Find & reuse past work
When a new request arrives, Veil checks whether you have seen it — or something like it — before, and lets you reuse the work. A repeat request that used to take days of gathering and processing can be ready for review in minutes. Three tasks, taught in order: find a similar request, reuse its documents, and work with the analysis Veil imports.
Find a similar past request
When to use this. At intake, to check whether you have handled this request before — or later, from any case, to see how similar ground was covered.
At intake. Start a new case and type the request summary. A Similar requests panel appears beside the form within a second of you pausing. Each result shows the case reference, its status, the departments involved, the date, how many documents it holds, and a match score.
From an existing case. Open the case and select Find Similar in the action row. The same panel opens, ranked against that case’s own summary.
Matching is by meaning, not just shared words, so “correspondence about the stadium project” will surface last year’s “communications regarding the arena development”; exact terms and case references still hit precisely. The search covers every case in the system, in progress and completed — which is how you catch the quiet duplicate: someone else already working this exact request.
Reading the results. A high match doesn’t automatically mean “the same request” — open the case and read it. You are deciding one of three things:
- It is the same request — coordinate rather than duplicate. It may already be in progress, or recently answered.
- It is the same territory, new request — the usual case. Carry on, and reuse its documents if they’re relevant.
- It is only superficially similar — carry on as normal.
Why some results show less detail. You will only see the requester’s name and a summary extract for cases you could open anyway. For cases outside your department’s scope you’ll see the reference, department, dates, status, outcome and document count — enough to know it exists and to ask the team that holds it — with a padlock and no link. A note at the bottom tells you how many results were restricted.
Reuse documents from a past case
When to use this. When a similar past case holds documents that are also in scope for your new request — so you can skip gathering them again.
Before you start. The case must already exist (documents need somewhere to go), so finish creating it first.
- Open your case and select Find Similar.
- Find the case you want to reuse from, and select Attach documents… on its row.
- Tick the documents you want. You will only see documents you are entitled to open.
- Select Attach.
What happens. Each document is copied into your case — a new document with a completely fresh review state. The original case is untouched. Copied documents carry an Attached badge showing where they came from.
If your department had confirmed collection complete, attaching documents re-opens that confirmation — the picture changed, so someone needs to confirm again.
Work with imported analysis
What “imported” means. When a document you upload or attach is byte-for-byte identical to one Veil has processed before, it offers to reuse that earlier analysis instead of re-running the AI. The document is ready in seconds rather than minutes.
On upload. If a match is found, an offer appears on the ingest screen. Accept it, or ignore it and the document processes normally — uploading is never held up. Note this needs an identical file: a re-saved, re-exported or edited copy of the “same” document won’t match, which is deliberate — a wrong match would be worse than a missed one.
On attach. Analysis is imported automatically where a match exists; there is nothing to accept.
What you see afterwards. The document carries an Imported badge, and every detection wears a chip reading “Imported from prior review — needs your fresh judgement”, showing the source case reference (as a link, if that case is within your scope).
Why nothing carries across. Withholding decisions under the Act are made for a particular request at a particular time. A person who was fine to name last year may not be this year; a negotiation that was live may have concluded. Imported analysis saves you the machine work — finding the material and classifying it — not the judgement.
Which files can’t use this. Emails (.eml/.msg) always process fresh, because an email carries attachments that Veil splits into separate documents; importing would silently skip them.
Learn more
- Screen-by-screen reference: document ingestion and document review.
- Common questions: Finding & reusing past work in the FAQ.
- Definitions: Attach, Import, Provenance chip, and Similar requests in the glossary.