FAQ / Features

What file formats are supported?

Word (primary authoring + automatic PDF at publication), PowerPoint, Excel, and PDF — all supported end-to-end. Legacy binary formats (.doc, .xls, .ppt) convert during migration. CAD, engineering, and specialized formats live in systems designed for them with cross-references from the DMS.

Supported formats

Word (.docx) — the primary authoring format. Word documents go through the full lifecycle: templated creation, co-authoring in Word Online, sequential approval, and automatic conversion to PDF at publication. The PDF is the immutable published version; the Word source stays in the editing area for further revisions.

PowerPoint (.pptx), Excel (.xlsx), and PDF. Also fully supported through the lifecycle. These formats don’t auto-convert to PDF at publication (PowerPoint animations and Excel formulas are lost in conversion); instead they publish in their native format. Read-receipts and distribution-list notifications work the same way.

Legacy binary formats

Customers with older libraries sometimes have .doc, .xls, and .ppt files. These convert to the modern formats during migration — the conversion itself is a documented event in the audit log, so the “this document was migrated from v0.doc on date X” history is preserved.

What’s not natively supported

  • CAD files — specialized engineering and design formats live in PDM systems (like Solidworks PDM, Siemens Teamcenter). We cross-reference: the PDM system is the master, with pointers from our DMS when cross-linking is needed.
  • Specialized medical-device files — design history files, DMRs, device master records often live in dedicated QMS platforms.
  • Video and audio — these live in video-hosting platforms (Stream, SharePoint video libraries); we link rather than store.

The principle: we support the document-management formats common in regulated enterprise document scope. Specialized formats with domain-specific behavior live in specialized systems.

See file-format support feature for deeper detail.

Related features

File-format support

Word as the first-class authoring format; PowerPoint, Excel, and PDF all fully governed through the lifecycle.

PDF publication

Word becomes immutable PDF the moment approval completes — automatically, without a human deciding.

More in Features

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Can we customize the approval workflow?

Yes, within the sequential-execution model. You configure the number of steps, which role sits at each step, fixed vs variable approvers, and whether any step requires PAdES signing. We don't support parallel, state-based, or conditional-skip workflows — by design, for compliance defensibility.

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Can we use our existing SharePoint library?

Yes. The active-lifecycle layer deploys on top of SharePoint libraries you already have — existing libraries become governed libraries. You don't migrate to a new storage location; the governance layer attaches to where your documents already live.

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