Bundles

What a bundle is

A bundle is a group of documents inside a workspace that a row can point at instead of a single document. The row answers as the group. Everything else about the table is unchanged — same columns, same output types, same citations.

The citation is the reason this matters more than tidiness. “90 days, per Amendment 2” is a different claim from “90 days”, and only one of them can be checked.

Named and unnamed

Whether it has a name is the whole difference between the two kinds. Drop files straight onto a row and you get an unnamed bundle: private to that row, invisible as a concept, and it simply looks like a row with several documents in it. An email forwarded to a mailhook makes one of these too — its attachments become one unnamed bundle on one new row, first attachment first.

Give one a name and it appears in the bundles column beside the files list, where it can back rows in any number of tables and outlives every one of them. Name a bundle when the same group is worth reaching for again — the same set of policy documents feeding a compliance table and a renewals table. A group that only ever backs one row does not need a name.

Making one

Select files in the panel and press Make Bundle — from the footer or from the selection’s right-click menu — or drop a set of files onto the bundles column. Either way it is created immediately as “Untitled bundle” with the rename box already open — the selection has said everything the bundle needs to exist.

After that it is all dragging:

• A bundle dragged onto a row’s Documents cell makes that row adopt it.
• Dragged onto the add-row bar, or onto an empty table, it creates a row backed by it.
• Files dragged into a bundle join it; members dragged back out to the files list leave it.
• The × on a bundle in a Documents cell detaches just that row — it keeps the same documents as its own private copy, answers intact, and the shared bundle is untouched.

Renaming, recolouring and deleting a bundle are all on the same menu, and the whole bundle takes a right-click — the header or any file listed under it — as well as the ⋯ button in its strip. A member leaves with the × beside its name.

A bundle’s colour is stored with the bundle, so everyone in the workspace sees the same one.

The bundles page

Named bundles have a view of their own in the workspace, and each one has its own address — so a bundle can be sent to a colleague rather than described to them.

The list is a table: primary document, files, size, usage and created. Primary document leads because most bundles are named after the fact and are still called “Untitled bundle” — the file at the top is what actually identifies them. Usage is the count of tables using the bundle, and it is the honest thing to check before deleting one.

Search covers the files inside a bundle, not only its name. A bundle is often named for a subject while the thing you remember is a document in it, so a bundle that matched that way opens showing only the files that matched and says so — “1 of 3 files match” — rather than appearing unexplained.

Add opens the files panel rather than making anything. A bundle is its documents; an empty one is a name waiting for a second gesture that nothing prompts you to make. So bundles are still created the way they always were — from a selection of files.

Unfolding a row shows its documents three-up, each with its own first page rather than a file-type icon, since every member of a bundle is usually the same kind of file and a letterhead tells them apart where “PDF” does not. Promoting a document there is a Make primary button rather than a drag — see below.

A bundle’s record

Clicking a bundle’s usage count opens its record: every answer every table holds about that bundle, in one place. It is grouped table, then row, then cell — and the same record is what the quick view shows from the files panel, so the two cannot answer differently.

It is not one grid, and that is deliberate. Two tables may each have a column called “Location” asking different questions with different output types. Merging them by name would show one answer and silently drop the one that disagrees with it — which is exactly the case you opened the record to find. Knowing which table asked is the point.

Citations sit beside the record rather than inside it, one tab per table, so checking a source does not cost you your place. The record can also leave the app as a spreadsheet or a report — see exporting.

How a bundled answer is produced

Each member document is read on its own first, producing one fact per document. A second pass resolves those facts against each other into the single answer the cell shows — which is where precedence gets applied, so a later amendment can override the master.

Order is part of that: the document in first position is the bundle’s primary one. In the bundles column you promote a file by dragging it to the top; on the bundles page, where the documents sit in a grid rather than a list, the same thing is a Make primary button. Both do one thing — a bundle that named one document as primary while listing it third would be answering the same question twice.

Editing one reaches every table using it

Adding a document to a shared bundle, removing one, or reordering it changes what every row backed by that bundle is about. Those rows do not silently rewrite themselves — their answers are marked stale instead, in every table at once, and rerunning stays your call. See running and reruns.

• The bundle’s own Run offers to fix what is out of date and says how many — “Run 1 out of date” — across every table using it. Re-running everything is behind the chevron beside it, and it is a different proposition: it charges for answers that are already correct and discards them to derive them again. The button appears only when a run would change something. Either way it asks first, listing the tables and totalling the cells, because from the files panel that cost is otherwise invisible.
• Moving a row to a different bundle marks that row stale outright — its old answers describe a different set of documents entirely.
• Deleting a named bundle asks what to do with the rows using it: let each keep the documents privately, or delete those rows too.

What a bundle costs

Every member is read on its own, so a bundled cell costs more than a single-document one. The first three documents come with the column’s rate; each one after that adds to the cost of that cell. The cost preview totals it before you run.

A bundle holds up to 15 documents. That limit is about the answer as much as the cost: the second pass keeps one document’s fact, so past a point extra members add noise to reconcile rather than evidence to reconcile it with.

One exception worth knowing: on a row backed by a large bundle, answering across documents rather than per document is the cheaper of the two, and by some distance — gathering across the documents once costs less than reading each of them separately. It is a table-wide setting, so it is a choice about the table rather than a lever to pull on one bundled row.

When not to use one

Do not bundle documents just because they are similar. Ten unrelated leases are ten rows; bundling them asks the model to reconcile ten documents that were never in conversation with each other, and you lose the per-document answer that made the table useful.

Bundle when later documents modify earlier ones: master agreements and amendments, a policy and its endorsements, a lease and its side letters.