Managing offline documents - Schema creation

Organizations may choose to not scan or import all of their files into the document management system due to time constraints, file type, size, location or any number of reasons but would like to be able to manage / reference those documents within the FileHold Software.  FileHold users have the ability to manage "offline" documents "online" .

The way to have "offline" documents available to those working "online" is to create document schemas for the offline documents. These schemas are associated with metadata fields that describe the offline document, the location of the offline document and any other relevant data about the document that is helpful for users to identify and locate documents that are kept in locations other than organized in the document management system as electronic documents.

A document with an offline format does not hold an actual electronic document. It is typically used as a reference to a physical document or other item or as a reference to one or more other entities in the document management system.

To create a schema for offline documents

1. Create a new schema and select the Offline Document schema format.

2. Create metadata fields for the offline documents. The following metadata fields are examples for offline documents:

• Offline location — The location of the offline document such as Shelf in CTO’s office, Cabinet #4, or Storage Facility Name. It is advisable to have multiple drop-down menus or a dynamic drop-down menu to organize your various record storage rooms and the locations within each room.

• Type of Document — The document type such as book, video, map, blueprint, or DVD.

• Comments — Comments about the offline document.

3. Associate the metadata fields with the offline document schema.

Version 0 switch for offline documents

When documents of any document type (electronic document, electronic record, or offline document) are added to the Library, the first initial version is set to version 1.

For documents that are Offline Document types, you can set the initial version to be 0 instead of 1. In order to set the initial version to 0, you need to set the value to 0 in the Library Manager > web configuration file on the server.

This could be useful for organizations which use the process of Document ID/Number Reservation. Adding an Offline Document with version 0 would create a placeholder for the future electronic document version (yet to be created); however, the document ID will be issued by the system and can be used as a reference when creating the electronic version. For example, the document ID could be stated on the title page of the Microsoft Word document. By checking out the offline document and then checking back in with “Convert to Electronic Document” option enabled, the first version (version 1) of the document will be added to FileHold repository using the same document ID (initially created for the off-line document stub).

To set the offline document version to start at 0 instead of 1

1. Log into the FileHold server using the administrator username and password.

2. Navigate to C:\Program Files\FileHold Systems\Application Server\LibraryManager.

3. Open the web.config file using an editor such as Notepad.

4. In the <appSettings> section, enter the value of 0 for:

<add key="InitialOfflineVersion" value="0" />

5. To set the offline document version back to 1, change the value above to "1".