Category Tree
What does main category mean?
In the accompanying image, you can see an example featuring four main categories. To the left of the top three main categories, there are small arrows (>) used to indicate the underlying categories, known as subcategories.
Main categories may represent entities such as Companies or Units on a site, while subcategories can represent their respective departments.
What does subcategory mean?
When we expand the main category of the Company Inc by clicking on the arrow (>), we reveal the subcategories that belong to Company Inc. In the accompanying image, you can see that Company Inc has nine subcategories, while the HSE category has two subcategories. Furthermore, the subcategory Environment has additional categories of its own, although these are not visible in the example since the arrow for expansion has not been opened.
Category Settings and Inheritance
Each category serves not only as a place where published documents are stored, but also has its own settings. These settings determine, for example:
- who has access to the documents.
- who can approve and publish documents,
- who is responsible for revising documents and when revisions occur,
The settings above are configured at the category level. When a subcategory is created, it will normally inherit the access settings of the category above it. This means you do not need to configure the same access separately for every subcategory in a category structure, making it easier to maintain a clear and consistent structure as the number of categories grows.
Inheritance serves as the starting point for the subcategory. As long as no separate changes are made, the subcategory will follow the same access settings as its parent category. For example, if the main category is set to Everybody, the subcategory will also be available to all users who have access to the Documents module. If the main category is instead restricted to Specific Users, Groups, Departments, or Workspaces, the same restriction will apply further down the structure.
At the same time, it is entirely possible to break the inheritance for a subcategory and assign it its own configuration. This can be useful when one part of the document structure needs to be more restricted than the rest, for example if certain documents should only be available to a specific workgroup or users in a particular department. When you change the access settings directly on the subcategory, it will no longer follow the settings of the parent category and will instead use its own settings.
A subcategory with its own settings then becomes the starting point for any levels beneath it. This means that its own subcategories will normally inherit that new setting rather than the one higher up in the category structure. In this way, you can create a structure where some parts follow the broader access of the main category while other parts have more limited access, without needing to rebuild the entire category tree.
How a setting is affected when you change it higher up in the category structure therefore depends on whether the subcategory is still inheriting that setting or has its own configuration. A subcategory that is still inheriting will be directly affected by changes made to the parent category. A subcategory that has already broken the inheritance will not be affected in the same way, since it uses its own settings. For that reason, it is important to keep track of which categories follow inherited settings and which have their own exceptions, especially in larger document structures where access needs to remain clear and consistent.
- a main category cannot inherit any settings because it is a primary category without a hierarchy.
- Inheritance of category settings can only occur from a category to its subcategories (think funnel). For instance, in the example above, the Environment category can inherit settings from the HSE category since Environment is a subcategory of HSE.
- If no specific settings are applied to a category, it will inherit access from its nearest parent category.
- Furthermore, a category cannot have higher access levels than its parent category.ögre åtkomst än sin överliggande kategori.
💬 Example
In the category settings, you can quickly gain an overview of whether a specific setting has been applied or if the category inherits the setting from a parent category. Below, we will explain the configuration of the example site and its relationship with the parent categories.
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- Placed under: This indicates the parent category. For example, the Environment category is placed under the HSE category.
- Approve and publish documents: Specific individuals, such as Henrik from HSE, Kim S, and Kim E, have been designated to approve and publish documents within the Environment category.
- Revise documents:The responsibility for document revisions is inherited from the parent category, HSE, which specifies that revisions should occur one year after publication and be conducted by the HSE revision group (C).
- Access: Access rights are inherited from Company Inc (D), which indicates that ALL users with access to Documents have access to this category.
- Concerned and reading receipt: These settings are inherited from the parent category, HSE (E), stating that ALL users with access are affected by the documents and that a read receipt is required.
- Company information: This is inherited from the Company Inc Workspace (F), where you can find information linked to the Workspace associated with the user.
- Header and footer in text documents:These elements are inherited from the Company Inc Workspace (G), ensuring that the default header is always displayed on any text document published in this category.