Creating the Folder Structure

Newly created Laserfiche repositories do not contain a predefined folder structure. The type of data that will be stored in Laserfiche dictates what sort of folder structure is needed to organize the data. When setting up a new repository, you will need to create an appropriate folder structure for your repository. Your folder structure should fit the needs of your organization. However, there are general guidelines as to what constitutes a good folder structure.

Folders should be organized and divided logically to provide an intuitive way for the user to locate items. When creating folders, you should consider how users will want to identify and browse for documents. For instance, you might decide to create folders based on department, document type, or date of filing, depending on how your users will most frequently distinguish which document they need. In general, a simpler folder structure is easier to use than a complex one, and fewer choices at higher levels are better than many choices. The existence of too many choices forces a user to stop and read all of the folder names in order to find the one they need. Finally, you will want to create a folder structure that will result in a moderate number of documents per folder. Many folders with only one or two documents per folder is inconvenient to browse, but single folders with hundreds or thousands of documents are both unwieldy for the user and may result in performance issues.

When creating a folder structure, you should also bear in mind the security you will want to use. Generally, in order to take advantage of rights inheritance, access rights should naturally flow down from the root of the folder structure down to the document. Access is usually most broad at the root of the folder structure and becomes more restricted further down on the individual documents. For example, you may want to create folders for each department at the root and allow access to each of those folders depending on which department a user is in. Within the folders, you can then set more restrictive security to restrict access to individual groups within the department.

In general, it is best to configure your folder structure and security hierarchy such that you can control access using Allow and inheritance rather than relying on Deny; it will be simpler to administer in the future. If your folder structure and entry access rights are not properly configured, you may end up with documents that cannot be seen due to a parent folder with more restrictive rights.