In this article, we will explain how to structure your documents in Documaster. If you stick to a few best practices, we believe you will quickly see the unique benefits of our product.
There are three main concepts in Documaster:
- Libraries: The top level “folders” where all your files and folders are stored.
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Filters and tags: The filters and tags replace the folder hierarchies found in normal file storage solutions.
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Files and folders: Your documents can be saved as single files or grouped in a folder.
The screenshot above shows a Customer contracts library. The Contract type filter is open, and you can see the list of different contract types (i.e. contract type tags). Behind the open filter dialoge, you can see the files and folders, with tags (the light blue pills) applied to them.
The top level in Documaster is the libraries.
The libraries often correspond to the business units in your company, or the processes that generate important documents. This could be:
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HR documents
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Customer contracts
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Vendor contracts
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Board meetings
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Asset management (e.g. telco or shipping)
In this article, we will use HR documents and Customer contracts as example libraries.
The libraries have their own specific properties: Library specific filters (more on that below), access rights, notifications, validation rules and more.
The concept of filters and tags is important to understand in order to really harvest the benefits of using Documaster.
Each library can have as many different filters as you want, but we see that somewhere between 2 and 4 is usually sufficient. The HR documents library could typically have filters for Employee and Topic. The Customer contracts library can have filters for Customer, Contract type and Department. (The Color filter shown below is a default filter that can be used to e.g. set the status of a file or folder).
The filters consist of a list of tags. That is, the filter list have the same content as the list of tags that you can apply to the files and folders.
In Documaster, there's only one level of files and folders. That is, you cannot have folders inside folders. The tags are applied to the files or the folders. The screenshot below shows a folder with two files in it, and tags for Employee: 9802833 John Snow and Contract type: Employee contract.
Note that when you apply tags to a folder, they are implicitly applied to all the files inside the folder. Thus, folders in Documaster should only be used to group files that can be tagged with the same tags. E.g: A master agreement for Acme Inc with two attachments belong in the same folder, and the folder should be tagged with Customer: Acme Inc and Agreement type: Master agreement. A service agreement with the same customer should not be in the same folder, but rather be a separate file tagged with Acme Inc and Service agreement.