Attaching Documents to Activities and Contacts

Document references in InterAction give you the ability to connect your organization’s clients and contacts with the materials (documents) produced in support of those clients. For example, you can attach documents such as contracts, proposals, engagement letters, and other information to your clients, contacts, matters, opportunities, and engagements in InterAction. You can easily track a complete view of all pertinent information related to the service of your clients.

Note that the document references feature are optional; your organization may choose not to use them. If your organization already has a process for cataloging documents, such as a Document Management System, then you may not have access to these features in the Windows Client.

To access the documents for a contact, open the contact details for the contact and choose the Documents view.

Documents View

See the following topics:

• Where Can You Attach Documents?
• What Happens to Your Documents When You Attach Them to InterAction Items?
• Attach a Document to an Activity
• Attach a Document to a Contact
• Viewing the Documents for a Contact
• What is the Date for a Document?
• View the Activity or Appointment to Which a Document Is Attached
• Open or Save a Document
• Editing and Replacing Documents

Where Can You Attach Documents?

If your organization has enabled document references in InterAction, you can attach documents to the following InterAction items:

• Activities. The most common example of this is an email attachment. When you create activities from email messages in Microsoft Outlook, any attachments in the original email message are automatically included on the activity in InterAction.

  You can also manually add documents to activities, both from the Windows Client and from Outlook.

• Appointments. If you are synchronizing appointments between InterAction and Outlook, any attachments included on an Outlook appointment are automatically attached to the InterAction version during synchronization.

  For more about creating appointments, see the Using the Web Client and Desktop Integration guide.

• Contacts. You can attach documents directly to a contact. For example, you could add a copy of a company’s annual report directly to the company contact. A résumé 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, you can include documents directly on these items in the Web Client. In the Windows Client, you can include documents on activities regarding the matter, opportunity, or engagement.

  For details about attaching documents to matters, opportunities, or engagements, see the help for your module.

Attaching Documents to an Activity in the Windows Client

Attaching documents to an activity in the Windows 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.

What Happens to Your Documents When You Attach Them to InterAction Items?

When you attach a document to an item, InterAction makes a copy of your document and places it in a location designated by your system administrator. At this point, there is no longer any connection between the original copy of the document on your machine and the version in InterAction. If you want to make changes to the document in InterAction, you should follow the recommendations given in Editing and Replacing Documents.

Attach a Document to an Activity

IMPORTANT When attaching a document, you can choose any document on your local network or your machine. Once the document is added to InterAction, there is no connection between your original version and the version stored in InterAction.

An activity can have any number of documents.

1. Add or edit an activity as described in Creating and Editing Activities in the Windows Client.

2. Choose the Documents tab.

3. Choose Attach.

4. In the Document Properties dialog box, choose Browse and select the file you want to attach.

   

5. If necessary, change the Title for the document. This field defaults to the document’s filename. The title is displayed when you view a list of documents.

6. Select the appropriate Type. Document types are useful for filtering and searching on documents.

7. Enter a Description for the document.

8. Choose OK. The document is added to the list of documents for the activity.

9. Make any other changes to the activity as needed, then choose OK. The activity is saved and the document or documents you added are added to InterAction.

Attach a Document to a Contact

IMPORTANT When attaching a document, you can choose any document on your local network or your machine. Once the document is added to InterAction, there is no connection between your original version and the version stored in InterAction.

You can attach documents directly to a contact. This is usually done if the document would extend profile information on the contact, but is not related to a specific action such as an email message or phone call. For example, detailed marketing profiles are sometimes attached to company contacts.

Documents associated with other actions are normally included on activities (see Attach a Document to an Activity).

Also, a document can only be attached to a single contact. If you need to associate the same document with multiple contacts, add an activity for the contacts and include the document on the activity.

1. Open the contact details for the contact and choose the Documents view.

2. Choose Documents > Attach.

3. In the Document Properties dialog box, choose Browse and select the file you want to attach.

4. If necessary, change the Title for the document. This field defaults to the document’s filename. The title is displayed in the Web Client when you view a list of documents.

5. Select the appropriate Type. Document types are useful for filtering and searching on documents.

6. Select an option from the Who can see this list. You can select Everyone or a specific group of users.

   • All groups to which you belong are included in the list.

   • For details about security for documents, see Access to View an Activity or Document in the Windows Client.

7. Enter a Description for the document.

   

8. Choose OK. The document is added to InterAction.

Viewing the Documents for a Contact

The Documents view displays documents for the contact. When viewing the documents for a contact, the list includes both documents attached directly to the contact and those that are attached to activities that include the contact.

For example, you could add a new activity to the contacts Jane Tarnoff, Telenorth Financial Services, and Edward Roberts and include the document Telenorth Contract v.2.doc on the activity. This document is included on the Documents view, along with documents attached directly to the contact.

Viewing the List of Documents for a Contact in the Windows Client

[A] This document is attached to an activity that includes this contact. The document also displays on the Documents view.

[B] This document is attached directly to the contact.

Filter the Documents View by Date, Type, or Originator

1. Open the contact details for the contact and choose the Documents view.

2. Choose Documents > Filter to display the Filter Documents dialog box.

   

3. Choose one of the Date radio buttons to set the range of dates you want to be displayed. Change the date ranges if necessary.

   For details about how InterAction determines the date for a document, see What is the Date for a Document?.

4. If desired, choose an Originator and/or an Document Type to further filter the list of documents.

5. Check the Save as default Document Filter if you want InterAction to use this set of criteria as a default when you choose the Document view.

6. Choose OK when you are finished defining the filter.

Clear the Document Filter

1. From the Documents view, choose Documents > Filter to display the Filter Documents dialog box.

2. Choose Clear to clear all of the selected criteria.

3. Choose OK.

What is the Date for a Document?

Because documents can be attached to different InterAction items (activities, contacts, etc.), the date for a document varies depending on how it was attached.

• For a document attached to an activity, the date is the same as the activity date. Therefore, if you create an activity on February 1, 2019, then attach a document to it a week later (February 8), the date for that document is still Feb. 1, 2019 (the activity date).
• For a document attached to an appointment, the date is the same as the Start Date for the appointment.
• For a document attached directly to a contact, matter, opportunity, or engagement, the date is based on when the document was last attached. Therefore, if you attach a document to a contact on February 1, 2019, then edit the document properties and re-attach the document a week later (February 8), the date for that document becomes Feb. 8, 2019. For details about replacing a document, see the Using the InterAction Web Client and Desktop Integration guide.

View the Activity or Appointment to Which a Document is Attached

The Documents view for a contact displays both documents attached directly to the contact and those that are attached to activities and appointments that include the contact. In some cases, you might want to view the activity to which the document is attached. This can be useful for determining the context around the document.

1. Open the contact details for the contact and choose the Documents view.
2. Select the document and choose Documents > View Related Activity or Documents > View > Related Appointment.

Open or Save a Document

You can open a document from any list of documents in InterAction. Opening a document retrieves a copy of the file from InterAction. You can either open the document directly (this essentially downloads the document to your temporary Internet files and opens it from there), or save a copy on your machine.

Dialog Box for Opening or Saving a Document

Note that you need to have the application used to create the document available. For example, you must have Microsoft Word (or another application capable of reading Microsoft Word files) to open Word documents stored in InterAction.

1. Open the contact details for the contact and choose the Documents view.

2. Select the document and choose Documents > View > Document.

3. When prompted, choose to either open or save the document.

   To	Do This
   Open the document directly	Choose Open
   Save a copy of the document to your machine first (recommended).	Choose Save. When prompted, specify a location for the document and choose Save.

Note that saving or opening a document from InterAction essentially downloads a copy of the document. The file itself is still stored in a special location within InterAction. Making changes to a copy saved on your machine has no effect on the version in InterAction unless you specifically choose to reattach the changed version (see Editing and Replacing Documents).

Editing and Replacing Documents

If you need to change a document, you can save the document to your local machine and make changes, then add the changed version back to InterAction. There are two different ways to add an edited document back to InterAction.

• Add the document as an entirely new document. These leaves the original document still available.
• Edit the document properties for the document and choose to replace the existing version with a new version.

For details about saving a document to your local machine, see Open or Save a Document.

Adding the Revised Document as a New Document

You typically use this method when attaching documents to activities, since the document revisions are often tied to an action that should be captured in an activity.

For example, Ed Roberts sends an email message to his client Jane Tarnoff and includes a draft copy of the client contract. He creates an activity for this action and includes the contract on the activity (see Attach a Document to an Activity).

Later, he needs to update the contract with some minor changes. He opens the contact for Jane in InterAction and saves a copy of the original contract to his workstation. After editing the contract, he sends Jane a new email message with the revised version.

Since this second email message should also be captured in InterAction, this is the quickest and easiest way to add the revised document back to InterAction. Other users who want to know your organization’s history with Jane can see both the communications and the different versions of the contract.

When using this method, include “version” information in the document titles. For example:

• Telenorth Contract v.1
• Telenorth Contract v.2

Replacing an Existing Document with a New Version

This method requires more steps, but is useful if you want to ensure that the document in InterAction reflects the most recent version. This method is more often used for documents attached directly to contacts or directly to matters, opportunities, or engagements.

Replacing an existing document is similar to attaching a new document to an InterAction item; you browse for the file to add.

To replace an existing document, you do the following:

1. From any list of documents, select the document and choose Documents > Edit.

2. Choose the Browse button.

3. Select the new version of the document and choose Open.

4. Change the other information in the document properties as needed. For example, you can use the Description field to provide information about the new version and why it has been changed.

5. Choose OK. The revised version of the document is copied to InterAction and the old version is removed.

Replacing a Document

For the example, assume you have already saved a copy of the Marketing Dossier for Telenorth document and updated it with changes. Now you need to reattach it to the contact Telenorth.

[A] Select the document from the list and choose Documents > Edit.

[B] The Document Properties dialog box displays existing information about the document.

[C] Choose Browse and select the revised version of the document to add.

This effectively replaces the existing document. Once the revised version is added to InterAction, the old version is removed. InterAction does not keep track of old versions of documents.