On the one hand, an upgrade is cheaper. On the other hand, some reporters prefer to still have access to their legacy CD-ROM because they operate in a working environment that:

• has no Internet access, but access from a smartphone or tablet is necessary for research/job prep
• has Internet access, but the connection is weak or otherwise unreliable
• differs by depo/job location

In such cases it is desirable to retain the Version 4 CD-ROM legacy software for situations where Internet access is unavailable and use the web-based programs when reliable access is assured.

Prospective upgraders are encouraged to decide whether access to Version 4 support is of sufficient importance to warrant purchase of a web-based product at the full price or upgrade price before placing an order, bearing in mind that Supplementary Brief Packs are not compatible with the Version 4 legacy programs.

Internet access is a requirement for Boucke Briefs. In addition to your home wifi, plus numerous free wifi hotspots that can be found in most courthouses, businesses, airports and metro areas, you can also create a wifi hotspot from one of your devices (phone, tablet, laptop or PC).

Nothing is wrong. Websites display differently on mobile devices due to the different aspect ratio of the screens. In the case of the missing menu bar, it is replaced by a rectangular navigation icon near the BouckeBriefs logo.

Please note that all the procedures given in these Online FAQs are written for this website as displayed and operated on a computer using a mouse and keyboard. Because these input devices are not used with mobile devices, the procedures need to be modified slightly (e.g., mouse movement and clicks are replaced by manipulating and tapping the touchscreen).

Yes, simultaneous access is allowed but is limited to two devices concurrently.

If you are denied access to our current cloud-based product services (“Briefs Encountered Pro,” “Briefs Encountered Lite” or “Medically Briefed Web”), it means that our security measures have detected that you have exceeded your allotted number of login attempts from a single or multiple locations within a certain time period. This action requires assistance from our customer service to remedy. Please contact inquire@white-boucke.com.

Please remember that the terms of your purchase allow you to log into your account from no more than two personal devices, concurrently. Our system is not only able to detect how many times you are logged in, but also in how many different locations you are logged in from. If it detects that you have logged into more than two systems concurrently, it will take appropriate measures to protect your account integrity.

Our entire site is designed to automatically size and format itself based on the device you are using to view it. If this auto-adjustment is not to your liking, you can use the conventional pinching action on smartphones, tablets or touchscreen computers to change the magnification. On conventional computers, the screen size setting and the web browser zoom setting can be adjusted.

Once you have created an account on our website, you can edit and update your information from your “Edit Profile” page. This can be accessed from any page by holding your mouse cursor over the “My Account” menu item. Note that if you are already logged in, the name of that menu item will show “Name’s Account” (where “Name” is replaced with YOUR first name). On the drop-down list that appears, click on “Edit Profile.”

If you were not already logged in before clicking that item, you will be asked to do so, and then you will be directed to your profile page. Once on the “Edit Profile” page, make any changes, then click the “Save Profile” button at the bottom of the page.

Absolutely not. Your credit card information is never saved directly on our website. However, it is kept by our merchant processing company’s secure website for a short period, which is industry standard practice. The reason for this is in case a refund or chargeback needs to be processed against the transaction.

Yes, our entire website has been secured using the latest industry standard SSL certificates. You can confirm this from the padlock symbol on your browser.

From any page on this website, hold your mouse cursor over the “Access Briefs” menu item. On the drop-down list that appears, click the “Search Briefs” button, as shown in the graphic below.

On the “Search Briefs” page, scroll down to the search form (search criteria panel), as pictured below. By default, the system is set up to search all the categories you have purchased access to. If the criteria match the search you want to perform, type your term into the blue box and click the “Begin Search” button. If you would like to refine your search/results, change any of the search criteria to suit your needs. 

1. Enter your search term here.
2. Choose to search by an English term or a Steno term.
3. Choose which category you want to search.
4. Check the “Search My Briefs” box if you wish to include results from your personal “My Briefs” database. NOTE: If you have not purchased “Briefs Encountered Pro,” you will not see this option on your screen.
5. Choose whether you are searching for a character sequence that appears anywhere in a word or phrase (“Contains”), at the start of a word or phrase (“Begins With”) or at the end of a word or phrase (“Ends With”).
6. Choose whether you are searching for a word, phrase or both.
7. Click the “Begin Search” button to start your search

Select one of the radio buttons in the “Search In” column of the main search page.

This can be determined by viewing your product purchase history on the “Site Dashboard” page or “Payments History” page.

This is to help “Briefs Encountered Pro” customers using the “All Categories” option by giving them a quick and easy visual distinction between entries:

• Results shown in black are results from the “Briefs Encountered” database.
• Results shown in red are from the “Medically Briefed” database.
• Results shown in green are from your “My Briefs” personal database.

If your search results contain more than 25 entries, your results will be split into multiple subpages to help sort them and to decrease page load times. To move between the different subpages of results, scroll to the bottom of the current subpage of results and choose an option from the list of controls, as shown in the image below.

• The number shown in the darker color is the currently displayed subpage.
• The numbers shown in the lighter colors are the other subpages of results for your search
• The “Prev” button on the left moves to the previous subpage.
• The “Next” button on the far right moves to the next subpage.

This happens when a search result has multiple entries for that result.

Using the image below as an example, a search for the English term “ab” returns many results. One of them is the English word “abbreviation” which has multiple Steno equivalents. When this happens, the English term is only shown once (on the first line) and corresponding Steno entries are listed vertically. This is done to visually distinguish multiple Steno entries (options for a single English entry) from the rest of the search results.

You have three options to initiate subsequent searches.

• Change the term you are searching for at the top of the search form, change any of the search criteria, then click the “Begin Search” button.
• Click the blue “reset” link that appears just above the “Begin Search” button.
• Click the “Access Briefs” menu item at the top of the page to reset the search.

Each time you perform a search of our database(s), your preferences are updated and saved automatically for your next session. We define search preferences as the state of the radio buttons and checkboxes within the search criteria section, except for the typed term you are searching for.

Although your search preferences are saved after every search you make, your search results are unique to each individual search you make on the site. If you need to recall your search results you can simply execute the same search again, which will always yield the same results.

The only way to share one or more of your brief entries is to copy/paste those entries within an email or file and send them to the other person for entry. Within the website, any briefs that you add are exclusive to you.

From any page of our website, hold the mouse cursor over the “Access Briefs” menu item which appears at the top of the page. On the dropdown menu that appears, place your cursor over the second entry which reads “My Briefs” (or “Name’s Briefs,” where “Name” is replaced with YOUR first name). From there, another menu appears with four new options. You can use option 2 (“Create”) or option 3 (“Import”) to add briefs to the system.

Please note that unless you have purchased one of our web-based products (“Briefs Encountered Pro,” "Briefs Encountered Lite" or "Medically Briefed Web") AND logged into our website with your username and password, the “My Briefs” submenu described above will not be shown to you at all.

You need the following three pieces of information:

• Your English word/phrase
• Your Steno equivalent
• Indicate if your entry is a Word or a Phrase

• In order to do this, you must have access to the old version of the program or a backup copy of your “My Briefs” database which ends with a DBF extension.
• Convert the DBF file to a CSV file.
• Import the CSV file into the new system. If in doubt, consult a computer specialist.

From any page on our website, place your mouse cursor over the “Access Briefs” menu item which appears at the top of the page. On the dropdown menu that appears, place your cursor over the second entry which reads “My Briefs” (or “Name’s Briefs,” where “Name” is replaced with YOUR first name). From there, another menu then appears with four new options.

To back up your entire “My Briefs” database as a standard Comma Separated Values (CSV) file, click the “Export” option. Alternatively, you can click here to visit the same location.

On the “Export/Backup My Briefs” page, read the text, then click the “Do Export” button at the bottom of the page.
Your “My Briefs” database will be downloaded as a CSV file. Depending on your web browser, you may be asked where to save the file or it may be saved to your default downloads folder/directory.

There are two ways to edit a brief entry.

1. Inline. The English and/or Steno is edited directly on the “View/Edit” page. This is best used when modifying Steno or correcting English.
2. Full Entry Edit. The English and/or Steno is edited using the full “Edit Brief” page. This is best used when modifying Steno and English and/or changing between a word entry or phrase entry.

To edit an entry using either of these methods, first navigate to the "View/Edit" page.

Method 1: Inline Editing

The "View/Edit" page includes a search field and a search results panel. Each line in the panel contains an English entry, a Steno entry and a set of icons on the far right. To the immediate right of each English and Steno entry is a small icon that resembles a pencil. To edit an entry, click on its associated pencil (Inline Edit).

To edit an entry directly on the main page using the inline editing feature, simply click anywhere inside the table cell of the value you want to edit. Using the example image above, to edit the English value for the first entry, simply click anywhere inside the "1 2 3" box. Doing so will instantly activate the "inline editing mode" which will change the appearance of that entry (shown below) and allow you to modify the entry any way you see fit. Once you are done editing, simply click your mouse anywhere outside that table to save the changes. You can then repeat the process as many times as you want, on any entries you want, to modify the English and Steno values. If you would like to change whether the entry is considered a "word" or "phrase" for search purposes, you’ll need to use the Full Entry Editing method.

Method 2: Full Entry Editing

The "View/Edit" page includes a search field and a search results panel. Each line in the panel contains an English entry, a Steno entry and a set of three icons on the far right. The icons represent Full Entry Edit, Delete Entry and Export Individual Entry.

Full Entry Editing allows you to modify the English and Steno entries as well as the "word or phrase" designation of your brief. To activate the full edit screen mode, click the edit screen icon on the far right side of the entry you wish to modify. The edit screen mode icon is the first icon in the group of three on the far right side of any entry in the table, and it resembles a piece of paper overlaid by a pencil. When you hold your mouse cursor over top of this icon the words "Edit Brief" will appear. Once you click that icon you will be taken to the Edit Brief page as pictured below.

The first field on this page allows you to designate this brief as either a Word or Phrase which are both filtering criteria in searches. Using the other two fields on the page you can make any changes you want to your entry by simply clicking inside the blue boxes and editing them with your keyboard. When editing is complete, click the "Save" button to save your changes and return to the "My Briefs" list.

Navigate to the “View/Edit” page on our site (see below). The “View/Edit” page includes a search field and a search results panel. Each line in the panel contains an English entry, a Steno entry and a set of icons on the far right. The icons represent Full Entry Edit, Delete Entry and Export Individual Entry.

Each entry starts with a checkbox on the left, followed by columns for an English value, a Steno value and a set of icons on the far right, as pictured below.  

Method 1: Single Entries

To delete any single brief from your “My Briefs” database, click on the delete icon (represented by the red “X” icon) on the far right of the entry. When you hold your mouse over the delete icon, the text “Delete Brief” appears. 

• If you click delete, a new page will appear asking you to confirm the delete brief request. To delete the brief, click “Yes, continue”; to cancel the request click “No, cancel.”
• Once you delete a brief, there is no way to recover it without recreating it manually.

Method 2: Multiple Entries

To delete multiple briefs, use the checkboxes in the first column (to the left of the English values for each entry) to select each brief you want to delete.

• Once you have selected/marked all the briefs you want to delete, click the blue box below the table that reads “*** Bulk Actions ***” and select “Delete” from the menu that appears.
• Once you click delete, a new page will appear asking you to confirm the delete brief request and will tell you exactly how many briefs you are attempting to remove. To delete the briefs, click "Yes, continue"; to cancel the request, click "No, cancel."
• Once you delete briefs, there is no way to recover them without recreating them manually.

There are two methods:

1. From the "My Briefs" page (or "Name’s Briefs," where "Name" is replaced with YOUR first name).
2. From the "Search Briefs" page.

Method 1: Using "My Briefs" page

To search from the “My Briefs” page, hold your mouse cursor over the “Access Briefs” menu item located near the top of the page, then select “My Briefs” (or “Name’s Briefs,” where “Name” is replaced with YOUR first name).

1. Type your search term into the search field (no. 1 in the image below).
2. Choose English term or Steno term in the “Search By” section (no. 2, below).
3. Refine the search criteria by selecting “Contains,”” Begins With” or “Ends With” in the “Brief or Phrase” section (no. 3, below).
4. Click the “Begin Search” button (no. 4, below) to execute your search. Search results will appear in the panel beneath the settings panel.

Method 2: Using “Search Briefs” page

To search from the “Search Briefs” page, hold your mouse cursor over the “Access Briefs” menu item located near the top of the page, then select “Search Briefs.”

In the “Search In” section, click the “My Briefs” radio button. This will tell the system to ONLY search your “My Briefs” database. Then proceed by defining the remainder of the search criteria as in Method 1. Press the “Begin Search” button.

By default, any time you perform a search, your “My Briefs” entries will be included with your search results, provided you have not changed that setting.

To make certain that your personal results are included in your search results, check the “Search My Briefs” box.

• With the box checked, your “My Briefs” entries are included in the search.
• With the box unchecked, your “My Briefs” entries are excluded from the search.

The “Search My Briefs” checkbox allows you to include or exclude your personal briefs during a search of a larger category. The only time you cannot make changes to this checkbox is when you select the “My Briefs” category radio button. By selecting the “My Briefs” category radio button you have already instructed the system to ONLY perform a search of the “My Briefs” database.

This can only happen for one of two reasons:

1. You don’t have access to the “My Briefs” feature, which is only available to registered owners of “Briefs Encountered Pro.”
2. You have not added any briefs to your “My Briefs” database (by default, the “My Briefs” database is empty).