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InterAction® Administrator Answer Center

Overview of InterAction Documents

  • Updated

In a professional services organization, two of the most important assets are the following:

  • The organization’s clients and contacts
  • The materials (documents) produced in support of those clients

Document references in InterAction give you the ability to connect these materials (contracts, proposals, engagement letters, etc.) to the clients, contacts, matters, opportunities, and engagements in InterAction. Professionals and staff can easily track a complete view of all pertinent information related to the service of their clients.

Although InterAction’s document features are useful, they do not provide all of the functionality of a Document Management System (DMS). Furthermore, there is no integration between documents in InterAction and a DMS. If your organization currently uses a DMS, you should not implement the document references features in InterAction.

See the following topics:

Where in InterAction Can Users Attach Documents?

Once you have enabled the documents feature, users can attach documents to the following InterAction items:

Note that files two GB or greater cannot be added to InterAction.

  • Activities. The most common example of this is an e-mail attachment.
  • Contacts. Documents can be attached directly to a contact. For example, a user could add a copy of a company’s annual report directly to the company contact. A resume or longer biographical sketch might be useful to add to a person contact.
  • Matters, Opportunities, or Engagements. If your organization has licensed one of these modules, users can include documents directly on these items. This is useful for making the various documents associated with this work available to others in InterAction. For example, users might add RFPs, proposals, or contacts to a matter, opportunity, or engagement.

Document references are available in the Web Client, the Windows Client, and the Desktop Integration components of InterAction. From any of these places, users can view and attach documents.

Viewing and Attaching Documents in the Web Client

[A] Documents already attached to the activity display here.

[B] Choose Attach to add an additional document

[C] Use the Browse button to find the document to attach. Fill in the other information about the document.

[A] Documents already attached to the activity display here.

[B] Choose Attach to add an additional document.

[C] Use the Browse button to find the document to attach. Fill in the other information about the document.

For more about how end users work with documents in InterAction, see How End Users Work with Documents.

Where Does InterAction Store the Documents?

When a user adds a document to InterAction, InterAction places a copy of the document in a special location called a document repository, then stores a reference (link) to the document in the database. At this point, the document in InterAction and the original version on the user’s hard drive are no longer connected. Any changes the user makes to the original version are not reflected in the InterAction version, and vice versa.

The document repository defines a physical file server location where the documents are stored. InterAction uses a component called the Document Repository Server to manage this location. The server is a Web Application that accesses the file server location as needed to add and retrieve the documents. You can set up multiple Document Repository Servers in your environment.

Requests for documents are routed from the various client applications (Web Client, Windows Client, Desktop Integration) directly through the Document Repository Server. Note that the client applications communicate with the Document Repository Server directly; these communications are not passed through the Application Server.

This configuration provides several benefits:

  • All InterAction users with appropriate InterAction access rights can open and view the attached documents through InterAction. Access to the documents is not dependent on having a particular drive mapping.
  • End users do not need any access to the physical location where the files are stored. For security purposes, it is recommended that users not have any access to this location. This ensures that InterAction’s security model controls all end-user access to the documents.

  • You can designate multiple document repositories. This enables you to create repositories that are physically near major groups of users, which improves system performance.

    For example, you could have one repository in Chicago and another in London. When a user in London adds a new document, the file is copied to the local repository rather than being sent across the WAN to Chicago.

  • The Windows Client, Web Client, and Desktop Integration components of InterAction can all communicate directly with the Document Repository Server. Therefore, if your Application Server is located in Chicago, but you have repositories in both Chicago and London, the London users do not need to send their documents through the Application Server to add them to the London repository.

Before You Deploy Documents

By default, document references in InterAction are turned off. This enables you to roll out or upgrade InterAction before you fully configure and test document references.

Before you start configuring documents, your InterAction environment should be fully up and running. For a new deployment, you can roll out to end users without the feature, then turn it on. Alternatively you can set up the documents feature and include it in the initial rollout. In either method, be sure that the rest of your environment is ready before you start.

Also note that you must enter your InterAction Account Number in InterAction Administrator before you can set up the documents feature. 

Steps to Implement Documents in InterAction

Once you have decided to deploy the document references in InterAction, there are several steps you need to take. All document-related features are initially turned off in InterAction; you must enable the feature before it can be used.

You can fully configure the feature before making it available to end users. This is recommended to ensure that everything is properly set up before users begin attaching documents in InterAction.

The following table provides the high-level steps for implementing documents in InterAction. See the later sections in this chapter for details about each step.

High-Level Steps to Deploy Documents in InterAction

Step Comment  
Configure Document Settings and Options
1. Set up a list of document types. Each document added to InterAction has a type to identify the purpose or content of the document. You can define a list of appropriate types for your environment. See Configuring Document Types.
2. Set up a list of excluded file types. These are files that users are not allowed to add to InterAction. This is important to prevent users from attaching junk files from e-mail messages or executable files by mistake. See Prevent Users from Attaching File Types.
3. Select the defaults that will be used when users add new documents to InterAction. See General Document Settings.
Set Up the Locations That Will Store the Documents (Repositories)
4. Decide where you want to store the documents users add to InterAction. Decide on the number of locations (repositories) you need.  
5. Make sure the machine you plan to use for the Document Repository Server meets the operating system and software requirements.  
6. Set up your file server. This includes setting up a directory to store the files, configuring security on this directory, and setting up your backup and anti-virus strategy.  
7.

Install the Document Repository Server.

Each document repository must be managed by a Document Repository Server. In a typical environment, you install an instance of the server for each repository.

 
8. Configure IIS settings for the Document Repository Server.

 
9. Use InterAction Administrator to configure a document repository. This ties the Document Repository Server to the file server location you have defined.

 
10. If you are deploying multiple document repositories, repeat steps 6-9 for each additional document repository you need.  
Test Your Configuration and Deploy to End Users
11. Enable the documents feature just for the System Administrator User.

 
12. Log in to InterAction as the System Administrator user and review your configuration to ensure that you have set everything up correctly.  
13. Enable the feature for the rest of your organization.  
Ongoing Maintenance
14. Make sure all the files stored in each repository are backed up regularly.  
15. Perform other maintenance as needed.  

About Configuring Document Settings

You do most document-related configuration in InterAction Administrator. Most of the relevant settings are available on the Activities, Appointments, and Document References dialog box.

Also note that you must do the following before you can configure any document settings:

  • Set up and start the InterAction Application Server.

  • Configure InterAction Administrator to communicate with the Application Server. To check whether this is set, choose Configuration from the main entity list in InterAction Administrator, then choose the General tab.

    You can confirm access to the Application Server by clicking the Test Settings button.