Document Attributes

Trying to find a record which you have linked to a specific document, can become a bit of chore, especially as the number of Linked Document page grows over time. Within Clever Document Links it is possible to use Document Attributes to help find documents.

Document Attributes are effectively additional data that describes the document link and makes it easier to find relevant documents.

Document attributes can be used in two areas. They may be used to filter the Linked Document List within Microsoft Business Central or (if using Microsoft SharePoint as the document repository) they can be  used with SharePoint to add MetaData (Columns).

To use Document Attributes with you need to navigate to the Document Attributes page, you can do this using either the search action on the role centre or from within the Navigate action group of Document Links Setup.

Once on the page start to create your attributes, simply click on the New button and begin by giving your attribute a unique Code along with a Name (something meaningful to describe the code you have just given the attribute).

If you are using Microsoft SharePoint as the document repository then you can also specify the SharePoint Metadata Tag. This is the name of the Metadata (or column) within SharePoint. If this is specified then the attribute value will be used to automatically populate the relevant additional column in SharePoint.

Note: The SharePoint Metadata Tag field will not be visible if using Database as the document repository.

Note: The value entered in the SharePoint Metadata Tag field must already exist as a column in Microsoft SharePoint. If the column matching the SharePoint Metadata Tag field does not exist in SharePoint then no error will occur however the attribute will not be copied to SharePoint.

Note: It is recommended that SharePoint Columns should be set as type 'Text' for all data types to remove formatting issues. 

Whilst it is possible to set attributes manually against a document, this presents a manual overhead. It is possible to default attribute values by selecting an option in the Default Value field. This field has the following options:

  • None - No value will be defaulted and this needs to be set manually on each document from a value in the Attribute Values list.
  • User ID - The User ID of the user who uploaded the document will be populated.
  • Date - The date the file was uploaded will be populated.
  • Time - The time the file was uploaded will be populated.
  • Date/Time - The date and time the file was uploaded will be populated.
  • Company Name - The Business Central Company Name will be populated. This can be useful within SharePoint if the multiple Business central companies are used.
  • Field value - The value of a field on the source record was be used. For example, if uploading a file against a Sales Order this could default the Customer Name.

If selecting Field Value a dialog will be automatically displayed to setup the field to use for each source record type. This option can also be displayed by selecting the Fields (Default Values) action:

The following dialog is displayed allowing you to map the fields for each source:

Within this dialog select the Attribute Source and the Field Name to use from the list of fields on the underlying record. For Example, if you want to default the Customer Name when you upload a document against a Sales Order select Sales Order as the Attribute Source and then Sell-to Customer Name as the Field Name. 

If you select None as the Default Value or you wish a user to be able to override the default value you can configure a range of values for the user to select from. This may be done by selecting the Values action:

This will display the "Document Attribute Values" screen as below:

Within this screen you may specify a list of values for the user to select from. The bottom part of the screen will display any documents that are currently assigned the Document Attribute/Document Attribute Value.