Documents can easily be found within GEMS using the “Find a Document” or “Find text in a Document” tiles on the main home screen or Document Hub.

Additionally, Documents can be found from the Search Hub.

Once a file has been associated with an entity within GEMS it can be located from the entity snapshot using the “Documents" button on the entity Snapshot.

From the documents screen, documents can then be grouped by several properties such as document date and type.

To view a single document, click on the description of the document. To view multiple documents, select the checkboxes to the left of the document names, right-click and select ‘View Document’ or select the button from the top right of the search results listed.

Please note: It may be required to hold the CTRL key down while launching documents from within GEMS on certain networks.

To view and modify the properties of a document, first search for and locate the document. You can then "right-click” the document title/description to access the actions menu.

To print several documents at the same time, the batch print functionality streamlines this process. This is especially useful for situations such as when a User has created an electronic filing form for several entities in a single batch. Multiple documents can be created as part of the batch number and then printed at the same time.

To print a single document or a group of documents at the same time, do the following:

Please note: If the selected documents have differing file types, for example, one Microsoft Word document and one EF form; the documents will open in separate windows to be printed.

Please note: The selected documents are combined into a single file and opened in the browser for printing.

Caution should be exercised in deleting Documents as all associations are stripped; in other words, deleting a Document that’s been associated with more than one entity deletes that Document everywhere, not just from one entity. Individual associations can be removed by editing Document properties.

The process of deleting documents is outlined below:

Please note: To retain the document file in the database for future reuse and delete the document record, make sure this checkbox is clear.

Please note: Documents deleted in this manner are irretrievably deleted from GEMS.

Documents may also be deleted when viewing the properties of a document.

To manually change the status of a document, for example, if an electronic filing form has been created in GEMS but filed manually, status of the form must be updated in GEMS.

The process for doing this is outlined below:

For documents that can be submitted electronically to the relevant authority, the filing module is used to perform the submission. The steps to launching the filing module for documents are outlined below:

For more details on electronic filing, see the Forms & Filings section within the Tutorials section on the Community Support Site.

Please note: ‘Convert RTF to PDF’ is a licensed module and this functionality is available only if the module license has been installed in GEMS. Customized Assemblies are also required to use this functionality. Please speak to Customer Support for more information.

To convert documents in the Rich Text Format (RTF) to the PDF format in GEMS, do the following:

Please note: Both RTF and PDF documents remain in the database. The RTF file is not deleted as part of this process.

From within the Entity Snapshot, Document Hub it is possible to download one or more documents into a .zip folder.

To do this, simply check the box beside each required document record and then select the download button.

A window will appear as the files are compressed and once complete an automatic download should appear. If this fails to complete automatically an option to download will be present in the window.

Please note: Documents can also be downloaded from a Search Hub - “Documents” search or “Find a Document” tile on the Home Screen. To do so simply check the box beside the required file and choose the Export Download menu option.

Admins can restrict who will have access to download multiple documents using the document download button through Admin > GEMS Settings > System Management > Options > General > Bulk Document Download.

There are 3 settings options whereby Admins can allow:

Please note: The default setting for GEMS is Admin Only.

Properly arranging and building document upload and nomenclature rules for Users is key to successfully maintaining the document library for quick reference and access by the User community, and expands the value of GEMS as a central documentation repository for a wide variety of departments across the organization.

Following the best practices in the subsequent sections will help ensure maximum benefit from the GEMS document upload and management features.

One of the first steps to achieving solid document storage and retrieval practice is to ensure there is a consistent and reliable document naming scheme clearly defined and adhered to across the entire GEMS user community afforded document upload and retrieval access.

Though GEMS will automatically append an incremental number to the filename if documents of the same physical filename are uploaded into the application, this may lead to confusion when searching for and retrieving these uploaded files and doesn’t give any clear indication about the document’s provenance, association, or content.

For example: If 3 documents named Resolution.pdf are uploaded by 3 different users into GEMS, they will be named in chronological order as follows:

Whenever possible, adopt a naming schema that highlights unique characteristics of the document, such as entity or person name, file or reference numbers, dates, or other unique identifiers.

The above documents could be more easily distinguished if named as follows:

If users are including dates of reference in the document's physical filenames, ensure there is consistency in the date format and the date sequence used in the filename.

The best way to list the date is based on an international standard, such as ISO 8601. ISO 8601 specifies numeric representations of date and time to be used in electronic format. The international standard date notation is:

YYYY_MM_DD or YYYYMMDD

Where YYYY is the year, MM is the month of the year between 01 (January) and 12 (December), and DD is the day of the month between 01 and 31. For example, January 5, 2008, is written as 2008_01_05 or 20080105.

There are several universally recognized ‘special characters’ that in some networks, applications, and security configurations, may be interpreted as malicious code and block the document from uploading, downloading, and possibly other actions, both within and outside of GEMS.

To ensure documents uploaded in GEMS are not construed as such, the following character and character combinations should be avoided in the physical file names of any documents prepared for upload to GEMS*:

· .. (double periods)

· ./ (period/backspace)

· : (colon)

· % (percentage symbol)

· < (less than)

· >(greater than)

· $ (dollar sign)

· % (percent sign)

· [ (square open bracket)

· ] (square close bracket)

· ) (open bracket)

· ( (close bracket)

· “ (quotation mark)

· ‘ (apostrophe)

Other Considerations:

Consider using underscores ( _ ) instead of periods or spaces in the physical filename. Periods have a specific function when included in a filename (universally used in front of file-name extensions to denote file formats such as .jpg and .doc, so using them in a filename could result in errors.) Any spaces in a physical filename translated in a web environment to be read as “%20”.

For example, a document titled test document.pdf could be seen as test%20document.pdf when opened up and referenced in some viewing applications.

Spaces in the actual document filename may also be interpreted as a trigger for a new line break in the document itself by some document rendering programs, such as Microsoft Word, and email programs like Microsoft Outlook.

Please note: If hosted with CGS, restrictions, as outlined above, are enforced consistently, and documents containing the above special characters in the physical filename of the document will be blocked from upload and retrieval outright. There will be an error message indicating the document contains one or more of the aforementioned invalid special characters in its physical filename.

The universally accepted maximum physical filename is 256 characters. (Some Operating Systems/applications permit far fewer) Filenames exceeding this number of characters will be truncated by GEMS at the 255th character in the physical filename once uploaded.

GEMS affords additional granularity to a document’s properties.

Whenever possible, make use of:

Key Words

To further characterize the documents.

Ensure that this is consistent across the organization: using Document Types and/or categorization, for example, means a far more effective manner of building access levels against documents based on specific user roles and user document visibility needs.

Additional data entered in the available Document Properties fields means richer indexing of the documents when using the Full-Text Search features available in GEMS, as well as more accurate document searching and retrieval for the users.

Control over document file size is one of the most common pitfalls for clients struggling to maintain an accessible and referable document library in GEMS.

Large document files represent overhead both in storage and retrieval time, particularly if there are large quantities of scanned (PDF or JPG) documents. A 100 kb file will always download faster than a 1 MB file.

Whenever possible, insist on the lowest acceptable resolution rate when scanning documents for storage in GEMS. A black and white scanned document, scanned at high-resolution rates, looks no different in digital format than one scanned at minimal resolution rates, yet may be 100 times larger. A good rule to abide by is that documents in GEMS should be no larger than the organization’s maximum email file attachment size; If unable to send a file stored in GEMS via email, then it is possibly too large and should be evaluated for file size reduction and re-upload.

Universally accepted file formats/ extensions are:

.doc / .docx: Microsoft Word

.xls /.xlsx / .csv: Microsoft Excel

.ppt : Microsoft PowerPoint

.one : Microsoft OneNote files

.opx : OrgPlus files

.pdf : Adobe PDF

.txt : Text format files

.jpg / .gif : image files (small)

.bmp : bitmap image files, and tend to be large

.zip / .rar: compressed files. Note however that the contents of compressed files may violate some network policies based on scanning and security and for hosted clients, additional security scanning may be undertaken to ensure no malicious content is uploaded.

​