Archive Management
- Brian Banet
Archives are used to group documents by department, workgroup, process, chronological schema, or to categorize documents that have a similar function or similar information. Archive permissions are set for individual users or groups of users by a member of the SSAdmin group or a database administrator.
When any Archive is opened, the user is presented with documents from the Default search, assuming one has been configured. The number of documents returned and the order in which they are sorted is determined by the user. By default, GlobalSearch will display the most recent 25 documents that match the Default Search criteria.
For details on setting Archive security, please refer to the Manage Archive Security page.
Best Practices for Creating Archives
- Create Fields First and Then Your Archives. It is more efficient and less error-prone to create Fields in the Field Catalog before creating Archives. This ensures all the Index Fields needed for an Archive are ready when you start creating. While you can go back and add Index Fields to Archives after the initial creation, it usually includes having to do some supplemental cleanup on the Browse Search that is created by default when an Archive is created. (When you create an Archive, the Browse Search is built with a criterion for each Field. Adding an Index Field to an Archive doesn’t add a criterion for the Field to the Browse Search; you need to modify the Browse Search and manually add a criterion for the new Index Field.)
- Use a Field to Identify Different Documents. You don’t have to have separate Archives for different document types; use a Field to identify the documents you wish to organize and replace the need for a Folder. For example, use a single Archive where everyone’s correspondences are stored, and include an Indexed By System Field to capture the username of the person who indexed it. Then create a Search to return correspondences where Indexed By is equal to @fulluser, and set that as the Default Search for everyone. When they click on the Correspondence Archive, they will see only the correspondences that they indexed.
- Name Archives Thoughtfully. Archive names are generally short descriptors of what data should be found in the Archive. GlobalSearch is extremely flexible in naming an Archive and may contain spaces and special characters. However, other applications that may connect to GlobalSearch in might not. To ensure cross-application compatibility, it is a good idea to minimize the use of special characters.