Using the Navigation Pane

The Navigation Pane is used to access cabinet level folders and Workspaces with their folders.

The Navigation Pane is available on the Home Page, the Cabinet Pages, Folder Pages, Workspaces, Recent Docs, Search Results, and Categories. 

A Home Page example is shown below.

When you first login, the Navigation Pane is expanded.  It will display the name of your repository and cabinets related to that repository. 

NOTE: If you want, you can also show My Cabinet at the bottom.  It is used to receive NetBinders from others who share with you who are not part of your repository. Go to My Account to display My Cabinet.

Expanding Navigation Pane
The Navigation Pane will display on the left side of the page and will be separated from the rest of the page by a thin gray line.  You can position your cursor on the gray line and drag it to the left or right to resize it.  If you drag it all the way to the left, the data will disappear leaving only the gray line.  When you want to expand it again, just drag it to the right.

The position of the Navigation Pane dividing line will always remain the same as you left it each time you login.

Just a note, when you hide the Navigation Pane, if you have expanded a cabinet to display the folders, that will automatically be collapsed the next time you expand the Navigation Pane.  If you do not want that to collapse, you can drag the divider line to about 1 inch from the left side, so the data continues to be visible.

If you do not use workspaces and you click the plus sign next to your Cabinet name, all of the top-level cabinet folders to which you have access will be displayed.  You can continue to click a plus next to a top-level cabinet folder to expand and display the subfolders.  When you click the name of a folder, the folder will open and display the contents of that folder on the right side of the page.

If you are using workspaces and you click the plus sign next to your cabinet name, you will see the 3 items as shown above in the example. 

Folders - By clicking the plus next to Folders, you will see the top-level cabinet folders to which you have access.

My Workspaces (My Matters) - Expanding My Workspaces will display those workspaces you have selected.  Folders in each workspace will be displayed when it is expanded.  You can have up to 350 workspaces displayed at one time.

Recent Workspaces (Recent Matters) - Expanding Recent Workspaces will display the last 40 workspaces you have accessed.  Folders in each workspace will be displayed when it is expanded.

Nature of Cabinet-level Folders

Cabinet-level Folders can be used to organize documents through a hierarchy.  Organizations with a larger number of documents may choose to just use the custom profiling and Workspaces to organize their documents and not use cabinet-level folders.  Cabinet Folders are stored in a cabinet and can be displayed using the Navigation Pane.  Only folders you have access to will be displayed in the Navigation Pane.

A NetDocuments folder functions similarly to the folders you use in Windows Explorer to organize documents on your local PC. However, NetDocuments folders are virtual, meaning documents are not actually "contained" or stored in the folders. Documents actually exist in the Cabinet and can be "filed" in at least one folder.

Typically, for Basic Accounts, the organization will create a set of top-level firm-wide folders where all documents are filed so that all users can easily locate the documents.

If the account is a Professional Account, the organization will generally use only a few cabinet-level folders for common firm-wide company documents.  The remaining Cabinet-level folders are generally personal top-level, non-sharable folders which are created and used for personal organization as opposed to shared folders across the organization. 

These personal folders are generally accessible only by that individual and cannot be shared with others.  Subfolders under these personal folders can be shared with small workgroups in the organization. 

If your firm chooses to use folders to organize clients and matters or projects, firm-wide, instead of using Workspaces and custom profile values, then you need to ensure that you do not have too many subfolders and/or documents in any given folder.

There is a limit of 500 items in a folder. The time to display a folder will increase as the document/subfolder count grows in that folder.  A manageable number of subfolders/documents in a folder varies with connection speed, etc, but you should be able to work fine with a couple hundred items.

We would suggest when firm-wide folders are used for clients or projects, that the top-level folders be letters of the alphabet, or a subset of the alphabet and then the client folders would be created as subfolders under the related letter and then a set of subfolders under each client folder for the matters.  This will keep the top-level folder from containing too many subfolders and/or documents.  If a particular matter within a client folder has too many documents, then you may want to further subdivide the documents by date range for a specific matter.  Also if you have a lot of matters or projects under one client folder, you may want to subdivide them in a logical way.
 

Understanding How Security Works for Folders

Cabinet Administrators
Cabinet Administrators must designate a default folder creation method in the Cabinet Administration page.  By default, everyone with access to the Cabinet has rights to create shared top-level folders.  When a folder is created in this scenario, the rights to that folder will be defaulted the same as the cabinet rights.  "Shared" means that all other users in the Cabinet will be able to see and access these folders. 

However, we generally recommend that this flag be set so that only the Cabinet Administrator can create shared top-level folders.  All members of the Cabinet can still create top-level personal folders that only they can see and access.  These personal folders are not "shared" and cannot be viewed by anyone else in the Cabinet, HOWEVER, shared subfolders can be created under these folders.  The access of these non-shared top level folders cannot be changed.

We recommend unless the organization has a relatively small number of folders, that the administrator set the flag to NOT allow everyone to create shared top-level folders.  It will help reduce disorganization in the Cabinet at the top folder level.  Users will still be able to create shared subfolders under their own top-level folder - just not top-level folders that everyone in the Cabinet will see. 

Cabinet Members
If you have been granted rights to create "shared" top-level folders, any folder that you create can be seen by others in the Cabinet, unless you explicitly set permissions to "no access".  If you do NOT have shared top-level folder rights, you can still create top-level folders that can be seen only by you.  Your subfolders can be searched by others if you explicitly grant rights to other Members to access those subfolders. 

When you create a top-level non-shared folder, your access will appear as View|Edit.  However, you remain as administrator of your non-shared folder and can delete it at any time.  Subfolders that you create under a non-shared folder can be shared with others in the firm.  This is generally done in a small workgroup scenario.

Setting Access Rights

To modify an access list to a folder:

1. Open the folder

2. Click Modify Access List

3. Add or remove users to the folder access list

4. Close the access list dialog

Suppose you have a hierarchy of four subfolders.  You can grant others access to all or some of these folders.  For example, if the hierarchy looks like this:
 

      Top-folder

          Subfolder 1

              Subfolder 2

                  Subfolder 3

                      Subfolder 4

A user could choose to grant others access to Subfolder 1 and 3 only, but not 2 and 4.  As a user browses the folders in the Navigation Pane, only the following folders will be visible.

      Cabinet Name > Top-folder > Subfolder 1 ...> Subfolder 3

Notice that Subfolder 2 is not visible.  It can only be searched for.  If a user opened Subfolder 1, he would not see Subfolder 3 under it because Subfolder 3 is not its subfolder.

Suppose that the user navigates to Subfolder 1.  The only way to access Subfolder 3 is to search for it from the Advanced Search page.  Hence, if there are folders that are accessed frequently, it is helpful to add them to your Home Page, or to create a Category to access the folders efficiently and quickly. 

NOTE: A Cabinet flag can be set by the Administrator so that all documents that are filed in a folder or linked to a folder will inherit the Access Rights of the folder.  This flag is useful, for example, in an extranet Cabinet where folders are generally used.  It should NOT be used if one document will be filed into more than one folder.

NOTE: To add a document to a folder, you must have at least VE rights to the folder.  If you have View only rights, you cannot add a document to a folder.

Folder Profiles

Folders, like documents, have a profile and name extension.  To access the Edit Profile screen for a folder:

1. Open the folder

2. Click on Edit Profile Option on the folder menu.

NOTE: If there are required custom profile fields in the Cabinet, the Edit Profile screen will automatically appear when a new folder is created as it does when adding documents to the Cabinet.  The Profile needs to be completed by the person creating the folder.  Users are allowed to complete a partial profile for folders and categories to facilitate folder and category hierarchies.

NOTE: Documents filed in a folder will always inherit any Custom Profile values which have been completed for that folder.

Searching for folders: From the Advanced Search page, you can enter ndfld in the Document folder extension search field.  This will locate all folders to which you have access.  By typing more specific information such as the date created, author, or text in the folder name, you can narrow your search results for folders, just as you do with documents. 

NOTE: If your selection criteria is only folders (ndfld), then the Mark All box will select all of the folders.  Otherwise, folders are not selected when you click the Mark All box.
 

Subfolders

You can create as many subfolder levels as you need.  Any subfolder can be "shared" with other members of the Cabinet, even if shared top-level folders can only be created by a Cabinet Administrator, as explained previously.   When a new subfolder is created, it inherits the Profile values of its parent folder.

Editing, Renaming, Moving, & Deleting Items Filed in Folders

You should be aware of the following.  In a traditional Windows folder system, you create the folder and add documents to it. The document can only exist within that folder. If you move it, it must be moved to another existing folder. In NetDocuments, you add documents into the Cabinet and then choose whether to "file" the documents in folders or not. Suppose a document is related to two folders with different purposes. One Cabinet user files it in her folder and another user files it in his folder view. If user A deletes the document, it deletes the document from both folders. If User B modifies it, it will be modified in both folders. If User A deletes her folder, the document will simply become un-filed from the folder but remains filed in User B's folder.

 

Using Drag and Drop to organize items
 

From the Navigation Pane, you can drag folders into other folders to move them.   This has to be within the same cabinet.

If you want to copy a folder or set of folders, hold down the CTRL key and drag the folder(s).  You will have the option to also copy the documents or just the folders.

Also from an open folder, you can "drag and drop" items to file them in a different subfolder in the folder or a parent folder of the opened folder.  To drag an item, hover over it with the mouse, then hold the left mouse button down and while continuing to hold the left mouse button, drag it to the new subfolder or parent folder where you want to move it.  This has to be within the same cabinet.

If you drag a folder to the cabinet name or the "folders" heading, that folder will become a top-level folder.

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At the bottom of each folder and subfolder is a count of the number of documents in the folder that you have rights to access.  (Other documents could be filed in the folder to which you do not have access.)

NOTE:  Adding a document to a folder, deleting a document in a folder, or editing the profile of a folder will cause the folder Modified By and Modified Date to change to the time the action took place and the person who took the action.

Folders have a History available, similar to what documents have that shows activity related to that Folder.