Working with Document Relationships

Document relationships provide a way to link documents in a Vault. You can view, edit and add relationships from within the Doc Info page. Vault automatically adds certain types of relationships when you perform actions like copying a document or creating a link annotation.

Relationship Types

Your Vault may have a number of different relationship types. Relationship types can vary by document type. You can see which types apply to a specific document from the fields panel of the Doc Info page.

Each relationship type includes rules which dictate:

How many relationships of that type can exist for a single source document
Document type for the source and target documents
Target document’s values for specific document fields (Product, etc.)
Whether the relationship is version-specific on the source and/or target document

These configuration options are explained more in About Document Relationships.

Viewing Relationships

To view the relationships for a specific relationship type, expand the area. Vault displays documents that you have permission to see and hides other related documents. You can open any document you have permission for by clicking on the document name.

How to Add & Remove Relationships

To add a new or remove an existing relationship, you need the Edit Relationships permission. If you have this permission, you’ll see a + icon in the header of the relationship type area. To create or remove a relationship:

Click the plus (+) icon to open the dialog.
In the dialog, Vault automatically filters to find relevant documents, based on the filters configured for the relationship type. You can remove filters that show an minus (-) icon. You cannot remove required filters.
Optional: Add additional search criteria or filters to find the correct target document. If needed, select a different standard view in the top right of the dialog. In addition to the standard Library views, you can limit the view to your Favorites, or to documents that are currently in your Cart.
For each document that you want to add a relationship to, select the checkbox.
For each document that you want to remove a relationship to, clear the checkbox.
Optional: Click Upload to upload and relate one or more files. This process works similarly to creating documents from uploaded files
When finished, click Close.

Upload and Relate Documents

With the multiple document upload and relate feature, you can upload multiple documents directly from the document relationship section in the document viewer, and establish relationships to the document you started the action from. This process works similarly to creating documents from uploaded files and allows you to classify documents, enter metadata, and check for duplicates.

Classification

Vault requires you to classify uploaded document(s). Additionally, any documents that you upload must be of the same document type. You must do multiple uploads to add files with different document types.

Type	Permission Label	Controls
Document Role	View Document	You must have this permission to view existing document relationships. You must have the View Document permission on the target document to add a document relationship.
Document Role	Create Document	You must have this permission on document types to upload and relate documents.
Document Role	Edit Relationships	You must have the Edit Relationships permission on the source document to add or remove a document relationship.

Limitations