What appears in folders?

Whenever a user or an administrator selects a folder in Enterprise Manager or applications such as Workplace, the folder displays icons that represent the documents, custom objects, and other folders that the folder contains and some information about those objects. This list of information is sometimes called the folder's "list view", and the exact information it contains needs to be understood.

Folder list view

The information displayed about documents is the document's latest Major version, and if the document has no Major version, then the latest Minor version. Before the initial Reservation version of the document is checked in, meaning that there is not yet either a Major nor a Minor version of the document, the Reservation will appear in the folder. For example, the folder in the preceding screen capture contains a document titled "Bob's trip report". The size, the create date, the Major and Minor numbers, and the status of Released are all the properties of the latest Major version of this document. There can in fact be more recent Minor versions of this document, which you could discover if you opened the document's Property sheet and examined the versions tab.

The document properties that appear normally include things like the document's size, class, last modifier, date last modified, and version number. Exactly which properties appear and the order in which they appear is configurable using the MMC's View > Choose Columns menu.

As checkins, checkouts, promotions, and demotions take place, the folder's reference to the document is automatically updated so that the latest Major version continues to display in the folder.

End users with view only permissions (View Content, View Properties) are able to view only the document being displayed. Other versions in that document's history, for example more recent Minor versions or Superseded Major versions, are not available to that user. There might be an icon or other indicator that later Minor versions exist

However, system administrators with permission to Modify Content, Modify Properties, Promote Version, etc., are not limited by the folder's display of the latest Major version. These users can access documents using Enterprise Manager and drill down to find the document's entire version series, view the content of earlier versions, check out the current version even if it happens to be a Minor version that was not appearing in the folder's list view, and do other tasks allowed by Enterprise Manager.

Unfiled objects

A variable in these rules about what appears in folders, is that custom objects and document objects are not required to appear in a folder. Applications can be written that do not place a document into a folder. And you can remove documents and custom objects from a folder by unfiling them.