ADAPT Newsletter Q1 2024
A message from management
On behalf of ADAPT, I’d like to thank you for your support this past year as we continue to enhance the ADAPT platform and to improve upon the legacy of Fore! Trust software. I have heard from many of you this past year on the things you like about the ADAPT offerings as well as other things you wished it did. Equally important, many of you have shared with us the things you don’t like about the product and the ADAPT team especially appreciates the detailed feedback we get from some of our customers on the specific bugs they encounter so that we can more readily address them. It helps us help you!
Behind the scenes this past year, ADAPT has been expanding its personnel to better improve our product and our customer service – hiring and training highly qualified added support and quality assurance staff. In addition, we have supplemented our internal staff with an extended team of outside legal researchers and consultants to help us review and enhance our document templates.
While this puts us in a much better position in 2024 for product improvements, we still were able to achieve quite a bit this past year with our team. In 2023, we had over 30 releases. These held a variety of updates, fixes and improvements where we addressed feedback from customers like you as well as issues we identified as part of our quality assurance and update process. We also included several legal updates throughout the year as well as some significant enhancements. These include:
Our new “My Templates” functionality where users of our EP Planner and EP Drafter products can create their own correspondence templates or modify ADAPT’s to be able to generate the correspondence they want through the system.
The ability to integrate ADAPT with Clio practice management’s system so that users can readily share client’s data between the two systems.
The ability to store preferred witnesses and notaries that can be automatically assigned to document assemblies or selected from a pick list as desired.
And a variety of items that were added to bring other features users wanted to see added in a manner that was more like Fore! Trust software such as the ability to default the pour over will executor to incorporate the Executors by reference to the then-acting trustees of the revocable trust.
During the same time, we also have done significant work on improving the Miller Trust and breaking it out into a separate template, some additional improvements related to the trust protector language as well as a variety of changes and updates to the various state powers of attorney, healthcare powers and advance healthcare directives.
In the year ahead, we are continuing to focus on improving the product both in terms of the quality and thoroughness of the legal documents and the format of the output. To that end, we are in a comprehensive review of all our notary and signature blocks which many of you will already have seen some significant improvements in this regard.
And, in addition to several document update releases we also have some brand-new document templates that we will be introducing – more to come on this later in the year.
Again, thank you for your commitment to our product and best wishes for the New Year!
Tommy Cimino, CIO
Supporting Your Workflow thru Integrations
Last month, ADAPT took a significant step forward in developing our first integration with other third-party cloud-based products – ADAPT’s integration with Clio’s practice management system. In speaking with customers over the years, one thing is noticeably clear; there is no one right way to “do” estate planning. Every firm has their own way in which they like to deliver their services and many firms use a variety of other parties’ software alongside ADAPT in fitting our drafting solution into their practice. ADAPT not only strives to make you more efficient and effective in drafting your estate planning documents but also more fully support and automate your workflow. Increasingly delivering on third party integrations is key in this regard. No one company is positioned to fully support every firm’s need and being able to pass data to other systems helps reduce steps and errors when attempting to coordinate multiple systems.
This means that at the same time ADAPT is continuing to improve and update the many different legal document templates available throughout our system, we are also continuing to add new features designed to improve the way ADAPT can better fit into your practice’s workflow. This means a continued focus on integration as well as greater customization capabilities are down the road.
You have seen us start to do this with our client questionnaire (which has been completely customizable for some time complete with a WYSIWYG editor) and our “My Templates” feature we released last summer allowing you to fully customize existing or new correspondence templates.
And while these initial new customization features focused on providing our users with greater control over system inputs and documents. Integration enhancements have an analogous impact on firm workflow. Each integration gives more firms the ability to manage how ADAPT data and content is moved between their systems as well as potentially how client data and objects are imported into the ADAPT system.
Our recent integration with Clio is an excellent example of this principle. Now our customers who are Clio users can pull client information from Clio directly into ADAPT and push ADAPT client information into their Clio system. They can do this in bulk and/or they can do this on a case-by-case basis in the system. This should simplify the firm’s data input process where firms use Clio forms as an intake source or conversely, if a firm likes to use our questionnaire process, they can easily port client information back to Clio if they so choose.
We already have a large number of users who have taken advantage of this integration, and we look forward to getting their feedback on ways we can improve as we begin to work on bridging other systems soon. You will hear more about specific integrations later in the year.
In this regard, if there are systems you want ADAPT to integrate with, be sure to let us know! We have identified several practice management and middleware systems for our next efforts but as there are a wide range of systems being used in practice (e.g. Clio, My Case, ActionStep, Practice Panther, etc.) we want to make sure we are prioritizing the systems that our customers are most interested in using alongside ADAPT.
From our Support Team:
THANK YOU! We would like to thank you for your feedback! ADAPT is only as good as our clients feedback.
Our team has grown! To ensure that ADAPT provides you with the best possible service we have added to our team.
HELP SUPPORT HELP YOU
To ensure that our support team can quickly assist you here are some things that we need from you when you a question or concern.
- Include as much detail that you can provide
- The name of the file and your permission to review the file
- The type of browser you are using to access your ADAPT account
Did you know that every account has access to the Resource Center?
This is located in the upper right hand corner of your account and can be accessed by clicking on the “Book” icon.
In the resource center you will find tutorial videos, user guides and helpful FAQ.
The Customer Service team can be reached Monday through Friday 8am to 5 pm CST.
We can be reached via phone, email or chat
(800) 212-2642 ext. 800
support@adaptdocs.com
adaptdocs.com
Time Saving Recommendations
While browsing ADAPT’s cloud-based solutions, it is recommended to use the following settings for the best experience.
Computer Type:
Personal Computer (PC) or MAC.
Browser Type:
Chrome is regarded as the best overall browser. It conforms to standardizations where most other browsers do not. Chrome will help to ensure the best experience however Firefox and Opera are acceptable.
Auto Cache Clearing:
Clearing your browsing data provides for a safer and cleaner browsing environment each time you surf the web. You can keep your browser clean by configuring the browser to auto clean each time you close the browser. Here is how to configure your browser:
Chrome:
Top right of the browser window, click on the hamburger icon (3 vertical dots),
Select “Clear browsing data”,
Select Advanced,
Select all items you wish to keep clean, (Browsing history, Download history, Cookies and other site data, and cache images and files. These items are recommended as a minimum.
The setting Time Range is recommended to All time.
Hinderance/Blockers:
Firewalls and Adware blockers are fine tools to use to help protect your computer, however they can be configured to deny good transactions via a browser. If you have any of these software or hardware devices, ensure that their configurations are not set so high they block ADAPT transactions. We employ very high settings for security to ensure you and your clients data are safe.
How do I know if blocking is occurring?
Simple, disable the software-based firewall or Adware blocker for a short time. Then open a new browser window and try again. If your experience is better, then you know the configuration is set too high.
If you need more assistance, please have a look at the ADAPT Resources link in your account for How To Articles, and Videos.