Time Capture in iManage, NetDocuments, and Worldox
An associate checks a summary judgment brief out of iManage at nine in the morning and works it until noon. That's three hours of billable time, all of it spent inside a single document. Ask most time trackers what happened during those hours and the best answer you get is that Word was open.
At document-heavy firms, the largest share of billable work happens exactly like this, inside the document management system. It's also the work most time trackers can't see. An integration-based tool can tell that Word was running. It can't tell you which document, from which matter, checked out of which workspace, or whether the three hours went to rewriting the argument or fixing a caption.
Why the document system is a blind spot
iManage, NetDocuments, and Worldox all expose some activity through their APIs. The problem is what that activity describes. An API event says a file was checked out, opened, saved, or re-profiled. It describes the file, not the work done to it. The same "document activity on the Henderson matter" event fires whether the attorney spent two hours restructuring the brief or twenty seconds correcting a date.
Plenty of real document work never reaches the API at all. Reading a PDF pulled out of the DMS, comparing two drafts side by side, marking up an exhibit in a viewer: none of that reliably registers as document activity, even though it's squarely billable. So an API-based tool ends up inferring entries from a thin, file-shaped signal, and the attorney inherits the gap at review time.
How screen-based capture reads document work
Screen-based capture starts from a different place. Ajax reads what's actually on the screen about every 30 seconds. The brief checked out of iManage and revised for an hour gets captured as that work, with the document name and the surrounding on-screen context. That context feeds matter prediction, which lands on the right client and matter about 92% of the time and keeps improving as it learns your firm's documents, people, and topics.
The same thing happens in NetDocuments, in Worldox, in a PDF viewer, in a Word file saved to a network share. A NetDocuments session becomes a time entry the same way an iManage one does, and Worldox time capture works on the identical principle. Any application with visible text is readable, which is the whole point: there's nothing to install inside the DMS and no plugin to keep current.
This is worth spelling out, because IT teams ask it directly. We built no deep integration with iManage or NetDocuments, and that is deliberate. When we say Ajax "works with" your DMS, we don't mean a connector you stand up and configure. We mean capture doesn't care where the document lives, because it reads the screen rather than the document store. When the firm upgrades iManage or migrates a workspace, there's no Ajax integration sitting in the middle to break. For the mechanics, we wrote up how screen-based and API-based capture differ.
Will another program conflict with the DMS?
The next question from any IT lead is whether a second program reading the screen will fight with the DMS client. In practice, it doesn't. Ajax runs at the desktop level next to iManage or NetDocuments, the document viewer, Outlook, and everything else the attorney has open, and we haven't seen it conflict with document management software in production.
It also stays out of your infrastructure. Ajax installs per user, a download the attorney runs on their own machine, and it never touches the DMS server or asks anything of your document management admin. Capture happens on the desktop, so a document someone only skims on a phone's DMS app won't be seen; on the laptop where the real drafting happens, it will. If your team keeps a running list for vendors, we cover the common ones in the questions legal IT tends to ask.
What the firm actually gets
The payoff is that a morning spent inside a document becomes a clean draft entry with a real narrative, instead of a "Word open, 9 to 12" line an attorney has to reverse-engineer on Friday. The timekeeper scans the day, corrects anything that's off, and releases. From there, released entries flow through direct integrations into Clio, MyCase, PracticePanther, SurePoint, Filevine, Centerbase, and Soluno, and Ajax is compatible with most other billing systems as well.
That contrast is the useful part. The billing system is where entries get written, so it needs a real, maintained integration. The DMS is where the work gets seen, so it needs none. This is what DMS time tracking looks like at a law firm when the tracker can actually read the work. One firm that runs its practice out of a document system described the change in their case study.
FAQ
Does Ajax integrate with iManage?
Ajax doesn't need an integration with iManage, and it doesn't have a plugin for it. It captures billable work by reading the screen, so a document checked out of iManage and edited is recorded as that work, with the document name feeding matter prediction and nothing to install or maintain inside your DMS.
Does Ajax work with NetDocuments and Worldox?
Yes. The same screen-based capture reads work in NetDocuments, Worldox, or any application with visible text, so there is nothing DMS-specific to configure. A session in either system turns into a draft time entry the same way an iManage session does.
Will Ajax conflict with our DMS software?
No, not in practice. Ajax runs at the desktop level alongside your DMS client and hasn't conflicted with document management software in production. It installs per user and never touches the DMS server, so your document management admin has nothing to provision.
Does captured document content stay private?
Yes. Everything Ajax captures, including document content, stays private to the individual timekeeper until they release entries. Captured data is deleted automatically on a rolling basis, encrypted in transit and at rest, and the AI subprocessors Ajax uses are contractually barred from training on your firm's data. Partners and admins see rolled-up reporting only, never screens or drafts.
A morning inside iManage makes the case better than we can. Book a demo, bring your own document workflow, and we'll run it live.
