Managing collections and documents

Managing collections

About collections

A collection is a group of documents that contain properties such as:

• A name
• An owner
• An editor
• Optional viewers with read-only access

Collections are private by default, with a list of readers that are controlled by the collection owner. Any Pinpoint user with a link can access a published collection.

Pinpoint users receive 100GB of storage space. We only count collections you have created towards this space. Collections shared with you by others do not count against your storage space. If you exceed your limit, all of your existing collections remain, but you'll get an error if you attempt to add new files. In this case, deleting some of your collections will free up space and allow you to add more files.

If you need more storage space, email us at [email protected].

List all collections

To list all collections that you can access, visit your workspace. Collections are grouped into those that you own, and those that you have view access to.

Publish a collection

Pinpoint users may choose to publish their collections as an individual or on behalf of a publication. To publish a collection for a publication, fill out this form.

Published collections are:

• Accessible to anyone with a link.
• Indexed by search engines, and may appear in web search results.
• Featured with collection title, description and publisher profile on Explore.

Once published:

• Collection owners can unpublish a collection at any time, which blocks public access and further crawling by search engines. The collection may temporarily appear in web search results based on previous indexing by search engines, but users won't be able to access the source content on Pinpoint.
• Changes made to a collection are immediately visible to viewers. Changes may include added or removed files, labels, or highlighted text.
• Viewers can download any file within a public collection.

Learn how to add your collection to Explore.

Create a collection

In order to create a new collection you must have full access to Pinpoint. If you don't have full access, you can request full access using this form.

To create a new collection:

1. From your workspace homepage, click Create a new private collection. This collection will be private by default. You can share it with specific users later.
2. Choose a name for your collection then click Create. You can change the name later, if you like.
3. Change your audio files spoken language, if you expect your audio files to be in a language other than English by default.
4. Start uploading files to your collection.
5. Optionally change the entity display language, if you want to see entities displayed in a language other than your default language.

Delete a collection

To delete a collection that you own:

1. Open the workspace view, which lists all collections that you can access.
2. Click More options . Then, click Delete.
3. The collection and all its documents will be deleted immediately. Deleted collections and documents can't be recovered.

Share or unshare your collection

Collections are private by default. You can share only collections that you own.

To share a collection:

1. In the Documents view of the collection, click Share.
2. Enter the Google email address of the person you want to share with.
   • If their Google Account is valid, their user profile should pop up.
   • If a pop-up doesn’t appear, the email address isn’t valid.
     • Verify with the user that you have their correct email address.
3. To share with the user, click their Google email profile pop-up.
   • Add as many users as you want. Added collaborators default to a viewer role.
4. Pinpoint will offer to notify your new collaborators. If you choose not to notify them, you can copy the URL from your browser later and send it to them.
5. When you finish your updates, click Done.

Tip: You can only share with individual users, not with mailing lists.

To remove access to a collection:

1. Click the Share in the Documents view for of collection.
2. Click the dropdown next to the user to remove, then click Remove.
3. Click Done when done.

To see who has access to your collection:

Click the Share button in the Documents view of a collection to see or edit the list of who can access your collection.

Rename a collection

To rename a collection that you own:

1. Open the workspace view, which lists all collections that you can access.
2. Click More options . Then, click Rename.

Search multiple files within a collection

Search for text across documents in a collection using the search box in the Documents view for your collection. You can filter your searches by document label, entity, and more. More details on searching.

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Managing documents

Upload documents to a collection

Pinpoint has a maximum of 200K documents per collection. Maximum individual document sizes depend on the file format.

If you upload more than 20,000 files per day and encounter failures, please try to upload the failed files the next day.

Each user has 100GB of storage space for all their collections. If you need more storage space, email us at [email protected].

When you upload non-audio files, they will be converted to PDF format. This conversion can take some time, depending on the size of the file and the number of files uploaded.

If you modify the source file after you import it, the changes will not be reflected in Pinpoint's copy of the document.

To upload documents:

1. From your collection homepage, click Add documents
2. Select one or more documents from your computer or from Google Drive. Some notes:
   • Zipped collections are not supported; you must upload individual files.
   • You can upload only supported file formats. If you have a file of a format not supported, see if you can save it as PDF, then upload the PDF file.
   • However, you can upload files of different types in one process.
   • If uploading audio files, be sure that the audio file language setting is properly set for the language in that audio file. If you have audio files in different languages, then upload audio files in batches of the same language.
3. When you finish selecting your files, uploading and processing will begin. Processing means converting the contents of all the files into text (using OCR or speech-to-text, as necessary) and typically publishing the results as a PDF. When processing is finished, you will see a notification Finished processing if successful, or a warning and an explanation, if any problems were encountered uploading individual files. You can continue working or searching in your collection while your files are being processed.
4. If Pinpoint encounters an error processing your file--for example if the file size exceeded the limit for that file type, or if a file format is not supported--you will see a popup explaining the issue when processing fails.

Upload an audio file

Upload an audio file the same as you upload any other file type. However:

• Be sure that all audio files in an upload request are of the same language.
• Be sure that the spoken language is specified in your audio file language setting.
• Pinpoint can analyze only one language per audio file. If a single file contains multiple languages, all audio will be transcribed using the audio file language setting specified at the time of the upload request.
• If you want to upload audio files in different languages, bundle your audio files into groups of the same language, change the audio file language setting for that group, and then upload the group.

Pinpoint makes the audio file available for listening after it has been processed. Pinpoint also creates a transcript of the audio file, according to the audio file language setting chosen when the file was uploaded.

If you find errors in the generated transcript, you can click Edit in the transcription to make changes.

Download a document from a collection

You can download the original source file used to generate any document in a collection. (You can't download the PDF version generated by Pinpoint.)

To download the source file for a document:

1. Open a document from your collection
2. Click More options . Then, click Download original file.

Delete documents from a collection

• To remove a single document from your collection, open the Documents view in your collection, then click the trash can next to the document.
• To remove multiple documents from your collection, open the Documents view in your collection, then select the checkboxes next to documents that you wish to delete. Click the trash can icon at the top of the list to delete documents.

Documents are removed immediately and permanently, and cannot be recovered.

If you delete the source document on Google Drive that was imported into a collection, it does not delete the corresponding imported document in the collection.

List or filter documents in the collection

The main page in the collection is the Documents view. The default view shows the full list, in pages of 100 documents. You can filter this view by label or entity to show only documents with all the selected labels and entities.

Filter documents by label or entity

You can filter your document view by one or more labels and/or entities. When filters are applied, your search will be limited to this filtered list.

To filter documents by labels and entities:

1. Open the Documents view for your collection.
2. Select labels or entities to filter by from the lists of labels and entities next to the document list.
3. The document list will show only documents with all the selected labels and entities.
4. Optionally select additional labels or entities to filter by. The list of available labels is attached to documents in the filtered view.
5. Clear your label filters by clicking the X next to each filter at the top of the list.

Notes about filtering by multiple items:

• All selected labels and entities must apply to a document for it to appear in the filtered list.
• The list of additional filterable labels or entities adjusts dynamically as you select items. This means that a filter or label will appear in the list only if at least one document in the filtered list also includes that label or entity. (Therefore, you cannot select a combination of filters that results in zero documents.)

Rename an uploaded document

To rename your uploaded document, you can do either of these steps: 

1. From the Documents view of your collection:
   • Hover your mouse over the document that you wish to rename.
   • Click Edit .
   • Enter a new name for your document in the pop-up dialog.
   • Click Save.
2. When you have a document open:
   • At the top right, click More options .
   • Select Rename document.
   • Enter a new name for your document in the pop-up dialog.
   • Click Save.

Share a single document

You cannot control view access to a single document, only to a whole collection. But you can share a link to a document if the recipient has view-only access to the collection.

To get a link to a document:

1. Open the document in Pinpoint.
2. Click More options . Then, click Copy link to document.
3. Send the link to someone with view-only access to the document. If the person doesn't have access, you can share your collection with them.

Copy a text snippet

You can select and copy text from any document that you can view. Open the document, select the text to copy, and select Copy text to copy the selected text to your clipboard.

Highlight or link to sections of text

If you have owner or editor permission for a collection you can highlight sections of text. Highlighted texts have a direct link associated with them. Anyone with view-only access can use the link to open the collection document at the highlighted location.

To create a highlight and a link:

1. Open a document.
2. Select a section of text.
   • To highlight the text, click Highlight.
     • If you later want a link to the highlight, click the highlight, then click Get link.
   • To both create a highlight and copy its link, click Highlight and get link .
3. To delete a highlight, click the highlight, then click Delete.

Search for text within a document

You can do an exact text search for text within an open document. This is similar to Control+F functionality search.

1. Open the document to view
2. Either click More options , then click Find, or type Control+F on the keyboard.
3. Type the text to find in the document, and use the arrows to navigate matches. Matches are exact, can be part of a word, and can be in any language or character set, as long as it has been identified as text by Pinpoint.

If you want advanced search capability for words or entities, use the collection search functionality.

Label your documents

You can add arbitrarily named labels to your documents. You can then filter your document list by label, or restrict searches to specific labels. A document can have multiple labels.

Add or remove labels from a document

To manage labels for a single document:

1. Open the Documents view in your collection (Documents in the navigation pane).
2. Hover over a document then click the add label icon next to the document.
3. Check or uncheck existing labels to add or remove labels from the document. To create a new label for the document, click + Create New and specify the label name and color.
4. Click Apply to save your changes.

To manage labels for multiple documents:

1. Open the Documents view in your collection (Documents in the navigation pane).
2. Check the box next to specific documents that you want to label or unlabel, or select the checkbox at the top of the list to select or deselect all documents in the list.
3. Click the add label icon new_label icon at the top of the list.
4. Check or uncheck existing labels to add or remove labels from the document. To create a new label for the document, click + Create New and specify the label name and color.
5. Click Apply to save your changes.

Delete a label

In the document view for your collection, click Edit next to the list of labels, then click the X next to each label to delete.

Filter documents by a label

To filter your document list by a label that you have applied, read the search guide.

Related Resources

• Share or unshare your collection
• Add your collection to Explore
• Get started with your own collection