Documents

External documents

Documents you didn't author — regulations, customer specs, supplier docs, industry standards — registered as first-class controlled documents alongside your SOPs, with the same approval, versioning, distribution, and search.

For
Document owners, Quality Managers, admins
Find it at
Documents → Type → External
Reading time
6 min

In one sentence

External documents — regulations, customer specs, supplier docs, industry standards — are stored alongside your internal SOPs as first-class controlled documents, sharing the same approval, version-history, acknowledgment, distribution, and cross-module linking, with the only difference being that the body is a PDF in a viewer instead of editable HTML.

Three things to remember
  • Same register, same lifecycle. Internal and external documents live in the same /documents list, share categories and classes, and move through Draft → Under Review → Approved → Obsolete the same way. The Type pill on each row is the only at-a-glance signal of which kind it is.
  • The body is a PDF, not HTML. External docs render their uploaded PDF in a viewer; internal docs render their TipTap-edited HTML. Everything around the body — approval chain, distribution list, version snapshots, links from MOCs / NCRs / Audits, Ask-the-Library search — is identical.
  • A separate External status tracks the publisher's view. Current, Superseded, Withdrawn — independent of your internal approval status, so you can mark "ISO 9001:2015 — Superseded by 2025 edition" even while your controlled copy is still the active version internally.

Where they live

External documents share the unified register at /documents.

  • Type filter in the sidebar — All / Internal / External. Clicking External narrows the list and updates the URL to /documents?kind=external.
  • Type column on each row, with an Internal or External pill.
  • The legacy URL /documents/external still works — it redirects to /documents?kind=external so existing bookmarks keep working.
  • Categories and document classes are shared between kinds. Both pull from the same admin tables at Admin → Documents → Categories & Classes; there's no separate "external category" anymore.

Creating an external document

Documents → New → External, or Documents → External → New, or /documents/external/new directly. Admin-only.

The form takes:

  • Title and a Ref Number auto-generated as EXT-001, EXT-002, etc. The number is locked once the doc exists.
  • Issuing Body (ISO, FDA, customer name), Standard Number (e.g. ISO 9001:2015), Clause Reference, Edition / Version.
  • Category (shared with internal docs) and External Status (Current / Superseded / Withdrawn).
  • Owner — defaults to you if blank.
  • Effective Date, Next Review Date, Review Frequency.
  • Source URL — link to the authoritative source (registrar's site, customer portal).
  • PDF Upload — the file that gets rendered in the viewer.
  • Notes — free-text "what is this doc" context, kept on the first version row.
  • Linked Supplier or Linked Client — pick at most one. The pickers are shown together; selecting one clears the other (the schema enforces mutual exclusivity).

On save, the document is direct-published as version 1.0 — first registration doesn't wait on an approval chain, since there's nothing to compare against and a new external entry typically just records what already exists.

Editing and replacing the file

Edit on the detail page, or /documents/external/[id]/edit. The same form. Two paths from there depending on whether the file changed and how the org's auto-publish toggle is set.

1
Metadata-only edit
No new file. Save updates the doc in place; no version snapshot, no approval. Status stays Approved.
2
New file, auto-publish ON
The new file replaces the live one immediately. A new minor-revision snapshot is written; ingestion re-runs against the new file's text.
3
New file, auto-publish OFF (default)
The doc enters Draft; the new file is staged. The unified detail page exposes a Submit-for-approval button. Non-editors keep seeing the previously-approved file in the meantime.
4
Submit for approval
Pick reviewer, approver, acknowledgment mode, and revision notes. The chain runs through the standard reviewer/approver steps, with passkey step-up if your auth policy requires it.
5
Final approval commits the new version
The approved file becomes the live one. A version snapshot is written. The PDF is re-ingested for search. Distribution and acknowledgment fire per the chosen mode.

What happens when you save the edit, depending on whether you uploaded a new file and whether auto-publish is on.

The auto-publish toggle lives at Admin → Document Settings → Auto-publish external document file replacements. Default is off, which means external file replacements get the same audit-grade approval treatment your internal documents get — the legacy "swap and go" behavior is opt-in.

Watch out for: leaving auto-publish on for regulated processes

For ISO, IATF, AS9100, or any audit context, the default — auto-publish off — is the safe one. It enforces that a regulator updating ISO 9001:2015 to 2025 gets the same review-and-approve traceability your internal SOP changes get. Only flip auto-publish on for low-stakes external libraries where the file genuinely just needs to be replaced.

Status: internal vs external

Two status fields, kept distinct:

FieldTracksValues
Document statusYour internal lifecycleDraft, Under Review, Approved, Obsolete
External statusThe publisher's viewCurrent, Superseded, Withdrawn

Both surface as badges on the detail page. So a single external entry can be Approved + Current (the typical case), Approved + Superseded (the publisher has issued a newer edition you haven't yet adopted), or Obsolete + Withdrawn (you retired the entry because the publisher pulled the document).

Supplier, client, and product linking

An external document can carry three optional cross-module links — set on the create / edit form and shown in the document's sidebar.

Supplier or client (one only). Pick at most one of the two; they're mutually exclusive at the schema level. Use this for "customer X's quality clauses" (link to the client) or "supplier Y's certification" (link to the supplier) so the document follows its owner across the system. The supplier or client's detail page surfaces a Documents tab listing both internal and external docs tied to it.

Products (any number). Many-to-many — an external standard can govern several parts in your catalog, and a single part can cite several external standards. Linked products appear in the document's sidebar with an unlink control; the document appears on each product's Documents tab and Overview card. Linking is locked while the document is in Obsolete state.

The same linking surface is available on internal documents — see Documents.

PDF search via Ask the Library

When you upload (or replace) a PDF, the file gets text-extracted page-by-page and pushed through the embedding + full-text-search pipeline. That means:

  • External documents appear in Ask the Library alongside internal docs. Question-and-answer cites the external doc with a page number.
  • Replacing the file re-runs ingestion; prior section embeddings for that document are wiped and replaced, so search results stay consistent with the latest file.
  • Metadata-only registrations (no file uploaded, just a source URL) are skipped — there's nothing to ingest.

See AI in documents for how Ask the Library uses the index.

Detail view

External documents render through the same unified detail page as internal documents. The body region shows the PDF in an in-app viewer. The sidebar carries the same panels: approval, version history, links, references, distribution, access. All actions you do on an internal doc — submit for approval, distribute, link to an MOC, archive — are available here too.

Reviewing external documents

The Next Review Date field is the same as on internal documents and feeds the same overdue / due-soon badges. Use it as a reminder schedule — "check the registrar's site quarterly for an updated edition" — not a deadline gate. The review work is still your team checking with the issuing body; QFormance only flags the date.

Admin

PageWhat you configure
Admin → Documents → Categories & ClassesCategories and classes (shared between internal and external)
Admin → Document Settings → Auto-publish external document file replacementsOff (default): file replacements enter draft and approval. On: legacy direct-publish behavior
Admin → Documents → Approval RoutingThe same routing rules drive approver selection for both kinds — facility / class / category → reviewer + approver

If you delete an external document

Deleting an external document sends it to Trash for 90 days. Restore brings the metadata, version history, supplier/client linkage, and cross-module references back exactly as they were. Approved and Obsolete external docs can't be deleted — revert to Draft first if you genuinely need to remove one.

The PDF file in storage is a footnote worth knowing: at purge time, the document record is permanently removed but the underlying file isn't always cleaned from object storage. If you're deleting because the file itself must go (customer-restricted content, expired licensing), raise a support request to clean storage in tandem with the purge.

See Soft-delete — how it works for the broader pattern.

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