About Document Management

This page explains how to manage different types of documents in your applications.

About documents

In Appian, any uploaded file is a document. Documents can be part of your application's design, like a logo on an interface, or part of your application workflows, like an invoice uploaded by a user.

Depending on the purpose of your document, you can use different Appian objects to create, manage, and secure them.

How to manage documents

There are two ways to store and manage documents—using record types or folders. Which method you use depends on how the document is used in your application.

You should use:

Record types when documents are created and maintained as part of your application workflows. It doesn't matter where your documents are stored: in Appian or in an external system. These documents are often related to your application data, like system logs attached to a support case or a resume associated with a candidate. These documents do not need to be deployed to other environments because they're created in the application workflow or they're stored in an external system.

Folders when documents are uploaded directly in Appian Designer and are used to build your application, like an image used as the logo in a site page or a PDF template used in a process to generate invoices. These documents need to be deployed to other environments since they are part of the application design.

Example using record types

In a support case application, customers can create new support cases and attach relevant images and system logs to their case. Since these documents are uploaded whenever a user creates a support case, you can create a Case Document record type to store those documents and relate them to the Case record type.

Then, you can create streamlined process models to automatically write case information and documents at the same time. You can also secure those documents using record-level security so that only support engineers who can see the case can see the related documents. With your documents related and secured, you can easily display them in case summary views so support engineers can view all case information at once.

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Example using folders

In the same support case application, you may want to display your company logo on the interface that customers use to submit a support case.

Since the company logo is directly used to build the application, you can upload the image to a document folder in Appian Designer. That document folder will also have an associated knowledge center to specify which groups and users can view the document.

Once the image is uploaded in Appian Designer, you can use a constant to reference the logo and display it at the top of your form.

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Get started

Once you determine how you want to use your documents, get started by either:

• Using record types to manage documents.
• Using folders to manage documents.

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