New Clio Feature Opens Documents In Your Desktop Editor With A Click

By Bob Ambrogi on July 31, 2018

The practice management platform Clio yesterday rolled out a feature called Clio Launcher that opens documents for editing on your desktop computer with one click and then saves them back to the appropriate folder in Clio.

It works on both Windows and Mac computers (but not Chromebooks) and for any type of file, including documents, PDFs, spreadsheets, videos and images. It requires either a Boutique or Elite subscription to Clio and thus is not available to those on Clio’s lowest-tier Starter plan.

The advantage of this one-click editing is that it eliminates the steps of first downloading a document from Clio when edits are required and then re-uploading it when you are done.

Use of Clio Launcher requires installing an app on your computer. The first time you click to open a document from within Clio, you will be prompted to install the app. Thereafter, it runs in the background and is available whenever you want to open a document from within Clio.

Next to each document in Clio is an icon for opening it externally. When you click that, the Clio Launcher opens the document in your default desktop editor for that type of document, such as Microsoft Word or Excel. When you are done and save the file, it is saved back to Clio with the edits. Clio also tracks prior versions of the document.

Be aware that Clio Launcher does not notify you if someone else in your firm is editing the same document at the same time. Clio says it is working on that functionality. However, if that happens, both edited documents will be saved as separate versions.