Email threading results

After running an email threading operation, we recommend reviewing the available reports. See Viewing the Email Threading Summary. You can then create an Email Threading view in the Documents tab to inspect your email threading results. See Setting up an email threading view. If your email threading results have errors, you can use a regular expression filter to format the extracted text. See Repeated content filters tab for more information.

Note: Inclusive, non-duplicate emails have black square indentation squares in the Email Threading Display field. If the emails with black indentation squares aren't actually inclusive, your extracted text format doesn't meet the formatting requirements. See Supported email header formats.

See this related page for information about email thread visualization in the document viewer:

• Email thread visualization

Viewing the Email Threading Summary

After running the email threading operation on a structured data analytics set, you can quickly assess the validity of the results using the Email Threading Summary report. On the Structured Analytics Set console, click View Email Threading Summary to open the report. This report contains a graphical summary and tables that list a breakdown of all the emails analyzed.

The Email Threading Summary pie chart provides a graphical representation of the percentages of inclusive emails, inclusive duplicate emails, and non-inclusive emails.

The Email Threading Summary table provides the following details of the operation's results:

• Total emails analyzed - total number of emails analyzed by the Email Threading operation.
• Inclusive emails - total count and percentage of all emails in the set that actually require review. This is the most important information in the table.
• Inclusive emails; duplicates - count and percentage of inclusive emails that contain duplicates in the set.
• Non-inclusive emails - total count and percentage of all emails in the set that do not contain inclusive content.

The Email Threading Results Summary contains a breakdown by percentage and count of the following report data:

• Emails with attachments - number of email messages that contain attachments.

This tally is a count of parent emails where another document's Parent Document ID value matches the parent email’s document identifier exactly.

• Emails with missing items - number of emails identified that are missing emails within their thread. This could be caused by missed emails in the collection.
• Email threads with no root - number of email threads with no root email identified. Missing root emails may result from discrepancies within the extracted text.
• Duplicate emails - number of duplicate spares identified. Duplicate spare is a message that contains the exact same content as another message, such as a newsletter sent to a distribution list. The identification of duplicate spare emails does not consider the To, CC, or BCC fields in the email headers.
• Duplicate email thread groups - number of distinct threads that contain one or more duplicate spares.
• Email action: forward - number of email messages with a forward action.
• Email action: reply - number of email messages with a reply action.
• Email action: reply all - number of email messages with a reply all action.

The Inclusive Email Reasons Summary contains a breakdown by percentage and count of the following report data:

• Message - number of emails found to be inclusive due to unique content in the text of the email.
• Attachment - number of emails found to be inclusive because they contain a unique attachment that is not present in any other emails in the thread.
• Inferred Match - number of root emails found to be inclusive because their metadata matches the rest of a thread, but the message has discrepancies. See Email threading fields for information on inferred matches.
• Unanalyzed Attachment - the message contains attachments that could not be analyzed by the Analytics engine. In most cases this is due to the attachment being larger than 30 MB.

Setting up an email threading view

To view the results of a specific email threading structured analytics set, we recommend creating an Email Threading view for the structured analytics set on the Documents tab. For more information on creating views, see Views.

To set up an email threading view, complete the following: 

1. Create a new view on the Document object.
2. Complete the fields on the Information tab specific to your view.
3. On the Other tab, complete the following:
   • Group Definition - select the relational field that is selected for the Destination Email Thread Group field on the structured analytics set layout (such as Email Thread Group)
4. On the Fields tab, add the following fields to your view, as well as any additional fields you desire:
• <Structured Analytics Set prefix>::Email Threading Display
• <Structured Analytics Set prefix>::Email Thread Group
• <Structured Analytics Set prefix>::Email Threading ID
• <Structured Analytics Set prefix>::Inclusive Email
• <Structured Analytics Set prefix>::Inclusive Reason
5. On the Conditions tab, add the following condition:
   • <Structured Analytics Set prefix>::Email Thread Group : is set
6. On the Sort tab, sort the following fields in ascending order:
   • <Structured Analytics Set prefix>::Email Thread Group
   • <Structured Analytics Set prefix>::Indentation
   • <Structured Analytics Set prefix>::Email Threading ID
7. Click Save.

The blue line between rows separates distinct threads of email messages.

Thread Groups in the related items pane

To improve the review efficiency, the Email Threading Display field automatically appears when viewing the Thread Group in the related items pane. You can also add the Email Threading Display field to any other view in Relativity.

In the related items pane, click the Thread Group icon to display all messages in the same thread group as the selected document. You can also click the Email Duplicates icon to show all of the messages identified as duplicates of the selected document, or click the Near Dup Groups icon to show all items that are textual near duplicates of the selected document.

After deploying the Analytics application, you can create fields that propagate coding choices to these structured analytics related groups. See Applying propagation to documents for more information.

Note: Be very careful when using propagation. We recommend against turning propagation on for your responsiveness fields. For example, if you mark an email within a group as not responsive, other potentially responsive emails within the group could be automatically coded as not responsive.

Email Threading Display

The Email Threading Display field provides the following visual information about email threading:

Indentation squares

The numbers within each square indentation icon indicate each email message's indentation level within the thread. For example, the first email in the chain would be "1," an email responding to the first email would be "2," and an email responding to the third email would have a "3." The indentation levels go up to 99. For messages with an indentation level over 99, the number within the square icon displays as "99+."

The color of the indentation square indicates inclusiveness and duplicate spare status. Inclusive email messages (Inclusive Email = Yes) contain the most prior message content from all the emails within a particular email branch. A non-duplicate spare email (Email Duplicate Spare = No) is either the primary email within a group of duplicate spare emails, or a standalone email.

• A black square denotes that the email is both inclusive and non-duplicate spare.
• A white square denotes that the email is either one of the following:
  • A non-inclusive email
  • An inclusive email that is a duplicate spare.

One possible workflow to apply is to batch out to reviewers only the inclusive emails that are non-duplicate spares, along with their attachments. This creates a more efficient review by eliminating the need to review non-inclusive and duplicate spare emails.

Message and file type icons

The Email Threading Display field includes the following file type icons:

• Send (or Other) - represented by a simple indentation square (this the start of an email thread)
• Reply - represented by an indentation square with a single left arrow (original file name begins with RE:)
• Reply All - represented by an indentation square with a double left arrow (reply to all recipients)
• Forward - represented by an indentation square with a single right arrow (original file name begins with FW:)
• Draft - represented by a pencil on the left of the square indentation square (email is a draft and not sent)
• Email contains attachments or - represented by an indentation square with a single paper icon on the right (file is an email containing a single attachment) or a double paper icon on the right (file is an email containing multiple attachments). Attachments are documents included in your emails in document set saved search. The following conditions apply to the icon display in the Relativity workspace:
  • The document type determines the attachment's file type icon.
  • The attachment’s file name that appears is based on the value in the attachment name field.
• Unknown - represented by a paper icon (file type cannot be found). This will be displayed for attachments where the file type isn't found.

Note: Do not add the Email Threading Display field to layouts. Because the Email Threading Display field uses HTML, it will not display anything if you add it to layouts you create. In addition, when a layout that contains the Email Threading Display field is edited and saved, the Email Threading Display field will be rendered blank for that document in the document list and related items views. The SanitizeHTMLOutput instance setting controls whether HTML content is sanitized and how specific HTML content is sanitized from fields on page render. You can set SanitizeHTMLOutput to False to add HTML alerts and links. To modify this default setting, see Instance settings.

Working with email threading results

After running an email threading operation and setting up your email threading view, use the following sample workflow to narrow down your documents to review.

Using the email thread visualization (ETV) tool

You can use the email thread visualization tool in the Viewer to visually examine email threads and how they are coded. You can also easily perform mass editing from this tool. See Email thread visualization for more information on how to use this tool.

Branched emails in thread

When an email thread branches into a new conversation, the branched email thread is included in the original family and the last email in the branch is flagged as inclusive. For example, when someone starts a new email conversation by forwarding an email from an existing email thread, the new email thread is still included in the original email thread family. You identify emails in the new thread as inclusive using the Email Thread Group, Email Threading ID, and Inclusive Reason fields.