Frequently Asked Questions
Getting started
What is Sentinel?
Sentinel is an enterprise platform for legal compliance monitoring and eDiscovery. It ingests documents and communications, makes them searchable, provides a review workspace, and offers an AI assistant (Emma) grounded in your matter's evidence. See Introduction.
How do I sign in?
Open your tenant's Sentinel URL and sign in with your email and password. New accounts may be prompted to set a new password and enroll in two‑factor authentication on first login. See Getting Started.
I forgot my password / lost my 2FA device.
Use the Forgot password link to reset your password. For a lost 2FA device, ask a tenant administrator to reset your 2FA so you can re‑enroll.
Why does the navigation look different from a colleague's?
Two reasons: your tenant's practice mode (Litigation, Transactional, or Real Estate) changes whole sections of the app, and your role controls whether you see administration tools. See Core Concepts → Practice modes.
Documents & search
What file types can I upload?
Documents (PDF, Office files), images, audio, and video, plus email containers (PST, MBOX, MSG) and archives (ZIP), which Sentinel splits into their individual items. See Data Rooms & Uploading Documents.
I uploaded a document but can't find it in search yet.
Ingestion is asynchronous. A document moves through processing states (queued → extracting/OCR → embedding → complete) and becomes searchable once complete. Large files and media take longer. See Core Concepts → What you see while a document is processing.
What's the difference between the search modes?
Keyword matches exact terms; semantic matches by meaning; hybrid combines both; visual searches the content of images and scanned pages. See Search & Research.
Can Sentinel read scanned documents and images?
Yes. Scanned PDFs and images run through OCR, and images/audio/video go through multimodal extraction, so their content is searchable.
Emma (the AI assistant)
Can I trust Emma's citations?
Emma may only cite documents that a tool actually returned, and her responses are mechanically verified — a response that references an unretrieved document is blocked. She also says so plainly when retrieval finds little, instead of padding from general knowledge. See Emma → Citations and guardrails.
Does Emma see all my matters?
No. Emma can only access matters you have access to.
Can I talk to Emma instead of typing?
Yes — Emma supports real‑time voice in addition to text.
Does using Emma train an AI model on my data?
No. Inference is performed under commercial terms that don't use your content for training, and embedding/extraction runs with zero data retention. See Security & Compliance → How AI providers handle your data.
Administration
How do users get access to a matter?
An administrator assigns them, with an access level of full, read‑only, or limited. Admins can access any matter; some matters are org‑wide. See Administration → Matter assignments & access levels.
How do I add or remove a user?
From user management, an admin can create users, reset passwords and 2FA, and deactivate accounts. See Administration → Users and roles.
What are API keys for?
Long‑lived, revocable keys for programmatic/service access — including the AI connector. Manage them on the API Keys admin page; the raw key is shown only once. See Administration → API keys and the API Reference.
Can I change our practice mode?
Practice mode is a tenant‑wide setting managed centrally (set during provisioning). Talk to Sentinel or your administrator if it needs to change — it reshapes the experience for everyone in the tenant.
Integrations
Can Sentinel pull in email automatically?
Yes — Sentinel Sync monitors Microsoft 365 mailboxes and ingests their mail into a matter. See Integrations → Microsoft 365 mailbox sync.
Can I start a case from a court docket?
Yes — import from CourtListener (free, U.S. federal) or UniCourt (broader, when configured). See Integrations → Court and docket import.
How do I report a bug?
Use the in‑app "Report a problem" option, or ask Emma. It files a structured report (with context) to Sentinel's issue tracker.
Security
Where does our data live?
In your tenant's own database and storage on Microsoft Azure, isolated from other tenants. See Security & Compliance.
Is our data used to train AI models?
No — see the AI data‑handling section in Security & Compliance.
Is everything logged?
Key activity and every AI tool call are audited for compliance and defensibility. See Administration → Audit log.
Is Sentinel SOC 2 certified?
For the current status of formal attestations and your specific contractual commitments, contact Sentinel. See Security & Compliance → Compliance direction.
Exporting this documentation
Can I get this as a PDF?
Yes. Open the single printable version and use your browser's Print → Save as PDF, or print any individual page (its sidebar and nav are hidden in print).