We are excited to announce the latest release of Draftable Legal (v25.1), delivering improvements across core comparison functionality, ease of use, and system integration. Here’s a quick highlight of the top five new features:
Highlighted benefits of the January release include:
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Quickly review, annotate and share changes in Excel files – Review redlined Excel documents with a new spreadsheet view in Draftable, enabling faster navigation through changes with a clickable change list, change notes and tags and easily share via our next-step options.
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Streamline clause reviews – Save time on document review by accessing improved clause extraction, parent-section visibility, and see color-coded notes and tags in the Departures Table export (available in Preview).
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Faster and smoother bulk comparison workflows – Easily manage large volumes of comparisons with one-click options to email or copy all results, faster exports, and real-time progress tracking.
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Only see the changes you need – Tailor comparisons to your preferences with new options to redline footnote numbering and ignore quotation mark differences, ensuring relevant changes are highlighted.
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Easier input file sharing – Export input files instantly without renaming when comparing two versions of a document from your DMS thanks to automated filename updates to differentiate original from modified documents.
Let's explore these updates in more detail.
But first, a note from our product team
Our product improvements are the direct result of insights from our customers. We are extremely grateful for the excellent feedback we received which allowed the January releases to be possible.
If you have feature ideas or product performance feedback, we would love to hear from you. Please share any suggestions with us by contacting product@draftable.com.
New Features & Improvements
Core Functionality
Excel Redline Viewer and Change List
We are excited to announce that from v25.1.100, all Draftable Legal users can review changes in Redlined Excel files faster and easier thanks to our new dedicated Excel Comparison Viewer. To access this viewer, simply load Excel files into Draftable and select the "Redline in Draftable" Comparison Type.
This dedicated Excel viewer provides:
- A clickable, filterable Change List for easy navigation and jump to change functionality.
- The ability to add notes and tags when reviewing changes in Excel comparisons
- Next actions options (save to DMS, email, etc.) directly within the viewer.
- The ability to export Changes Reports, to easily share review notes with colleagues, clients or external parties.
Our Excel viewer is designed to be a familiar spreadsheet viewing experience for users accustomed to Microsoft Excel. These changes help streamline analysis and reporting for complex Excel documents and will be particularly useful for Banking and Finance and M&A practice areas and legal teams working in large financial institutions.
Our new Excel Redline comparison viewer includes the ability to select changes from a list and jump directly to its location across the entire Workbook. Users can also add notes and tags to changes and export these to a changes report.
Departures Table Enhancements (Preview feature)
In our December 2024 update, we released a Preview of our new Departures Table. This feature automates tedious manual work to prepare issue lists from redlined comparisons during contract negotiations. In Draftable, the Departures Table comparison output provides a Word document with a table of clauses that have been amended in your documents. The table includes the changes shown in the context of the whole clause to avoid the need to read the export in the context of the redlined document.
Our January 2025 updates have added a number of important enhancements to the Departures Table output, including:
- Clauses now display with parent sections to provide better context.
- Improved clause and reference section extraction, especially for table-based content.
- Updated clause number detection ensures greater accuracy in redline outputs.
- Added differentiated comment colors, viewer notes, and tags for more organized feedback.
- The export process for Departures Tables has also been improved to ensure file naming consistency.
We are continuing to work with customers to test the Departures Table feature on real life documents and we plan on releasing this feature to all customers in the next 1-2 months. If you or your firm would like to get early access to this feature, you can contact your Account Executive or contact product@draftable.com.
The Departures Table export shows section clause IDs in abbreviated form, adds all relevant parent clause text into the 'Proposed Change' column and now exports tags and notes from the Draftable viewer into the 'Review Notes' column
Bulk Compare Improvements
The January releases have added several improvements for document processing teams running large numbers of comparisons at once. Our Bulk Compare feature now allows these users to:
- Easily share multiple comparisons via new Email and Copy to Clipboard actions after completing comparisons in bulk.
- Include summary information when using Bulk Compare with Summary Pages now included when saving and sharing files in Bulk Compare mode.
- Easily select recent files for bulk comparison with file-type icons added into the navigation in "Select from Recent Files" in Bulk Compare mode.
- Complete Bulk Compare workflows faster and with more confidence thanks to increased export speeds and a progress bar to track the progress of large exports.
- Avoid unnecessary errors when trying to run Bulk Compares thanks to new smart Comparison Type selection logic that ensures only valid Comparison Types for your input files can be selected.
These enhancements provide faster, more intuitive batch processing for high-volume document comparisons.
Filetype icons have been added into the 'Select from Recent' menu for Bulk Compare
The January releases added new Next Action options for Email and Copy to Clipboard after Bulk Compares
Our January release made Bulk Compare exports faster and added a progress bar so users can see how long export preparation will take
Accuracy and Output Quality
The January updates provides users with clearer, more accurate redline outputs, making it easier to identify and understand document changes. Specific accuracy and quality updates included:
- Improved revision visibility by dynamically adjusting row heights in tables, ensuring no changes are obscured and tables remain readable.
- Better rendering of deleted sections, eliminating formatting issues like long, narrow columns that can disrupt the document layout and clarity.
- Minimized layout inconsistencies by aligning numbering IDs, reducing visual clutter from unnecessary change markers and improving output presentation.
New Markup Customization
In direct response to requests from our customers, the January update made two important additions to Redline Profile settings to reduce noise in comparisons and focus on meaningful differences. From v25.1.0, users and administrators can now:
- Choose to ignore changes to quotation marks from curly to straight to prevent minor formatting variations from appearing as tracked changes.
A new Profile setting allows users to ignore changes from straight to curly quotation marks in redline outputs
- Track changes to footnotes more easily with redlined changes to footnote numbering references Note: this setting is off by default and is not shown to end users. To enable redlining of footnote numbering, administrators can configure the following Windows Registry key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Draftable\Feature\CompareFootnoteNumberingEnabled
Redlined footnotes by default (not showing numbering changes) |
Redlined footnotes with new setting enabled (not showing numbering changes) |
Ease of Use improvements
Draftable's January 2025 updates also included a number of workflow improvements to help users handle documents more efficiently, reducing errors and improving clarity during the comparison process.
Automated renaming of input files to prevent filename conflicts
From v25.1.0, any input files with the same document name will be automatically renamed by Draftable with "- original" and "- modified" by default. This removes a mandatory renaming step for users when comparing two versions of a document from their DMS. Now users can simple export their input documents with no manual renaming, reducing the number of clicks to complete comparison workflows. Importantly, Draftable Legal users will still have the option to rename input files if needed.
Easier access to file loading options
The January update made a simple but important change to the Draftable New Comparison Window user interface. Users with more than one document management system integration will no longer have to use the horizontal scroll bar to see all their file input options. Instead, the updated UI organizes file selector options into two rows in the New Comparison Window, meaning all file loading options are visible at all times. This reduces the number of clicks required to complete file loading when using more than one document management system.
Improved file loading selection state visibility
January's update also adds an small improvement to our user experience that avoid conflicts in file loading actions. Previously, users were able to choose to load a second file when the first was still being added to Draftable. From v25.1.0 a loading spinner and disabled compare button will display until all files are loaded, ensuring users know when files are still being prepared and do not need to reload files unnecessarily.
Integration Updates
Improved file ordering when loading files from DMS
Our January update includes an improvement to ensure DMS files are loaded in the correct order when selecting document management system files. Previously, Draftable only used file version metadata to order documents only when those were loaded from the loading commands available within each Document Management System. This update ensures the same file ordering logic applies when using the file selection options within the New Comparison Window. This improvement applies to iManage, Epona, and SharePoint.
Updated load behavior for Draftable's Microsoft add-ins
Several customers provided feedback that Draftable's dynamic MS Office Add-in dynamic load behavior was causing issues with avoiding it being disabled by Outlook, Word and Excel. Based on this feedback, we have updated all of the Draftable MS Office Add-ins (Outlook, Word and Excel) to now load at startup to reduce issues with add-ins being disabled by Microsoft Office. As part of this update, all Microsoft Office Add-ins have had version upgrades, specifically:
- Outlook Add-in v1.18.0.0
- Word Add-in v1.26.0.0
- Excel Add-in v1.4.0.0
Administrator Features
A number of small updates were made in our January releases to assist application administrators and to ensure software frameworks leveraged by Draftable are kept up to date. Specifically, the 25.01.0 release included:
- An update to remove the 'Remember my choice' checkbox for next actions in admin-set profiles when the 'always ask' option is configured
- An upgrade to .NET80 for improved stability and performance
- An updated CEF (Chromium Embedded Framework) to version 131.3.50 to reduce logging noise and improve integration behavior.
Bug Fixes
As with all releases, the January updates have included fixes to several reported issues:
- Fixed file naming inconsistencies for filenames with periods (".").
- Resolved an error in the Word Add-in impacting the 'Compare Text with Draftable' option.
- Fixed errors related to SharePoint graph client connections.
- Addressed color highlighting issues in the Departures Table.
- Corrected file loading issues from Document Management Systems.
- Resolved export errors when using 1-Click Compare for redline DOCX files.
- Fixed crashes related to clause data generation in the Departures Table.
If you are ever experiencing issues in Draftable, please contact support@draftable.com for further assistance.