Overview of documents

Document owners

Documents cannot exist on their own. They must be attached to a parent object. From a Cloud API perspective, ClaimCenter documents are always attached to claims.

In ContactManager, documents can be attached only to vendor contacts (contacts with the "vendor" tag).

Document metadata and content

The ClaimCenter data model includes a Document entity. Instances of Document contain only document metadata, such as the author, MIME type, and status (draft, final, and so on).

Document contents are stored in and managed by a Document Management System. ClaimCenter is almost always integrated with a Document Management System so that users can upload documents and view and edit document contents.

Note: The base configuration includes code to mimic Document Management System integration. This code is suitable for demonstration purposes, but it is not recommended for production as it lacks the full range of features found in a Document Management System, such as versioning.

Documents can exist in an InsuranceSuite application with metadata but no contents. For example, this may be appropriate when a document is a physical piece of paper retained by the insurer. The insurer may want to track the existence of the document and metadata about the document, even though the contents are not in the Document Management System.

Documents cannot exist in an InsuranceSuite application with contents but no metadata.