We're pleased to announce the latest release of Access Legal Case Management, Version 2.17.3.

This update includes various enhancements and bug fixes detailed below.

Release 2.17.3 resolves a wide-reaching issue where ALCM occasionally defaulted the "for user" field on time records, emails, and letters to the wrong person, and closes out a long-standing intermittent "Out of memory" error that had affected a small number of users for several months.

It also fixes the Legal Aid case uplift issue on Certificated Civil matters using the Rule 16.4 or Other Public funding types, where changing the Case Complexity Uplift incorrectly showed a warning that the exceptional limit hadn't been reached, even though these funding types have no such limit. The uplift itself was being applied correctly on a second save; this release removes the misleading warning and ensures the uplift is calculated correctly the first time.

Other fixes in this release cover the User KPI screen's billing target calculation for new fee earners, an error loading the Aged Debtors KPI graph on mobile, a generic "Unknown Error" message occasionally shown while using email, hidden items still appearing in the Opportunities Title dropdown, a session freeze after attaching an email via the Mail section, bill requests failing with a server error on certain matters, the Time tab not displaying entries in chronological order, and a follow-up fix extending validation to the Postcode, SIC Code, Company Registration Number, and VAT Registration Number fields.

This release also includes a technical update to ALCM's email integration, moving away from the older Exchange Web Services (EWS) protocol that Microsoft is retiring for Exchange Online, so email functionality continues to work without interruption for affected customers.

Summary: Occasionally, when an email was processed into a case's file history, either sent from ALCM's Mail section or arriving as a reply or forward, the record created showed the note or description from a completely different email instead of its own. This made it harder to trust the file history at a glance, since the note shown didn't always match the email actually attached.

Fix: The reference used to match emails to their file history record is now updated and encoded correctly every time, so each email's note reliably matches the actual email that was sent.

Summary: A small number of users occasionally saw an "Out of memory" error appear at random while working in ALCM, sometimes after leaving their machine idle, sometimes mid-task such as writing an email or working from a template. Refreshing the page resolved it, but the interruption could mean losing unsaved work, and this had been an ongoing issue for several months.

Fix: The session-refresh process now cleans up correctly after itself, preventing this build-up during long sessions and resolving the random "Out of memory" errors.

Summary: When a new fee earner joined partway through the firm's financial year, their monthly billing target on the User KPI screen was spread across the firm's full 12-month financial year rather than starting from the month they actually joined. This distorted both the individual's and their department's KPI figures, making performance look worse than it should for a partial year.

Fix: The billing target calculation now starts from the fee earner's actual joining month, so their monthly target, and the department totals that depend on it, are spread correctly across the months they were actually with the firm.

Summary: On DPS Mobile (iOS and Android), the Aged Debtors KPI graph sometimes failed to load, showing a server error instead of the chart.

Fix: The Aged Debtors calculation now handles missing values correctly, so the graph loads reliably on mobile.

Summary: Some users, particularly at high-usage organisations, occasionally saw a generic "Unknown Error" pop-up appear while using email features in ALCM, for example while sending an email or closing a window. The email itself was still sent successfully, but the error message understandably caused concern that something had gone wrong.

Fix: These interrupted background requests are no longer shown to the user as errors. Genuine errors are still shown as before; routine background activity being interrupted no longer results in a misleading pop-up.

Summary: When a "Title" option (for example Mr or Mrs) was marked as hidden in the Client screen's dropdown configuration, it correctly disappeared from the Client screen's own Title dropdown, but continued to show in the Opportunities module's Title dropdown.

Fix: The Opportunities Title dropdown now correctly hides any option marked as hidden, matching the Client screen.

Summary: After attaching an email to a matter from the Mail section and then clicking the green arrow icon, ALCM would freeze completely. Nothing else could be clicked, and the only way to recover was to close every open item using its X button before ALCM became usable again.

Fix: The green arrow action now completes and releases the interface correctly, so attaching an email no longer freezes the session.

Summary: On certain matters, creating a bill request, as opposed to just previewing one, would fail with a generic server error, while previewing the same bill worked fine. This happened unpredictably and only on specific matters, making it hard for firms to spot a pattern, with the only workaround being to post the bill through OneOffice or via the Financial Director.

Fix: Bill requests now safely shorten any text that exceeds the supported length before saving, so bill requests complete successfully instead of failing.

Summary: On Certificated Civil matters using the Rule 16.4 or Other Public funding types, changing the Case Complexity Uplift showed a warning saying "No uplift applied. The exceptional limit has not been reached," even though these funding types don't have an exceptional limit at all. Pressing OK and saving again applied the uplift correctly, but the misleading warning caused confusion and made it look as though the uplift hadn't been recorded.

Fix: Rule 16.4 and Other Public funding types are now correctly recognised as always eligible for the panel member uplift, with no exceptional-limit check applied. The misleading warning no longer appears for these funding types, and the uplift is calculated and applied correctly on the first save.

Summary: On the Time tab, chargeable time entries weren't listed in the same chronological order as they appeared in the case's overall file history, making it harder to see at a glance the most recently added time entry on a file.

Fix: The Time tab now lists entries in chronological order, matching file history, making it easy to find the latest time entry on a case.

Summary: Following on from a previous fix to the company "Address 2" field, a similar error was found affecting the Postcode, SIC Code, Company Registration Number, and VAT Registration Number fields when creating a company client: entering more characters than the underlying system could store in these fields caused a server error, most consistently when the postcode itself was too long.

Fix: The Postcode, SIC Code, Company Registration Number, and VAT Registration Number fields now correctly validate and constrain entries to their supported length, preventing the error.

Microsoft is retiring the older Exchange Web Services (EWS) protocol used by some organisations' Exchange Online mailboxes. This release updates ALCM's email integration to use Microsoft's newer Graph API instead of EWS, so email sending, receiving, and calendar integration continue to work without interruption for customers affected by Microsoft's retirement of EWS.

Note: Client Update - Exchange Web Services (EWS) to Microsoft Graph Migration

Mail folder sharing / folder permissions

This is the ability for a user to share a mail folder with a colleague and control their level of access (for example read-only, editor or owner) - equivalent to setting folder permissions in Outlook. Access Legal Case Management currently provides this through Microsoft's legacy EWS interface.

Microsoft Graph does not yet offer any equivalent capability: there is no mail folder permission or sharing function in either the generally available or beta versions of the API, and the only available alternative is an administrator-level preview endpoint that is not suitable for this scenario. Microsoft's published roadmap targets this capability for Q4 CY2026.

As a result, this feature will continue to operate on the existing interface until Microsoft releases a supported replacement. We are monitoring Microsoft's roadmap weekly, and because their target date sits close to the start of EWS disablement (1 October 2026), we are also assessing contingency options to ensure there is no interruption to the service.