Along with Search, it is equally important for a Content Services application to focus on the interface for how users interact with Folders and Documents to promote user efficiency and overall application satisfaction. Instead of taking an organization’s shared drive and implementing a “windows explorer” style interface on the web, we recommend the following six Best Practices.

Best Practice 1: Leverage Search Instead of the Folder Tree

Often, when first implementing a content services application, organizations are moving from a “shared drive” to a more modern interface. Unfortunately, it’s often the case that system designers simply take that paradigm – a folder tree – and simply port it to a content services platform.

This folder tree approach introduces a number of issues:

1. Governance – at best, it’s very difficult to keep the folder tree clean and consistent across areas of the repository. At worst, the tree can become messy and inconsistent rather quickly. Entropy is not on your side here. It only takes a few different managers with differing viewpoints to create confusion and difficulty finding important information.
2. Complex Security Structure – In order to provide some level of governance, often a complex security model is deployed that enables certain users to manage the folder tree at certain levels. While the complex security model attempts to avoid the governance problems mentioned above, it cannot prevent inconsistencies that arise due to users in different departments failing to adhere to structural policies and securing content using their own rules.
3. Inflexible – Once implemented, a folder tree is not likely to be changed. As business needs evolve, trying to update the tree structure is inefficient and is often left undone. This approach robs an organization of future efficiencies and possible features simply because users are rooted in a set folder tree structure.
4. Misplaced or “Lost” Content – When important information is located in a folder tree structure (department, customer number, etc.) users are typically not prompted to enter these metadata values when content is imported. As a result, content can be easily lost when it is misfiled due to lack of metadata available to locate the misplaced content.

Instead of the folder tree approach, we recommend that users leverage metadata and search rather than browsing a folder tree. Not only is utilizing search a more efficient method for finding content, it is much more flexible to change over time, and avoids the governance issue with the static folder tree entirely.

For example, say a Quality Document author is looking for a Change Control form for the Peoria plant, in the Finishing department, for Unit A.  Rather than traversing a folder structure three to four levels deep, it’s much easier to simply select metadata values in a search form and execute a search.

To be clear, we are not recommending that the folder tree should be ignored. Instead, we have long recommended utilizing an “auto-filing” mechanism to automatically place folders and documents into a sensible structure based on their metadata. This approach is much more flexible, avoids incorrectly filing content, has a cleaner security model, and is easier to keep consistent over time.

Best Practice 2: Ensure the View Changes Based on the User Context

Like with search, when viewing a folder in the application the UI should be context-aware based on the type of folder being viewed as well as the user that’s viewing it. Here’s an example view from the Alfresco Content Accelerator (ACA), which powers the Claims Management and Policy and Procedure Management accelerators. In this example, a Claims Adjuster has loaded a Claim folder into ACA:

Above, we can see a number of areas where the view is context aware, highlighted by the red boxes:

1. High value metadata is displayed prominently when looking at the folder. In the Claims example, the view may display Claim Number, Claimant Name, Loss Date, etc. When viewing a Vendor Folder, the view should show attributes like Vendor Name, Vendor Number, etc. In either case, high value metadata is displayed prominently and based on the folder context.
2. When listing the documents contained in a folder, concepts from Search best practices carry through. Relevant metadata is available to sort and filter, and the user can personalize the view by reordering the columns and updating visibility. When digital assets are involved, a thumbnail view is also available.

To show the flexibility in this interface, the Policy and Procedure scenario utilizes the above view without a folder at all. Instead, the Change Request document acts as a ‘container’, and any associated documents display based on repository relationships.

In the above example, the metadata displayed in the top left pertains to the Change Request document, not the underlying repository folder as in the previous Claims example. Documents associated with the Change Request are provided in the Related Objects section in the left sidebar as well.

In either the Claims or Change Request examples above, both Folder and Document action buttons should be displayed based on the user’s context and permissions. For example, if the user doesn’t have the ability to upload a new document, check out a document, or start a workflow, buttons for these actions should not appear (even as unclickable).

Sometimes users will only see a certain action based on the context of the document. For example, the user may be able to start workflows, but the “Start Workflow” action button should not show up if the document is already on a workflow. In these cases, it’s helpful to have a “Why Can’t I?” action that explains why certain actions do not appear.

Best Practice 3: Ensure All Actions Are Visible Instead of Hidden In Menus

Action buttons should be clearly visible and easily accessible instead of buried in menus and sub-menus. Perhaps this is another vestige of a windows-explorer like mentality, similar to the folder tree item above, but an interface that looks like this is dated and should be avoided.

Instead, actions should be immediately visible and apparent to the user based on their context as mentioned in the previous best practice. This best practice does assume that the user’s device has enough screen real estate to accommodate viewing action buttons. In cases where the user has a small screen, typically a mobile device or tablet, standard mobile action paradigms should be utilized.

Best Practice 4: View Documents With an Advanced Viewer

When viewing documents in a Content Services application, we recommend using an advanced viewer. At a minimum the viewer should provide for:

• Seamless in-browser viewing with no client-side installs or downloads needed.
• High speed viewing regardless of document size, in either number of pages or data size.
• Support for all necessary file formats your organization utilizes, including Office (Word, Excel), PDF, images, video, etc.

Some advanced viewers that we recommend, like the Alfresco Enterprise Viewer, provide the above features, plus additional advanced features such as:

• Document and video annotations that allow users to comment on and mark up the document without changing the underlying content.
• PDF redactions that remove sensitive content from documents.
• Collaboration features that allow multiple users looking at a document to chat, follow scrolling, or even launch a Teams or Zoom call directly from the document.

Best Practice 5: Allow for Multi-Perspective Viewing

When positioning the viewer in the containing application, many Content Services UIs default to simply displaying the viewer full screen, taking over the entire view. While this approach should certainly be an option for the user, we recommend a few other options and features to give the user more flexibility.

For many case-management applications we recommend maintaining the list of documents while a user is viewing a document. For example, if a Claims Adjuster is viewing the documents in a claim, the list of documents should not disappear upon each click to view a document. This way, the adjuster has the option to easily cycle through the documents if needed and can close the document list if more room is needed for viewing a particular document or image.

With this dual pane ability, another often-requested feature is side-by-side document viewing. From this example in the Alfresco Content Accelerator (ACA), the user can view two documents (or two versions of the same document) at the same time on a single screen:

Since many users have multiple monitors, ACA provides an easy mechanism to launch a document in its own window for better viewing. In this way, a user could comfortably view three to four documents at once.

Best Practice 6: Surface Related Information Automatically

When users are viewing a folder or document, it can be very helpful for the interface to automatically surface related information. For example, when a Claims Adjuster is looking at a claim, it would be helpful to easily navigate to related claims opened by the same Claimant or the underwriting Policy documents. Another example is viewing forms or work instructions relating to a specific procedure. There are a number of ways to surface these related documents, but the most common are:

• Search – leverage common metadata to find related folders and documents.
• Repository Relationships – Most Content Services platforms allow you to connect multiple objects via a ‘relationship’ or ‘association’. For example, in ACA’s Policy and Procedure accelerator, this concept is leveraged easily to display the related Change Request object when a viewer is looking at a Standard Operating Procedure document.

Surfacing related information combined with side-by-side viewing opens up significant benefits for the user. Going back to our claims example, now the Claims Adjuster can cross reference information from the claim with the policy contract on the same screen and without losing context of the claim.

Note that the folder structure here is automatically generated based on metadata. The interface is not going against Best Practice #1, but rather highlights the flexibility of not relying on a repository folder structure.

In the image above, the interface has automatically surfaced the related Policy for the Claim we’re working on. This view allows the Claim Adjuster the ability to view the underwriting documents in the Policy folder without losing context on the claim. The side-by side-view even allows the user to view the policy contract to cross reference information in the claim.

Summary

How a Content Services application presents the UI for viewing folders and documents is critically important. After finding their work, users require an efficient and easy-to-use interface that allows them to perform their work to the best possible level of quality. The six best practices outlined in this post, along with mistakes to avoid, have assisted many customers in choosing and implementing the best possible interface to provide value for all users.

Comment your thoughts below or on LinkedIn. Do you have any folder and document viewing best practices to share? Let Docuvela know!