Workspace and Document Viewer

The workspace is designed around three kinds of work: choosing material, reading source documents, and building reasoning.

Screenshot placeholder: Workspace with left rail, document viewer, and Canvas area visible.

Workspace layout

The workspace can include:

A Case or library rail.
A Documents and sections area.
A document viewer.
A Canvas or PenPad area.
Toolbars for document review, annotations, Canvas tools, and navigation.

Document and Canvas/PenPad toolbars can auto-hide after 5, 8, or 10 seconds. Use the hamburger menu to enable this and the pane’s top-center notch to reveal a hidden toolbar. See Toolbar auto-hide.

Left-pane controls

When no document is open in the center pane, use its browsing overview and section lists. That guide explains Case tiles, the two scrolling areas, upload destinations, file selection versus opening, renaming, recordings, and section actions.

The buttons at the top of the left pane are:

+ New Case: create a matter workspace. See Create Case.
Record audio: the microphone button, also called Rec audio in HELP. Confirm the destination, start recording, then use the same button to stop and save. See Record audio.
Ask Docs: search indexed documents using a question and a selected scope. See Ask Docs.
Compare passages: select two to four documents for comparative review. See Compare passages.

Below these buttons, Structure / AI Legal follows the focused document when the Doc Structure Index drawer toggle is on. Available Cases selects the matter, and the active location shows Bookmarks, Highlights, Comments, Structure-Legal Indexes, Tags, Documents, and the Case sections. Global Lib. and its subheads appear farther down the rail; its + adds a custom subhead for an eligible account.

Use the slim notch at the start of the left-pane action-icon row to hide or show Available Cases. This frees rail space when you are working inside one active Case. Scroll the left pane to reach lower controls. The Case picker and long index lists also have their own scroll areas. In a very narrow or portrait layout, widen the rail or open its temporary browser overlay to see the full names and lists.

Resize and reveal the left pane

Drag the left pane’s resize edge or splitter to adjust its width. If you squeeze the left pane completely shut, the app preserves that sizing and shows a left-center handle when the browser is hidden.

Click or tap the left-center handle to open the full left browser temporarily. It stays open while you choose Cases, library locations, sections, documents, and Canvas/PenPad files, so repeated browsing does not collapse it. Close it with the browser close control or by clicking/tapping outside it. To resize by dragging, use the pane edge or splitter; the left-center handle is a reveal control.

This reveal handle is available in the normal landscape workspace, app full-screen landscape, and app full-screen portrait layout.

Left pane sections and document panes

When a Case is active, the left pane shows its working sections:

Documents.
Issues.
Facts.
Legal Diary.
Evidence.
Tasks/To-dos.
Drafts.
Authorities.
Research.

Select a section to review or edit that part of the active Case. Legal Diary is where confirmed hearings, deadlines, events, meetings, reminders, and dated actions live after review. When Global Lib. or one of its subheads is selected, Documents remains available, while the Case-only sections are muted and disabled.

Select Documents under a Case to list all documents stored in that Case. Selecting Global Lib. or one of its subheads displays the Documents list for that library location. Click or tap any listed document to open it.

Open documents from the left pane

Click or tap a document name under the active Case, Global Library, or Global Library subhead.

If the center document pane is available, the document opens in the center.
If a document is already open in the center pane, the newly selected document opens in the right pane.
Further document selections replace the document in the right pane while leaving the center document open.
Selecting the center document again opens another view of it in the right pane when that second view is not already open.
Selecting a document that is already open focuses its existing pane instead of opening another copy.

This makes it possible to keep one reference document open in the center while reviewing other documents one after another in the right pane.

Close the center document when you want to make the center pane available for another selection. If a remaining open document is automatically promoted into the center pane, it becomes the current center document; close or retain it as needed before making the next selection.

Active Case, browsing mode, and the receiving Canvas/PenPad

The document browser and the Canvas/PenPad destination are separate. At startup, CogniVenue-Legal opens the default or last active Case and its default or last-open Canvas/PenPad. After that, the Canvas/PenPad that is open in the right pane remains the receiving workspace for Copy to Canvas until you explicitly open another Canvas/PenPad, regardless of which Case, Global Lib., or subhead you browse.

When no document is open in the center pane, selecting a Case, Global Lib., or a subhead changes the browsing context. A document selected from that context opens in the center pane.

When a Case document remains open in the center pane, it pins the active document context. Selecting another Case, Global Lib., or a subhead puts the rail into browsing mode: the selected location is shown for browsing, the true active Case remains indicated, and documents from the browsed location open or replace the right-pane document. This lets you copy useful passages from another Case or the Global Library into the currently open Canvas/PenPad without disturbing the working canvas.

Close the center document when you want the next selected Case or library location to become the main browsing context and open its document in the center pane. Closing a right-pane document reveals the same Canvas/PenPad that was open underneath.

For a deliberate complete switch, expand the double-arrow carousel at the workspace’s top left and select Search Case. Enter part or all of a Case name, then select a Case from either the scrollable Available Cases list or the filtered Short-listed Cases list. This closes every open document and comparison view, saves and leaves the earlier Canvas/PenPad, makes the chosen Case active, restores its center-pane Documents overview, and opens that Case’s most recently updated Canvas or PenPad in the right pane. A new Case therefore opens its default ThoughtMap_1.canvas. Unlike the eye-marked browsing mode, Search Case knowingly changes both the active Case and receiving Canvas/PenPad.

Screenshot placeholder: Left pane showing Case sections, one document open in the center pane, and another document open in the right pane.

Choose the active document in two-document view

When documents are open in both the center and right panes, click or tap the pane you want to navigate. That document becomes the active document for Search Text, the Document Structure/AI Legal indexes, and the left-pane Bookmarks, Tags, and Comments controls.

The active document is therefore not necessarily the most recently listed document or every document in the selected Case. Navigation controls act on one focused document at a time.

Search inside the active document

Use the document toolbar’s Search Text/Tags control after text extraction or OCR finishes.

Enter a word or phrase. Matching text and annotation tags are listed for the active document.
Press Enter to move through matches in the current direction.
Use the down arrow for the next match or the up arrow for the previous match. After using an arrow, repeated Enter presses continue in that same direction.
The match is brought into view and highlighted. The counter identifies the current match and total matches.
Close Search Text when finished. Opening it again starts a new search session.

If no matches appear, confirm that the correct document pane is active and that its OCR/text extraction has completed.

Navigate bookmarks, highlights, tags, and comments from the left pane

When an open document is active, the left pane shows that document’s Bookmarks, Highlights, Comments, Structure-Legal Indexes, and Tags beneath the selected Case or library location.

Click or tap Bookmarks repeatedly to move through that document’s bookmarks in document order, wrapping to the first after the last.
Click or tap Highlights repeatedly to move through grouped Highlighter sections in document order. Highlight navigation keeps its own position.
Click or tap Comments repeatedly to move through its comments in the same way. Bookmark, highlight, and comment navigation keep separate positions.
Click or tap Structure-Legal Indexes repeatedly to move through accepted Structure and AI Legal index entries in document order. Pending-review and dismissed entries are not included in this sequence.
Select an individual tag name to choose it, then click or tap the Tags - [name] heading repeatedly to move through that tag’s occurrences. Selecting the name alone does not move the document. If no tag is selected, clicking Tags selects the first available tag and opens its next occurrence.
Each navigation action brings the active document to the saved text, region, or page and shows a temporary source highlight when available.

The numbers beside Bookmarks, Highlights, Comments, and Structure-Legal Indexes are saved-location counts; the unselected Tags heading shows the number of distinct tag names. Empty types have no count and cannot be cycled. Tag names are listed alphabetically; scroll the left pane to reach lower names. If you focus another document pane, including one opened by Related, these controls refresh for that document.

Use the document toolbar’s Annotations & Structure-Legal Indexes panel to scroll saved entries and accepted indexes. Select an entry to navigate directly; manual entries can be edited or deleted there, while accepted generated indexes are read-only. Deleting a Highlight removes the grouped Highlighter ink for that highlighted section. The eye button hides/shows page marks while preserving entries. See Review, hide, and delete annotations for the differences between closing a list, hiding marks, clearing a temporary highlight, and deleting an entry.

Document Structure Index and AI Legal Index

The left-pane index panel appears while Documents is selected and follows the active document pane when Doc Structure Index is enabled in the hamburger drawer. Turn that persistent toggle off to hide the panel completely, including the collapsed Document Indexes heading. Turn it on again when you want the index panel back. It provides two source-linked views:

Structure shows a grounded outline found in the document, such as headings, subheadings, clauses, schedules, annexures, and other structural labels. DOCX paragraph styles can improve this outline when they are available.
AI Legal shows generated, source-linked legal signals that may help locate issues, facts, dates, evidence, admissions, duties, reliefs, risks, contradictions, missing material, and related passages. These are review aids, not verified legal conclusions.

Open and use an index

Select Documents and open a document in the center or right pane.
If two documents are open, click or tap the document pane whose index you want to use.
Select Structure or AI Legal in the left-pane index panel.
Click or tap an index item to scroll the active document to its source passage and highlight it.
Use the single up/down arrows to move to the previous or next index item. Use the double arrows to move between repeated items in the current group.
Use Group index to organize entries by Page, Category, Confidence, or Chronology.

Each item can show its category, page, confidence, origin/review status, and a source snippet. Open its three-dot menu to use the available actions: Accept, Edit for AI Legal items, Bookmark source, Tag source, Comment on source, or Dismiss.

Long indexes scroll inside their own list. Using an item’s action menu, including Accept, preserves the current list position. If the hamburger drawer’s Doc Structure Index toggle is on, Close indexes hides the panel to free space in the rail and Document indexes shows it again. If the toggle is off, the index panel stays hidden until you enable it again.

Filter Index

Type in Filter index to narrow only the currently selected Structure or AI Legal tab. Filtering is not a new document search: it filters the existing index entries by their title, body, category, source snippet, or page number. Clear the field to show the complete index again.

Index messages and refresh

Open a document to show indexes means that no document pane is currently open and active. Open a document, or focus one of the two open document panes.
No grounded structure found yet means no reliable Structure entries were found in the available extracted text.
No source-linked legal signals found yet means no AI Legal entries are currently available.
No matching items means the Filter Index text excludes every current entry; clear or change the filter.
Index unavailable for this document means the index could not be loaded or generated.

If a document is new or still processing, let OCR, text extraction, and indexing finish. Then use Regenerate index to rebuild the selected tab. Use Close indexes to collapse the panel; click or tap Document indexes to reopen it.

Always open and review the source passage before relying on a Structure or AI Legal entry.

Screenshot placeholder: Left pane showing the Structure and AI Legal tabs, Filter Index, grouping and navigation controls, and a source-linked index item.

Open a document

Open a Case.
Select Documents.
Select a document in the list.
Open it in the document viewer.
Use page navigation, search, selection, annotation, and source-link tools as needed.

If the document preview is not available for a file type, the file can still be saved locally and queued for OCR/indexing.

Document viewer

The Document View guide explains the PDF and image viewer’s toolbar, page navigation, text and area selection, annotations, and export. Start there for scanned PDFs, textual PDFs, and image files; its text-preview comparison identifies which page annotation tools are unavailable for TXT/TEXT, DOCX, Markdown, RTF, ODT, HTML/HTM, EML/MSG email, ICS/VCS calendar, and CSV previews.

The document viewer is used to:

Read PDF and image pages.
Read text previews for TXT/TEXT, DOCX, Markdown, RTF, ODT, HTML/HTM, EML/MSG email, ICS/VCS calendar, and CSV files.
Navigate pages.
Search extracted text.
Select text or page regions.
Copy selections inside Document View and paste them as PDF/image overlays.
Add comments, tags, bookmarks, and annotations.
Draw page ink or highlighter marks.
Read aloud selected text or document text when supported.
Send useful material to Canvas.

Related topic: Source-linked Canvas notes.

Search within a document

Use document search after OCR or text extraction finishes. Search applies to the active/focused document pane. Enter cycles through results; using the previous or next arrow changes the direction used by subsequent Enter presses.

Search is useful for:

Party names.
Dates.
Contract clauses.
Invoice numbers.
Statutory terms.
Admissions.
Limitation facts.
Notice and reply references.

If search results are missing, the document may still be processing. See OCR, text extraction, and indexing.

For the complete workflow, see Search inside the active document and Navigate bookmarks, highlights, tags, and comments from the left pane.

Ask Docs

Select Ask Docs to open the Ask the Docs dialog. Use it to ask a question against indexed local documents and receive a short source-grounded answer with matching passages. It is useful when you want to find the documents and excerpts most relevant to a clause, fact pattern, date, issue, admission, or procedural question without manually opening and searching each file.

Open or create a Case first; the current Ask Docs entry point requires an available Case even when you intend to search the library. The dialog initially selects Current Case, so explicitly choose Global Lib. when searching library material.

Open the scope dropdown and choose Current Case, All Cases, Global Lib., or Everything.
Enter a word, phrase, sentence, or question of at least three characters.
Select Ask, or submit the entry from the text field.
Review the answer and the source list. The answer is composed from the most relevant indexed passages in the selected scope.
Click or tap a source entry to open the relevant document and move the document viewer to the matching excerpt or page.

Scope choices work as follows:

Current Case searches indexed passages belonging to the active Case.
All Cases searches across every Case.
Global Lib. searches Global Library documents and subheads.
Everything searches both all Cases and the Global Library.

Ask Docs first uses local semantic matching. If semantic matching is unavailable or has no useful results, it can fall back to indexed text matching. Results depend on completed OCR, text extraction, and indexing, so newly uploaded documents may not appear immediately.

You can ask several questions and scroll through the current Ask Docs conversation. Each question retrieves passages using the scope selected for that question. The conversation is retained for the current app session, so closing and reopening Ask Docs, or selecting a source that closes the dialog and opens the source passage, keeps the existing Q&A available when you return. Restarting the app clears this session-only history. To clear it manually while the app is still running, use the Clear conversation button in the dialog. If there are no useful results, try more specific source wording or allow indexing to finish; if retrieval fails, the dialog shows an error so you can try again.

Good Ask Docs prompts are specific enough to match source text. Examples:

Which documents mention termination notice?
Find arbitration clause and stay of suit language.
What payment admissions appear in the record?
Which passages discuss limitation or delay?

Ask Docs is a retrieval and source-navigation tool, not an independent legal opinion. Open and review the cited passages before relying on the answer.

Screenshot placeholder: Ask the Docs dialog showing the scope dropdown, question field, matching excerpts, percentages, and selectable source entries.

Annotations and page ink

Use bookmarks, highlights, tags, and comments to save locations and searchable notes. Use Pen, Highlighter, Eraser, and Lasso Ink to mark PDF or image pages. Continuous Highlighter ink appears as grouped Highlights for navigation and annotation export. Pen strokes are not grouped as Highlights. Enable Annotation controls page ink and appears only where the open document has a PDF/image page surface; you can add bookmarks, tags, and comments while drawing is disabled.

The Document View guide covers annotation visibility and deletion, automatic saving, Export Annotations PDF, and Export PDF with Ink. Generated Structure and AI Legal entries are covered separately under document indexes.

Screenshot placeholder: Document page with highlight, pen ink, and annotation tools visible.

Annotation color selector

The annotation color selector icon at the top-left opens 12 circular color swatches.

The first 11 swatches are ready-to-use color presets.
A tick on a preset shows the selected color. Selecting one of these presets applies that color to both document annotations and Canvas/PenPad annotations.
The last swatch contains an encircled + sign and opens the custom color editor.

The custom color editor contains a rectangular shade selector and a vertical brightness strip. You can also enter an exact six-digit Hex value (with or without a leading #) or Red / Green / Blue channels from 0 to 255. Valid edits keep Hex, RGB, and the preview synchronized, and either Set Color button applies the preview color. Incomplete or invalid text keeps the last valid color. See Edit a color for the shared editor’s input details.

Choose or enter the required color.
Select Set Color - Doc to apply it to document annotations.
Select Set Color - Canvas/PenPad to apply it to Canvas and PenPad annotations.
Select Close after setting the required colors.

The two set-color buttons allow document and Canvas/PenPad annotation colors to be customized independently. To return both areas to one shared preset, reopen the selector and choose one of the first 11 swatches.

Screenshot placeholder: Top-left annotation color selector showing 11 preset swatches, the checked active color, and the final encircled plus swatch.

Screenshot placeholder: Custom color editor showing the shade rectangle, vertical refinement strip, hexadecimal value field, Set color-Doc, Set color-Canvas/PenPad, and Close controls.

Select and link document text or areas

When selection tools are available, you can select text or a visible page region, copy it inside Document View, copy it to Canvas, or create a source document link to a selected Canvas node, card, or PenPad page.

For an image or scanned PDF, a rectangular area selection is a visual snapshot. Use Include ink & copied overlays to choose whether Copy and Copy to Canvas use a clean page-region image or include committed pen/highlighter ink and previously pasted document overlays inside the selected rectangle. If an ink stroke crosses the rectangle boundary, only the portion inside the selection is copied. Ink on other pages and interface overlays—such as the selection border, handles, search highlight, annotation labels, and action buttons—are excluded.

Ordinary text selection in a textual PDF continues to copy only the selected text. If you instead draw a closed ink loop and use its visual Copy to Canvas action, the captured page content and previously committed ink inside that loop are composited in the same way, including for textual PDFs. The newly drawn loop acts only as the selection boundary and is not included in the copied image.

Copy in Document View uses the app’s shared rich staging area and also writes a best-effort operating-system clipboard item: plain text for text selections, or a PNG image for visual area selections where the platform supports image clipboard writes. Canvas/PenPad region Copy uses the same staging area and mirrors a flattened PNG to the operating-system clipboard. Source metadata and app-only links remain in the rich staged item.

Document View and Canvas/PenPad each provide one Paste action. Paste reads the OS clipboard only when pressed. If supported external text/image content has changed since the app last copied, that external content is used; otherwise Paste consumes the richer in-app staged selection. Document paste requires a PDF/image page surface and remains disabled for text-preview documents.

Copy to Canvas sends the selection to the Canvas/PenPad currently open as the receiving workspace. The source document may belong to the active Case, another Case you are browsing, the Global Library root, or any Global Library subhead. This is intentional: keep the matter canvas open, browse other contexts, and copy useful source material into the open Canvas/PenPad without uploading duplicate documents into the Case.

Copied text is placed in a new node. A Canvas destination automatically switches to 50% Canvas zoom for visibility; a PenPad destination fits its page. Use Center Canvas at the workspace’s top left or in the expanded full-screen tool strip to restore the Canvas’s most zoomed-out 5% overview. See Copy document text to a node for viewing zoom and node text-size controls.

Opening or browsing a Case, Global Library, or subhead document does not automatically switch the receiving Canvas/PenPad. To copy into another Case, Global Library root, or subhead canvas, explicitly open that Canvas/PenPad from that location’s left-pane Documents list or the center-pane Open Canvas / Open PenPad action. That Canvas/PenPad then remains the receiving workspace until another Canvas/PenPad is explicitly opened. See Copy library material to a Case canvas and Open a Global Library canvas explicitly.

Once copied, Copy to Canvas nodes can also own nearby Canvas/PenPad ink. If you write ink inside or close to a copied text excerpt, copied image, or copied page-area node during a Canvas/PenPad annotation session, turning annotation mode off automatically groups that fresh ink with the node.

If the receiving workspace has no Canvas/PenPad file, for example because its last one was deleted, the app can create ThoughtMap_1.canvas when Copy to Canvas needs a destination. If a destination cannot be prepared, the app displays an explanatory message instead of silently discarding the copy.

To create a source document link:

Open the source document in the document viewer.
Select the destination node, card, or PenPad page in Canvas/PenPad.
Mark the required text, paragraph, or page area in the document.
Click or tap the elliptical Link selection to selected node or PenPad page icon.

You can repeat this process to attach multiple source links to one destination. A node/card’s bottom strip opens its source directly when there is one link, or shows a scrollable source list when there are several. PenPad page links opens the page’s source list, and the document’s bottom-right Canvas rail provides the return route to linked items. Direct linking to an existing item requires a single-document center view; it is disabled in comparison views.

The document’s Canvas rail lists matching links from the active Canvas/PenPad. Expand its bottom-right tab and scroll inside its list to reach more entries. Clicking or tapping a link navigates to the document source and focuses the associated node/card or PenPad page. See Canvas rail in the document viewer and Open a source document from a linked item for both directions of navigation.

See Create and review source document links for the complete workflow and link-list locations.

This is useful for:

Capturing a clause.
Mapping a document exhibit.
Saving an admission.
Connecting a page reference to an issue node.
Building an evidence chart.

Compare passages

Select Compare Passages to open a multi-document review dialog. You can compare any number from two documents up to four documents at a time. Documents can come from different Cases, the Global Library, or Global Library subheads.

Select one of the four document slots: Doc 1, Doc 2, Doc 3, or Doc 4.
Choose a Case, Global Library, or Global Library subhead from the source list.
Select a document for the active slot.
Repeat until at least two and no more than four documents are selected.
For a two-view comparison, optionally enable Open side by side to put one view in the center pane and the other in the right pane.
Select Compare 2, Compare 3, or Compare 4, according to the number of selected documents.

The Compare action remains disabled until at least two documents are selected. The same document cannot occupy multiple slots at once; selecting it for a new slot removes it from the previous slot. Audio recordings are not included in the compare picker. Open side by side applies to two-view comparisons; three- and four-document comparisons use the multi-pane comparison layout.

To compare a document with itself, choose it as Doc 1, then select Compare with Doc1. With Open side by side enabled, one copy opens in the center pane and the other in the right pane. With it disabled, both views open in the center comparison area.

Selected documents open in the comparative review layout. In the standard landscape workspace, two-view comparisons are stacked vertically in the center area unless Open side by side is enabled. With three or four documents, the first two documents occupy the center area and the additional one or two occupy the right area, stacked when there are two. Click or tap a pane to make it active; search, document navigation, annotation tools, and source navigation follow the active pane. Close individual panes when they are no longer required. If only one document remains after closing panes, the app returns to normal single-document viewing.

The document toolbar’s Related list provides another route into comparison. Clicking or touching a result automatically opens the originating and related passages in two comparison views, including two views of the same file for a within-document match. See Related: click or tap a result to compare both passages.

Examples:

Contract clause versus amendment.
Notice versus reply.
Invoice versus payment record.
Pleading allegation versus evidence.
Earlier draft versus final document.

Screenshot placeholder: Compare Passages dialog showing four document slots, Case and Global Library sources, selected documents, and an enabled Compare button.

Screenshot placeholder: Comparative review layout showing selected documents across center and right panes.

Full screen modes

Use the app full-screen button to open the whole workspace in landscape. The controls at the top-right then let you choose:

Landscape workspace for the standard three-column layout.
Portrait workspace for a simulated portrait three-area layout that keeps the document browser, document view, and Canvas/PenPad visible together.
Close to restore the normal window.

The portrait workspace gives the document slightly more width than Canvas/PenPad. Drag the document/Canvas divider to resize either pane between 20% and 80%; its last portrait position is remembered separately from the landscape divider. The left browser can shrink fully shut. Use the left-center handle to slide the full browser temporarily over the document. It stays open for internal browsing and file selections; close it with the browser close control or by clicking/tapping outside it.

Document and Canvas areas can still enter their own full-screen modes for focused review. When opened from the portrait workspace, they initially use their portrait full-screen view; closing the focused view restores the three-area portrait workspace.

Use full screen when:

Reading long PDFs.
Drawing detailed page ink.
Building a dense Canvas.
Presenting a working map.

Close a focused document or Canvas full-screen view when you need the full Case layout again.

See Full-screen Canvas and PenPad for its floating tools and orientation controls, and Canvas zoom, then node-level zoom for working from the overall map down to one card.