NetDocuments Setup for Use with Actionstep

Modified on Fri, 27 Mar at 12:05 PM

NetDocuments can be customized in many ways (like Actionstep). We recommend that you set it up a certain way to get the best out of the integration but this is not meant to be a limiting way that you configure your system. You can configure it, however, suits you best.

This will involve three steps:

Setting up your profile attributes
Defining workspace templates
Configuring your profile attributes

Setting Up Your Profile Attributes

You can configure your NetDocuments Cabinet to link to both Clients and Matters (recommended), or Matters only. For More information about what Attributes are and how they work see the NetDocuments User guide: Define Profile Attributes

To set this up:

Sign in to your NetDocuments account and go to the Admin section.
Click on Define profile attributes.Here, you will define your document profiles. As NetDocuments has powerful full-text searching, you usually do not need to have many profile fields. If you want to link both Clients and Matters then you should add both of these. You may want to add further options like "Document Type", for example.
Use the Create button to add a profile Attribute for "Client" and one for "Matter".

For the Client Attribute

On the Profile Attribute Definition page for Client:

Type will usually be Text
Maximum length should be large enough to accommodate even long client names.
Link to Parent should be set to "None".
Tick Use lookup table. (This is important for the Actionstep integration)
You would normally want to tick Prompt if Empty to ensure documents aren't just dumped anywhere.
You can leave the remaining fields un-ticked.
You can leave the remaining fields un-ticked.

TIP: If you've already set up your attributes and you want to edit the profile attribute definition again, select the attribute from the list and on the resulting page, click the Modify attribute definition link in the top left of the page.

For the Matter Attribute

On the Profile Attribute Definition page for the matter:

When Editing the Matter Attribute do the same as above (for Client) with one exception: Use the Link to parent to link the matter attribute as a child of the client attribute.

For the Document Type Attribute

You should also create an attribute for your document types. This allows you to arrange your documents into different types (e.g., emails, correspondence, quotes, invoices, etc.).

CAUTION: If you set up a Document Types attribute, it should not have a link to a parent. Document types that link to a parent cannot be selected in Actionstep.

Define Workspace Templates

Go to the Admin page in NetDocuments and select your cabinet.
Click Define workspace templates towards the top left of the page.
Make sure that the Base workspaces on this attribute is set to "Matter".
Enter in a plural form of Matter ("Matters").
If you have setup a Documents Type Attribute you may want to choose it from Organize documents within workspaces by this attribute to that Document Type.
Select the box for Enable workspaces for this cabinet and use the default.
In the Templates Details part of this page, you can use the Workspace Title to define how the Workspaces in NetDocs that are created from Actionstep will be named. You can use this to define how they will be named (i.e., client name then matter name). For instance:

[ParentDescription]: [MatterKey]- [MatterDescription]
Will show the Client_Name: MatterNumber - Matter Name, e.g., Connor Smith: 198 - Sale of 45 Wilson Street
Click Save Templates once you have made the changes.

If you have an Attribute for Document type like we mentioned above you can automatically create folders for each of the types in NetDocuments by Clicking on Pre-Define Document Type Workspace Filters at the bottom of the screen and select them all and save.

If you click the Display containers in two columns tick box at the bottom of the screen you will be able to have a slightly more organized workspace display rather than all listed vertically.

Configuring Document Attributes

Document attributes set what you will be able to record as an attribute against each document in NetDocuments.

When generating a document from a template in Actionstep and saving it to NetDocuments, Actionstep can populate:

The Client attribute
The Matter attribute
The Document Type attribute

If you have other document attributes beyond these three then there may be errors as you save a document to NetDocuments. Actionstep recommends that you only configure document attributes listed above.

To set your document attributes in NetDocuments:

Go to the NetDocuments Admin page.
Select your cabinet and go to the section Configure Document Attributes.
Select the checkboxes for one or more of the Client, Matter and Document type attributes only.
Scroll to the bottom of the screen and Submit to save the changes.