Summary

When a document is provided for replacement, the existing document instance is replaced with the new document to ensure no work product is lost. In doing so, it is important to understand the behaviour of any annotations / notes which will depend on the nature and changes made to the replacement document.

It is important to request a document is replaced to ensure work product is kept, rather than requesting the existing document be deleted and a new document uploaded in its' place which would result in any associated work product being deleted. 

We've set out the behaviour of annotations / notes following replacement below. 

Behaviour of Annotations / Notes Following Replacement

When a document is replaced, work product should not be lost however the ability for the platform to map the annotations / notes to the exact same location on the page is dependent on the changes in the replacement document, most importantly relating to the: page length, content and OCR data. 

Upon replacement, the tool will look in the same area of the page that the annotation was made on and try to map it to the same OCR data, if this data has moved or changed, the tool will not be able to map the annotation to it successfully.  

  1. Same - If the replacement document is the same as the existing document in page length, and largely the same content and OCR data, the annotations should appear in the same location following replacement. 
    1. For example, if you are replacing an existing 10 page document with a 10 page document that has the same content and OCR data, albeit there is now hyperlink ready references in the right margin or a Document ID stamp in the top right.
  2. Different - If the replacement document is either different in page length, content or OCR data, the annotations will appear on the same numbered page in which they were created, albeit either in a slightly different location on the page or the content of the page itself may now be different and therefore the annotation on the intended associated text - therefore becoming 'orphaned' or 'floating' on the page.   
    1. For example, if you are replacing an existing 10 page document with a 5 page document and a note is made on page 10, as page 10 no longer exists, the note would appear on page 5 as the new last page of the document. 
    2. For example, if you are replacing a 10 page document with an 11 page document, and a page has been inserted at the front of the replacement document, it would offset the page numbers by 1. If there was an annotation on page 5 of the existing document, the annotation will stay on page 5 however the image of page 5 is now page 6 within the document and will no longer appear on the intended associated text. 

Export Annotated Document

If users are concerned that their work product may be impacted, before requesting Opus action the replacement, users should export a copy of the annotated document. Following the replacement, users can check the location of their annotations against the export and then on the platform, delete the annotation if it is in the wrong location and re-create it in the intended location. 

More information on how to: 
- Export an annotated document can be found here.
- Delete and Create annotations can be found here.