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Documents module

Centralized governing document library — bylaws, constitutions, standing rules, and policy with version history.

Optional module Enable in Settings → Modules

The Documents module is a centralized library for governing documents — constitutions, bylaws, standing rules, policy documents, and other reference material members need to find. It is not a general file vault; it is purpose-built for the small, important set of papers a chapter or organization governs itself by.

The library is intentionally flat — there is no folder hierarchy. Documents are organized by an org-configurable category (six defaults — Constitution, Bylaws, Standing Rules, Policy, Manual, Other — fully editable, reorderable, and extendable per org), by scope (org-wide or attached to a specific chapter), and by visibility. Title your documents with strong, consistent prefixes if you also want folder-style grouping within a category.

Audience​

  • Members read documents at the visibility level they belong to.
  • National (org) admins upload, edit, version, and publish documents for the whole organization and any of its chapters.
  • Chapter officers can read chapter-scoped and officer-only documents, and can edit or delete chapter-scoped documents that already exist, but cannot author new documents from the chapter Documents page — chapter-scoped document creation goes through an org or regional admin.

What gets enabled​

When Documents is licensed:

  • A Documents sidebar entry appears for members, officers, and admins.
  • Members see a browseable library filtered by visibility and scope, with a full-text search bar (title + content, PostgreSQL tsvector-backed) to find a document without browsing categories.
  • Each document has its own page with content, attachments, and version history, plus a Download button wherever a file is attached.
  • A document can carry an uploaded file or an external link (Google Drive, SharePoint, or any URL) instead of a duplicate copy — not both.
  • Every published change is recorded as a new version with a change summary and the editor's identity, and the most recent edit can be rolled back one step; the latest version is the one members see.
  • Org admins can turn on a per-document approval workflow: edits are staged instead of publishing immediately, and a national admin approves or rejects them from an Approval Queue.

There are three visibility levels:

  • Public — visible to every member of the organization.
  • Chapter — visible to members of one specific chapter (the chapter is required when this level is chosen).
  • Officers — visible only to chapter officers and admins.

There is no per-role or per-chapter custom access list beyond these three levels.

Common workflows​

For members​

For chapter officers​

For national / org admins​

What's NOT in this module​

  • No folder hierarchy. The library is flat; use category and consistent titles instead.
  • No full-text search of attached PDFs, Word docs, or text files. The search bar indexes the title and the typed content field only. If you want a document's file body to be searchable, paste its text into the content field as well as attaching the file.
  • No per-role / per-chapter access lists beyond Public / Chapter / Officers.
  • No multi-step rollback. Version rollback restores only the single most recent edit; recovering an older version means copying its content from the version history list into a fresh edit.
  • Documents is not a general file storage product. Photo albums, event flyers, and one-off attachments live in Community or are uploaded directly to forum posts and event records.

Where to go deeper​

Last verified against v0.65.25 (2026-07-05). Corrected stale "not built" claims for full-text search, external link documents, the approval workflow, version rollback, and org-configurable document categories (fixed "document type" field), all shipped v0.63.40/41; removed the stale "no download button" claim (download button shipped v0.63.16).