A bit over two years ago, I wrote a fairly complicated guide for Clio and Google for Work users that explained the automatic creation of a digital filing system. That process has since been simplified, and no longer requires Hazel and works completely in the cloud. The video is a complete walkthrough, so we recommend you watch that, first.
Create a Google Apps Script
Start by opening Google Drive and clicking the red New button, hover over More, and select Google Apps Script. Create a script for a Blank Project. You might want to name this Create Matter Folders, but the name doesn’t matter. Now go grab the code from GitHub. Copy and paste all 77 lines into the script. Click the Save icon.
Configure Two Variables
- Variable Subfolders: The first variable contains the name of the Subfolders that the app will create. The reason these numbers are in front of them is to actually make sure they stay in that order rather than alphabetical order. Change these to fit your own needs. At this time, the script does not support subfolders, but maybe somebody can help with that fix.
- Folder ID: The second variable is FolderID, which identifies your Clio folder within Google Drive. To find that, open Google Drive and click on your Clio folder. The folderID is the string of random characters at the end of the URL. Copy and paste that into the variable.
Tell the App to run once an Hour
I have this app running once an hour because I haven’t figured out how to run it automatically when the matters are created, and running it more than once an hour overloads Google’s servers. Select Resources in the menu bar, then current project triggers, then click here to add a new one now. You’re going to run createMatterFolders, and set it run once an hour. Click Save. You might need to do some authorizes at this point, so get that out of the way.
That’s it. You’re done.
Now, once an hour this app will look for new, empty matter folders and create the subfolders. Open a test matter in Clio and give it a try!