Creating and Managing Document Folders

There are two ways to create new document folders within Keystone - one at a time for individual contacts, family partners, or houses, or in batch based on certain criteria.

Important notes about documents

For purposes of this Help, 'document' is used in a more generic sense and includes both text and PDF documents of various kinds as well as pictures.
You can store as many documents as you want for any person or property.
Your documents are not stored in your Keystone database, but rather in folders on your computer. Backing up your database from within Keystone does not back up your documents, as those files and folders are stored separately from your database. Therefore, it is strongly recommended that you include your documents folders in your regular computer or server backups.

Because your documents and pictures are not stored in your database, even if you switch to a copy of your database using Database Selection, the documents and pictures you see are still the original files and not copies. Do not do anything related to your documents while using a copy of your database that you wouldn't normally do in your main database.

Because scanned documents and digital photos potentially can use a significant amount of disk space, you may find that backups of your Keystone files and folders are much larger than you expected after you start using documents and pictures with Keystone.
Documents - whether they are reports, receipts, or anything else generated by Keystone, or documents created in other programs - are not automatically stored in your Keystone document folders unless you are asked by Keystone to do so. However, you can manually place document files in any person's or property's document folder and access them through Keystone.
You can store any document you want in your document folders as long as you have the program required to view them on your computer. When you select a document from within Keystone, it will open using the program on your computer set up as the default for that type of file. For example, Keystone will open files ending in .doc in Microsoft Word.
Develop an affiliate policy about what documents you want to store for contacts, family partners, or houses. Examples include: a special certificate awarded to a contact, mortgage and other agreement documents in a family partner's file, or plats for a house.

Consider as part of this policy adding a date at the beginning of your document file names in YYMMDD format (such as 090511 for May 11, 2009) as this will allow Keystone to sort your documents by date in document lists. Example: 090511 Mortgage Documents.doc
You can only manage documents for contacts containing a person (Person 1). If a contact record only has an organization name, no documents option will be available for that record.
You may create subfolders within the top folder to organize the type of documents stored.

Creating folders in batch

You can quickly create folders for groups of records based on certain criteria using the Document Mgmt tab in Affiliate Setup.

Creating a folder for a single person or property

If when you look at a record on the Contacts, Family Partners, or Property Addresses screens you see the No Pictures and No Documents buttons, that means a folder either does not yet exist for that record or that folder has no documents or pictures in it.

You can create a folder for that single record in either of two ways.

Click either the No Pictures or No Documents button. If no folder exists for that record yet, Keystone will ask you whether you wish to create one now. Click Yes to create the folder.

Go to the Document Management Folder field for that record (Documents tab on the Contacts and Property Addresses screens; Administration tab on the Family Partners screen) and click the Update button next to it.

Adding files to a folder

You can add files to document folders in either of two ways.

Go to the Document Management Folder field for that record (Documents tab on the Contacts and Property Addresses screens; Administration tab on the Family Partners screen) and click the Open button next to it. This opens that record's document folder in Windows. You can then copy files into it.

If this folder is currently empty (buttons along the top of the screen will say No Pictures and No Documents) and you then add files to it, those buttons will not change to Pictures and/or Documents until you leave the current record and then come back to it.

Locate and open the record's document folder in Windows and copy files into it.
By default, document folders are stored in the Keystone Documents folder. Within that folder are the Contacts, Family Partners, and Houses folders.

Within those are folders for individual records. Folders related to people are by default named using the last name then the first name then a unique number ID (example: Bill Smith may be Smith_Bill-103); folders related to houses are named using a combination of the address and a unique identifier- such as 123_Main_Street-001.

Folder Maintenance

You can see the name of the folder for a particular record's documents in the following locations:

For contacts, go to their record on the Contacts screen, open the Documents tab, and refer to the Document Management Folder field on that tab. Note: The Documents tab will not be visible for contact records with an Organization but no Person 1.
For family partners, go to the their record on the Family Partners screen, open theAdministration tab, and refer to the Document Management Folder field on that tab.
For houses, go to its record on the Property Address screen, open the Documents tab, and refer to the Document Management Folder field on that tab.

If the background of the Document Management Folder field is blue, then the folder already exists, and its name is shown in this field. If the background is yellow, it has not yet been created, and the name shown in the field is the default name Keystone will assign to it when it is created.

Click the Open button next to the Document Management Folder field to open that record's documents folder in Windows.

This is the easiest way to open their documents folder so you can drop documents into it.

When a folder does not exist, clicking the Update button will create it for that record.

Changing a folder's name

If a contact or family partner's name changes or if a property's address changes (e.g., you previously assigned a lot a name and now it has been assigned a street address), you may wish to change the name of the document folder for that record.

You cannot manually modify the folder name that's in the Document Management Folder field. Keystone assigns the folder name based on a combination of the person's name (for contacts and family partners) or the property address (for houses) and a unique ID number.

Simply changing the name or address in the record does not automatically change the folder name. You must use the following directions to update the folder's name.

Do not change the names of the folders using Windows. Only modify them within Keystone.

To change the folder's name

Open the person or property's record.
Go to the Document Management Folder field.
On the Contacts and Property Addresses screens, this is on the Documents tab. On the Family Partners screen, this is on the Administration tab.
Click the Update button.