How to find a document and link it to your work

A document nobody can find is a document nobody reads. This page covers getting back to one and, more usefully, connecting it to the work it belongs to. Start at What are documents? for what documents are.

How is the list ordered?

Documents in the sidebar shows every document in the workspace, most recently edited first, with who last touched it and when.

That order is the useful default, because the thing you want is usually the thing somebody was writing this week. It also means a document nobody has touched in a year sinks, which is a fair signal about whether it is still true.

Everyone sees the same list. Documents are workspace-wide, so there is no personal view to get out of step with anyone else's.

How do you link a document to your work?

By mentioning it from wherever the work is. Typing @ in a chat message, a comment, or another document brings up a menu you can pick a document from.

This is the habit worth forming. A returns policy linked from the record that needed it is found by the next person automatically; the same policy sitting in the list is found only by somebody who already knows it exists.

Records carry links to documents in their Related panel, which shows what points at what in both directions. See How to link a record to work, and see what points at it.

Can you link from inside a document?

Yes. Mentioning works inside the editor too, so a shoot brief can point at the products it covers and at the project it belongs to.

Those links go both ways. The thing you mention shows the document back, which is what makes the connection worth making rather than just typing a title.

How does a document get created alongside work?

A planned item on a project can create one automatically when it becomes a task, already linked to that task.

For a content calendar this is the whole trick: every post arrives with its brief attached rather than somebody making a document later and hoping it gets connected. See How to plan what goes out and when.

Why can I not open a document somebody sent me?

Two possibilities, and they look the same from a broken link.

The Documents module may be switched off for your workspace, which makes every document unreachable including one linked from a message. That is an admin setting, covered in How to switch parts of Tideswell on and off.

Or the document was removed. Removing takes it out of the list for everybody, so an old link to one stops resolving.

Is there a Documents screen on the phone?

Documents are written and read on the web. The iPhone app covers the things you do away from a desk, which is chat, tasks and notifications.

That split is deliberate rather than temporary, and How to create and format a document is where the writing happens.