Document Sequence Numbering Add-on with Custom Naming

Many organizations, especially engineering or project-focused companies, have complex document / project naming and numbering schemes which they either want to replicate or initiate when they purchase a Document Management Software system. FileHold software provides standard features for automatic custom naming and numbering of documents. Additional granularity of automatic numbering is available through a configurable plug-in.

Standard automatic numbering for documents is done with the document control number feature of FileHold. These document control numbers can be used globally or assigned to be used with a specific document schema or type. When the document numbering is not global to the system or to the document schema, this plug-in provides for adding an automatically generated sequence number to documents depending on the metadata that has been captured for that document. Purchase of the plug in includes professional service assistance from FileHold to activate and help configure the feature.

For example; in creating a new product called MoonBuggy every design document that describes this product will begin with the product name, followed by a unique sequence number, and end with a short description of the document. If the first document added is the project charter, the desired document name is MoonBuggy-0001-ProjectCharter. If the second document is the high level design, the document name should be MoonBuggy-0002-HLD.

Using the standard automatic numbering feature, you would need to create a document control number for each product. Since a document schema can have only one document control number, you would also need a document schema for each product. If you have a very small number of products, this is manageable. However, if you need it to scale, a different solution is required. The standard custom naming feature of FileHold can already handle this document name format. Assume you have three metadata fields: Project name, Sequence no, and Short description. It is a simple matter to add those to a custom naming template with hyphens in between each. The only problem is that the sequence number would need to be edited manually and subject to manual errors. This is where the automatic sequencing plug-in comes in.

When the sequencing plug-in is configured the name of the metadata field that will be the sequence number is defined along with defining the length and starting value for the sequence number. Finally, the sequence number is included in a custom naming template. The position of the sequence number in the template is important as any metadata fields (up to five) that precede the sequence number will now become a permanent prefix for determining what the sequence number should be.

In our example, whenever a document is added to the system the sequence numbering plug-in will check to see if this the first document for a product or if other product documents already exist. If this is the first document for the product, the plug-in will update the sequence number field with the starting number. If other documents exist for the product the plug-in will determine the next number in the sequence and update the sequence number field. The standard custom naming feature will create the document name including the newly assigned sequence number. Once a sequence number has been generated for the document the prefix can never be changed thus document numbering integrity is assured.