While we can't solve every problem you might experience via this Web page, here are tips and tricks from our Technical Support Staff to resolve some issues that commonly occur. Take a look at these ideas and see if they help solve your issue. If not, you can always contact Catalyst Support and we will try to help.

Please be aware that our Technical Support is centered on addressing problems with our applications and making sure they are accessible from the Internet. There are a host of internal problems our users face, ranging from problems with their computers to problems connecting their computers to their networks or the Internet that our people are not in a position to address. Please contact your own technical support group for help on those issues.

That said, here are some issues we regularly see at Catalyst Technical Support.

Browser & Adobe Settings

The most common problems that users run in to have to do with their browser and Adobe settings. Click here for the settings guide. We recommend that you go through the guide step-by-step as the first attempt in troubleshooting your problem. 

Click here to access the checklist that every user should complete before starting work on CR.

Full-Text Search and Continuous Indexing

Searches in Catalyst CR are run against the FAST search engine. FAST is an industrial-strength search engine that operates over a grid of servers. It offers sub-second search speeds and can handle extremely large volumes of documents.

We chose FAST for a number of reasons including its ability to provide continuous indexing. Continuous indexing means that the system updates itself on a regular basis when you add new documents or tag records. We feel this is important for large matters and fast-moving reviews.

With continuous indexing, we can update records to reflect new tags while users are still working in the system. We can also add new records and index them on the fly while reviewers continue to work. The system never shuts down.

Many litigation-support systems don’t offer continuous indexing. Rather, you have to shut them down and re-index when you want to update or add records. Often this is done nightly or at designated intervals during the day. In the interim, you have to search against an outdated index or limit your search to the fields contained in the database.

FAST’s continuous indexing capabilities aren’t perfect. There is still a latency period between the time you update a record and the time that update is reflected in the search index. In addition, record counts can “fluctuate” during indexing periods. Nonetheless, we think it is the best in the industry and is better than the alternative—waiting until the system has been reindexed before you can search against the latest updates.

Download this document to learn how continuous indexing works in our FAST system and to get more information about latency and index fluctuations.

Remapped Fields

Sometimes you need to move data from one field into another. We call this remapping. For example, occasionally we do this if you have requested that a field be made sortable. We would need to remap the field data to another field that is sortable. If you do this, please keep some things in mind:

• Make sure that if the field you are remapping from is part of a Rule in the Review Module, that you work with your Catalyst Project Manager on making some updates to the rules. You will need to make sure documents are released with the current rules in place and then you will need to add a new rule for the new field that you have mapped the data to.
• Make sure to check that your Dynamic Folders are changed so that any folder based on the field that was remapped, is changed to the new field.
• When you go to do a Print Job or Export, take care and never use your “last settings”. The fields you chose the last time you ran a Print Job or Export may have been based on the field that you remapped. If you use your last settings, you will export a field that is no longer in use, or has had its values moved to another field and is therefore blank.
• If you use Reports, under the Admin tab, make sure that you get your reports updated to reflect the new field, not the old field. If they are still pointing to the old one, the data will not be reliable.

Talk to your Catalyst Project Manager about things to watch out for when remapping fields.

Internet Explorer - Caching

Users sometimes complain that changes do not appear to be saving properly for a record. Our system employs multiple checks to make sure the data is properly saved for each record before moving to the next. However, Internet Explorer sometimes presents a cached copy of the record rather than the updated one. This can cause confusion and consternation that the changes have not been saved.

To avoid these issues, we recommend that IE be set so that data is retrieved from the server each time (rather than using the cache). These settings should be set every time you visit the site.

To learn how to adjust your Internet Explorer settings so that it does not use the cache, click on this link.

Speed Issues

When clients experience "slowness" with our systems, they often assume the problems lie with our servers. In some cases this may be true. We monitor server performance and try to address lags as quickly as possible.

In other cases, the problems lie in the bandwidth reaching your computer or its ability to connect to the Internet. If many users are accessing a limited Internet pipe at the same time, they may all experience slowness.

We offer a free "Catalyst Speed Test" that you can use to check your connection speed. While we offer no warranties regarding its accuracy for your situation, it is a good and quick way to see how your Internet connection is performing. Give it a try and see what happens. This utility is a Java application so your browser will have to be able to accept that download.

Click here to try the Catalyst Speed Test.

Problems with Adobe Acrobat

Some users experience problems viewing PDF files using Adobe Acrobat. Sometimes their computers slow down. Sometimes they get an IE error and their browser closes down causing them to open IE and log in again. This is certainly frustrating for our users.

There are several reasons for this problem and they all relate to the interplay between Adobe Acrobat and Internet Explorer. If the two programs do not work well together, you will get a GPF error that will close your browser. For what it's worth, Catalyst itself cannot cause your browser to fail. Only a registered plug-in like Acrobat has the power within IE to cause a GPF.

This problem seems to have been solved with the release of Acrobat version 9. If you have the choice, upgrade to Acrobat 9 (either the free Reader production or a paid version) and these problems should go away. Please make sure to completely uninstall existing versions of the product, reboot, and then install version 9.

If you are on an earlier version of Acrobat (8 or earlier), then here are two steps to address this issue. We have found they work in most cases.

Turn off Speculative Downloading: Acrobat has a special setting called "speculative downloading" that allows it to keep loading the Acrobat file after you move on to the next document. It can fail during rapid review. As a standard measure, we suggest that all users turn off this feature. (Speculative downloading does not have to be turned off in version 9 and is a handy feature).

For detailed instructions on how to disable speculative downloads in Adobe, click on this link.

Problems with the Acrobat Install: Some versions of Acrobat have problems when new versions are loaded on older versions without uninstalling the older version. Also, some users have several versions of Acrobat or Acrobat Reader on their systems, which can cause conflicts.

If the speculative download setting doesn't solve your problem, we recommend you do the following:

1. Uninstall all versions of Adobe Acrobat or Acrobat Reader from the system. Make sure you remove everything possible.
2. Reboot your computer (so the uninstall finishes).
3. Load the most recent version of Acrobat or the free Acrobat Reader available to you. Reader can be downloaded from the Adobe site.
4. See if that solves the problem.

The problem that leads to the failure is a memory overrun. If nothing else works, you can monitor Acrobat memory using Task Manager and kill Acrobat periodically as memory gets too large. This won't affect your browser session and Acrobat will load for the next document. However, this is a bothersome process.

We find that the first two remedies resolve the issues in most cases. If problems persist, our Technical Support people will try and help you.

Incorrect MIME types causing problems with exports

If you find that you are having a problem viewing your zip or print job, it might be a problem with the MIME type.

Each type of file delivered from a web server has an associated MIME type (also called a "content-type") that describes the nature of the content (e.g. image, text, application). For compatibility reasons, Internet Explorer has a MIME-sniffing feature that will attempt to determine the content-type for each downloaded resource. In some cases, Internet Explorer reports a MIME type different than the type specified by the web server.

For example, in some cases the zip file contains HTML contents inside. The browser sniffs the MIME type to HTML so the content is rendered as HTML text in the browser window.

Here are the steps to disable MIME type sniffing in IE:

1. In IE go to Internet Options > Security Tab > click on Custom Level
2. Select the disable option for "Open Files based on content, not file extension"
3. Apply, Save, and close the browser and open a new window.

This should solve the problem.