Processing

Use Relativity’s processing feature to ingest raw data directly into your workspace for eventual search, review, and production without the need for an external tool. You can use the various processing objects to create custom processing jobs that handle a wide array of information.

Note: Your environment has been enabled to dynamically scale your Invariant worker servers dependent on load. Sustained activity is automatically detected by the system, and Relativity will add workers to handle this work. Once the work is done, they will automatically scale back down. This feature is continually being improved to be smarter about when we add workers and how many we add.

Some of the primary goals of processing are to:

Discern, at an item level, exactly what data is found in a certain source.
Record all item-level metadata as it existed prior to processing.
Enable defensible reduction of data by selecting only items that are appropriate to move forward to review.

Note: As of February 2025, the new Feature Permissions redefines Relativity's security management by shifting the focus from Object Types and Tab Visibility to feature-based permissions. This new method is simply another option; any feature-specific permissions information already in this topic is still applicable. This new interface enables administrators to manage permissions at the feature level, offering a more intuitive experience. By viewing granular permissions associated with each feature, administrators can ensure comprehensive control, ultimately reducing complexity and minimizing errors. For details see Instance-level permissions and Workspace-level permissions.

Note: There are no specific security requirements, but if a user needs to be restricted from running processing, then permissions need to be revoked to all processing objects.

For a list of changes made to processing per monthly product update, see the Release Notes.

Basic processing workflow

The following steps depict a typical processing workflow that uses all available processing objects and phases. Note that each user's workflow may vary. You may not be required to follow all of these steps for every processing job you run.

Create a Processing Set
- Entities can be created on the fly, in advance, or automatically through imports or connections to HR systems.
- Processing Profiles carry over from template workspaces.
- If necessary, create new Password Bank Entries with passwords for any password-protected files to be processed.
(Optional) Inventory files
- Inventoried files can be filtered down based on several metadata attributes prior to publish.
- Reports can be run to understand and communicate the files culled from publish.

Discover files and Publish
- Post publish – view, ignore, or retry any errors that occurred during any phase of the processing job. If needed, republish the files.