Faster Suite - Firm and User Data Storage

Modified on Sat, 3 Jun, 2023 at 11:54 AM

Everything is stored in Clio!

All of your firm and user data is stored in Clio so it will travel with you between computers!

How data is stored in Clio

Faster Suite stores any necessary data right in Clio, this way you can access Faster Suite from any device without having to reconfigure your settings.

When someone at your firm first installs Faster Suite, a matter will be created called "Firm-Wide Settings" and will be assigned to a client that is created called "(INTERNAL)". This matter is set to closed and contains all of the files and folders that Faster Suite needs in order to allow your data to travel with you.

Your firm and user data will be saved as .JSON files to this matter, a format that is readable by Faster Suite. These files are not intended to be manually viewed or modified in any way.

What data is stored

The "Firm-Wide Settings" matter in Clio stores quite a bit of information. Anything that would need to be accessed by other users or on other devices will be stored in order to be shared. Below are some examples of the type of data stored:

Settings that have been configured to be firm-wide or group-wide
Individual user settings
Faster Time activities that have not been saved in Clio
Faster Snippets in both individual and group libraries

FirmWideSettingsConfiguration.config

The FirmWideSettingsConfiguration.config file contains any settings that have been configured to be firm-wide. This way the settings can be loaded for all firm users at all times on any device used to access Faster Suite

GroupName.config

The GroupName.config files are stored in the "Group Settings" folder. They will be named based on the groups configured in Advanced > Group Policies > Group Settings and will contain the settings related to each group. Users belonging to each group will have settings loaded from this file on all of their devices.

User@FirmDomain.com.config

Inside the "User Settings" folder you will find a file called User@FirmDomain.com.config for each email address used to log in to Clio through Faster Suite. These files contain several pieces of individual user data such as settings, Faster Time activity data, individual Faster Snippets, etc.

SnippetLibrary.config

Group Faster Snippets are also stored in Clio in the "Faster Snippets" folder. Each library configured in Text Snippets > Faster Snippets > Snippet Sources in settings will have its own file here so users that choose to use those libraries will be able to access those Faster Snippets on any device.

How this affects your firm

Storing data in this fashion should generally be non-invasive and you may not even notice that it's happening. However, there are a few things to be aware of:

Each user will have their own user file stored in Clio. This file is periodically updated to ensure that it contains the most recent information in Clio. Each time this file is updated, you will see a new entry in your firm's Firm Feed to indicate that a new version of that document has been uploaded.
Since a new matter is created in Clio, your firm's matter numbering system will be incremented by 1. This will only happen the first time a user from your firm runs Faster Suite. You may manually reassign a matter number to the "Firm-Wide Settings" matter.
The "(INTERNAL)" client automatically created for your firm. You may assign additional matters to this client in order to create storage locations for other non-matter-related documents such as payroll or marketing.