Setting up metadata
Forms are a great tool to save all kinds of data in Bricsys 24/7. One of the most common use cases is metadata, extra information to a document in order to easily group documents together and search on that data throughout the project.
Follow the next steps to successfully create and manage forms in your project.
- Add form folder
- Create form
- Set Access
- Attach form
- Reservations
Once the metadata is set up you can upload a document with metadata, use the filter in the documents app or the advanced search to find the documents based on the metadata throughout the project.
Form folder
Make sure your project has a folder of type Form and you have access to the form folder. Once this is setup, the Forms app will become available in the app bar on the left.
Create form
In the form folder, click the Add form action to open the form editor. Edit the name of the form on the upper left corner by clicking the name.
On the left panel multiple types of form fields are shown. The top right corner lets you toggle how users tab from one field to the other.
- Form fields
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The form fields are the elements that contain data. Simply select the desired form field and drop it on the right side. The form itself has two panels. You can drop the form fields on either side.
Once a form field is dropped, the settings of the field can be adjusted. Each field has its own settings. Click the wrench icon to reopen the settings for the form field.
- Choice field
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A choice field is a drop down that shows options a user can choose from. You can add the choices yourself manually. Each choice consists of a name and a description. The name is required and will be used in case you use metadata to define the document name.
Instead of adding the options yourself manually, you can Use existing form as options. By clicking the link a new dialog pops up and asks you which form you would like to use and which fields you want to view in the drop-down.
- Unique counter field
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This field makes it possible to add a counter at the end of your document name, should you chose to rename the documents based on the metadata input.
It will search for the amounts of rows that already contain the same data. If none have the same data, the number will be 1. If there are already 2 rows with the same data, the number will be 3.
You can chose the amount of digits will be used: 1 to 10 maximum. Selecting 4 digits will turn number "1" into "0001". A document name might be: PL_HVAC_0001.dwg
- Document field
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If you want to work with metadata, make sure you add a document field to the form. In case you want to have different metadata for each revision of a document, check the “Link to a revision” box.
Form access
As an administrator you can define the access on a form by going to . Just like the folder access you can set the access per role and per form.
There is only view all access in forms. Open the form to view the form fields and set individual access on the fields.
Now access on a form might be a bit tricky at first, take a look at the Table Administration entry to have a better understanding.
- Add access
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When a role has add access and the form is used as metadata, the form fields with add access will be shown in the upload dialog.
- Edit access
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When a role has edit access and the form is used as metadata, the form fields with edit access will be editable if the user can edit the document.
Attach form
Once a form has been saved you can attach it to a document or to a folder. If you want to work with metadata, the administrator of the project needs to attach the form to a folder in .
- Rename uploaded documents
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You can rename documents based on the data filled into the form. This is ideal for everyone looking to have a structured name for their documents. Renaming also enables you to add reservations.
The administrator can also define default metadata per folder so a user doesn’t have to pick all the values each time a new document gets uploaded.
Default values
You can predefine per folder metadata values. This lets you set values so a user doesn't have to select it again and only needs to fill in the necessary metadata.
Reservations
It's not uncommon that document managers already have an entire list of documents to be produced for the project. With reservations you can add empty documents that are a placeholder for the real document.
In order to work with reservations, the attached form needs to have the Rename uploaded documents based on the field's content option checked.
Open the document folder and select the Add reservation action from the menu. You can add up to 50 reservations at once. In the example below we are adding 3 reservations:
This results in 3 reservations:
The real document can be added as a revision which will replace the placeholder. The name of the reservation will be updated from "Reservation - PL_HVAC_B_3_0001" to "PL_HVAC_B_3_0001" after adding the document.
This way you can easily follow up the missing documents.
Advanced search
Now that you are using metadata within your project you can easily search on that metadata. Go to the advanced search by entering the search field in the top right corner and clicking the “Advanced Search” button.
Click the metadata radio button to search on metadata, chose the form and add your criteria. In this example we search for all HVAC plans on the third floor of building B.
Bricsys 24/7 will search the entire project for documents that match your criteria and return the ones you have access to.
Filter
Within the document app you can filter on the metadata using "&" and "|". The following example returns all the documents that match the criteria "PLA", "HVAC", "B", "3".
Use the ... button in the top right of the documents table to toggle the metadata columns in the documents app.