and share a case, then switch back to Chrome for case reviewing.
   

I think one of those options will help you out. If not, please let us know so that I can further assist you with that. As I said, the problem will be gone with Beta 2.

 

Best regards,

Łukasz

[E-Hounds]

Thanks Łukasz, Incognito mode works great. Can't wait to see what comes of Beta 2.

 

Hi E-Hounds!

 

I can confirm that the process of resolving IP addresses in "Case URL" parameter could suffer from randomization. This is something we will fix in upcoming release. We will also allow for overriding this parameter with domain name or computer's network name.

 

As to the "authentication loop", I believe we have seen this before on Chrome browser. Firefox and Internet Explorer (9+) shouldn't have this issue. Despite this, we have already changed authentication scheme for Connect and that should eliminate the problem. This change will be available for Beta 2 (coming out soon!).

 

In the meantime, here is what you can use for interim solution (I'm assuming you are using Chrome):

1. The best option is to clear the browser cache while any of the Connect's tabs are closed. This action is available in Chrome options or by using CTRL + SHIFT + DELETE. It would be the best if you could clean the whole cache, but that might not be appropriate for some users, as this would remove all the cookies and stored passwords for all the pages. Please use your own best judgment here.
   After doing this, when you open up admin page again, you should be asked for credentials just once.
   
2. You can always use Incognito Mode (CTRL + SHIFT + N) in order to start new browser window without any cached data. This should help you to get pass the authentication dialog.
   
3. You can try to use different browser (like Firefox) to only run the admin page and share a case, then switch back to Chrome for case reviewing.
   

I think one of those options will help you out. If not, please let us know so that I can further assist you with that. As I said, the problem will be gone with Beta 2.

 

Best regards,

Łukasz

[E-Hounds]

In terms of functionality, Beta 1 is amazing.  Remote connection on 25/5mbps connecting to my office 100/50mbps was nearly flawless in terms of speed.  Even previewing native files.

 

Here's some of the bugs I've noticed...

1. not being able to run the server from a VM or a RDM connection is huge.

2. previewing search results after about an hour using "next", will eventually result in a missing green arrow and the inability to do anything more within the case.  Exiting, and logging back in does nothing.  Must close IC and restart the server and reshare.

3. Random "Error Response Code 400" - again, have to close IC, restart, and reshare.

[tufelkinder]

Does the Intella Connect beta expire?

 

And, of course, the follow up being when can we purchase it? :-)

[ŁukaszBachman]

@E-Hounds,

 

running Connect in VM or via RDM will be supported in the final release, as this requires appropriate licensing privileges provided by a proper Dongle.

I will look into the reported issue with regard to inability of doing anything after certain amount of time. Some logs would be very helpful here, could you perhaps provide me with some? I'm referring to the server logs (accessible via Connect's tray icon) and even browser Log, which can be usually seen in the "Console" tab in developer tools of your browser. A shortcut key for accessing this set of tools is usually "F12".

 

@Walt S,

 

yes, Beta releases will expire after 30 days from the day of first use. However, as you might have not noticed yet, the Beta 2 is out! So if you want, you can get another 30 days of trying out it's awesome new features :-)
The final release date is not scheduled yet, but we are planning to do it this summer (depending on users feedback).

[tufelkinder]

Thanks Łukasz, much appreciated. I'm really loving the product and excited about where this is going!

[philrodo]

Previewing of the attachments

 

... or "Preview" tab (for PDFs and Ms Office documents) in order to see the contents of this attachments

 

When I go to Preview, I'm unable to view any files, like DOCs, PDFs, etc. Is there something wrong with Preview? 

[AdamS]

Phil preview is working for me (Beta2) but I did have issues with Beta1, have you upgraded?

 

Some more feedback for the developers.

 

Would be great to have the ability to enable/disable the paginated view. I know it would slow things down but I'm a lazy person and when I preview pictures I don't want to have to change pages. I want to switch to thumbnail mode, then if it's many thousands of pictures I can go away overnight or have lunch and then come back and hopefully all the thumbnails will be loaded into memory (if it works that way...). In any case, if there was a tickbox or something we could change that would be great.

 

And just because I like to be contradictory, if we don't want to disable paginated view, it would be great to be able to navigate directly to a particular page.

 

I'm thinking ahead as to how I might work with a client on this. If they happen to have their view in paginated, because they like that, and then they have responsive documents on page 233, then I don't want to have to click 233 times to get to the same page. Probably a bad example because they can just tag the responsive file, but lets say they are old school and they just right down the page number or something.

 

Love the improvements so far guys can't wait for Beta 3 or better yet the roll out!

 

Edit - what about a 'log off' button or will closing the browser achieve the same thing?

[ŁukaszBachman]

Hi Adam!

 

You have brought up an interesting issue. But before we go any further, let me ask you one thing. Is the current speed of loading thumbnails too low? There is one major improvement on our road map regarding preprocessing of the thumbnails. This should speed up thumbnails view at least a couple of times, but most likely won't be done in first official release. However, based on our test, the thumbnails fetching speed was alright even on slower dialup connections, and paging was the feature that actually made it possible to work in the first place. Otherwise loading would take far too much time and make the browser unresponsive.

 

To address the question about navigating to a custom page - that is already possible! If you click on the center icon representing the current page, you should be able to see a list of numbers for all the pages (for instance 1...100). If you go ahead and click on some number, then this page will be set as the current and fetching of appropriate images should automatically start. If you found something not working as I have just described, then please let us know. Perhaps we are missing something.

 

Log off button is already done, you can expect it with next release :-)

 

P.S. Would you prefer load-on-demand initialized by scrolling to the next page?

[AdamS]

With the caching of thumbnails I can see why paginating is desirable and gives you that faster response time, it's by no means a deal breaker but I am firmly in the school of spend time in the beginning to save time at the end, in fact I would love if pre chaching of thumbnails was something done by Intella normally as part of the indexing process. But I digress, if there was a tick box to disable/enable paginated view perhaps a small popup warning that displaying large amounts of files could cause the browser to be non responsive for a long time...?  A small thing really and this might just be my personal preference from working with EnCase and Xways for so long that I prefer not to have to press a button to change pages, I just like to scroll and scroll and scroll

 

On my browser when I click on the current page number to bring up the page list it is only showing page 1-10, so 10 pages each time. Perhaps a small field with "go to page ?" where we enter the desired page number? If we are looking at something with thousands of pages, which is highly likely given the paginated view shows only a very small number then it could still be a lengthy process to get from page 1 to page 4533

 

To be clear my desire for non paginated viewing has nothing to do with the loading of the thumbnail images. Intella (and Connect) are by far the fastest tool I've used when it comes to previewing images from thumbnail. It's purely about having to manually move the mouse up to the arrow and click each time I want to change pages.

 

Just on image preview, a dynamic preview window would be fantastic if possible. By that I mean the ability to open a floating window that is independent of the normal layout which will display a preview of the highlighted file. Again just looking at pure usability for previewing large amounts of pictures/PDF/word documents/emails.

 

Oh one more thing, multi select. Currrently holding cntrl then clicking on a second field does nothing, so for multiples we have to use the include option. Would be nice to just highlight multiple items and hit search as we do with Intella (or tickboxes next to each field).

 

Edit - I might be going crazy but I can't find how to watch video files, I can open them and see all the properties etc but there doesn't appear to be a way to launch them via Media Player. I'm assuming that this will be a bandwidth issue but just wanted to confirm in case it's meant to be there.

[ŁukaszBachman]

Hi Adam!

 

Ok, now I understand your point of view perfectly. Indeed there is a place for improvements here.

 

To clarify, when I was saying that browser might get unresponsive, I didn't mean that it can get into "loading..." state for a long time. I meant that the whole browser window (single tab, to be exact) might be considered broken by the browser (not responding) or work very slowly, making reviewing nearly impossible. That's why I don't think that additional checkbox option would help you out while dealing with large sets, and for the small ones it wouldn't be that feasible. 

 

I think I will propose a change in the thumbnails view which would do more operations under the hood, so that old images are discarded (lowers memory consumption) and new ones will be loaded on demand. That should help us to leave pagination as optional feature, rather than a must. I can't promise you that this will be done in the final release, but most likely will come soon after it.

 

Lack of possibility of quickly jumping to any page is something I would like to have fixed soon, so this will get a higher priority now.

 

Multi-select is also one of the features that we are planning to do after first release.

[AdamS]

Any idea on the Video files not being viewable?