Overview of documents
Document owners
Documents cannot exist on their own. They must be attached to a parent object. From a system API perspective, PolicyCenter documents are always attached to accounts, jobs, or policies.
Document metadata and content
The PolicyCenter 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. PolicyCenter is almost always integrated with a Document Management System so that users can upload documents and view and edit document contents.
Documents can exist in PolicyCenter 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 PolicyCenter with contents but no metadata.