Document Management Overview
Note: This set of topics refers to managing versions of documents associated with a database record. For information on managing versions of CAD drawings, see Document Management for Drawings. If you have many documents, you may wish to incorporate the Document Library feature.
The Archibus Document Management features enable users to associate one or multiple versions of a document with a database record so that Web Central users can view and edit documents using a management system that includes checking in, checking, out, locking, unlocking, viewing, and editing.
Document management has several uses in facility management:
- Maintenance managers can access a scanned version of the equipment maintenance manual from the Equipment Standard record.
- As a tenant and landlord negotiate a lease, they can store each version of the lease contract with the Lease record.
- Facility managers can take digital photographs showing the condition of the facility and store them as part of Action Item records.
- Remote managers can redmark a CAD floor plan drawing and attach the drawing file to an Action Item record that gets routed to a draftsperson. The draftsperson uses the redmark copy to update the actual floor plan drawing with the changes and marks the action item as completed.
- Information that is conveyed by email messages and faxes can be attached to a Communications Log Item or other similar record.
Since multiple versions of a document can be stored with a record, facility managers can archive older versions of documents.
Note: For information on how users work with the document management system, see the following location on the Contents pane of Archibus Help: Web Central User's Guide / General Staff / Using the Document Management System.
The Document Vault
The document management system uses three tables to store the versions of documents:
- Per-document attributes (such as a document's locked status, author, and author's description) are stored in the Archibus Documents table (afm_docs).
- Documents and their previous versions are stored in the Archibus Documents Versions table (afm_docvers).
- The archived versions of documents are stored in the Archibus Document Versions Archive table (afm_docversarch).
Note that your database quickly grows when you add document files to it. If you check in 20 documents, you can easily double your database size. With 200 documents, you can have a 1GB database. If you keep revisions of files, memory requirements grow greater still. Your database server can typically handle this load; and, on Oracle, documents can occupy a different table-space
Since the entire document file is stored in the database, each document file that you check in can increase the size of the database by as much as the size of the document. A 10 MB document file can increase your database by that size. You should ensure that your database server hardware has hard disk space to accommodate the documents.
Document Management Tasks
The System /Archibus Administrator role offers the following tasks for administering the document management system.
| Task | Description |
|---|---|
| Documents | Presents the Archibus Documents table so that you can review the attributes of a document associated with a document field. As an Archibus Administrator, you can archive documents and retrieve archived documents from this task. |
| Revisions by Document |
Use this task to view complete information about a document: the attributes and the version information. The task first presents the Archibus Documents table; choose a document, and in the Archibus Document Versions table, you can review the versions of this document. |
| Deleted Document Revisions | When users choose the Delete Document button to break the association between a document field and document, or if users delete the inventory record associated with the document, Archibus sets the Deleted? field of the Archibus Documents table to Yes. This task presents all document records with Deleted? set to Yes, along with heir version records. |
| Archived Revisions by Document | When an Archibus Administrator archives documents, the system moves the revisions from the Archibus Document Versions table to the Archibus Document Versions Archive table. The archive table presents all the same fields as the Document Versions table. This task presents the Archibus Documents table; choose a document record, if it has been archived, the system presents the archived versions in the Archibus Document Versions Archive table. |