Frequently asked questions

Yes! Not by making the model smarter, but by controlling what it reads and proving where answers come from. Hallucinations thrive when an AI guesses from stale training data or retrieves obsolete files. A governed DMS grounds every answer in the current, approved version (retrieval-augmented generation), restricts retrieval to what each user may access, and links every response back to its source. The model's limits remain; the answers become verifiable.

They serve two different needs on the same governed base. AIDA, the AODocs Intelligent Document Assistant, serves people: it answers questions, summarizes, and translates, using retrieval-augmented generation grounded strictly in the documents each user is allowed to see. AI Process Automation serves workflows: it classifies incoming documents, extracts their data, and routes them through formal processes, with a human confirming the result. In short: AIDA reads for you; AI Process Automation processes for you.

Because most corporate repositories feed it conflicting inputs: duplicates, obsolete drafts, expired policies, and documents the user should not even see. A language model answering from that corpus will confidently cite the wrong version. Governance fixes the retrieval side: one identified version in force, explicit statuses, metadata, and permissions. When the AI can only read current, approved, access-controlled documents, its answers inherit that reliability, the discipline AODocs enforces before any model is involved.

Use a formal transmittal whenever the contract or project plan requires a controlled issue record. Some internal drafts may use a lighter record, but "internal" alone does not exempt an exchange from the project's control rules.

There is no single period: retention requirements depend on jurisdiction and document type. Common anchors: accounting and financial records must typically be kept 6 to 10 years (10 in much of the EU, commonly 7 in US practice) while contracts are usually retained for their full term plus 5 to 10 years, covering the limitation period for claims. The reliable approach is a retention schedule per document type, applied automatically by your document management system, with documented, defensible disposal at the end.

Update event-driven fields when submissions, reviews, approvals, issues, or supersessions occur, including the actual submission date and approval date when those events happen. Reconcile the whole register at a project-defined cadence and before decision gates. The right cadence depends on volume, risk, contract reporting, and how quickly stale status could affect work.

Test one representative exchange. Record authentication, field mapping, data ownership, error handling, recovery, and any configuration or licensing dependency, and confirm the exchange can integrate seamlessly with the target system where that is a stated requirement.

Review the transmittal record, delivery evidence and any acknowledgment captured by the configured process. If a dispute arises, resolution depends on the contract language and the evidence at hand; this article does not provide legal advice.

A transmittal records a controlled issue of documents. A submittal is a formal submission package sent for review or approval and may include a transmittal record. The contract and project document-management plan define the direction, responsibilities and evidence required for each process.

An authoritative document has four properties: a designated owner, an explicit status (draft, approved, in force, retired...), an approval history showing who validated it and when, and a guarantee that search returns this version rather than an older copy. Without these, a company has files; with them, it has a record it can act on and defend in an audit.

Use representative documents, metadata, roles, and external participants. Test revision status, approval, transmittal, restricted access, reports, export, and handover evidence against agreed acceptance criteria.

The contract and project information plan should name the accountable owner. Depending on the governance model, accountability may sit with document control or project information management. Contractors can maintain assigned records without owning the project-wide schema or acceptance rules.

Retention periods depend on contract terms and applicable records laws in the project jurisdiction. Consult your organization's records management policy, legal counsel, and the provider's legal and corporate information; do not rely on this article for a retention ruling.

It is not necessarily the system of record for planning, scheduling, cost control, BIM authoring, field execution, project management, or project controls. Define which system owns each decision and how approved document information moves between them, since the right software depends on that ownership.

An MDR can make current and superseded states explicit, but prevention depends on the surrounding workflow, permissions, distribution controls, field practices, and user behavior. Prevention also depends on linking users to the actual document and maintaining access control so obsolete documents are harder to use by mistake. Test every channel through which a recipient can access or retain a drawing or document.

An audit trail is the chronological, tamper-evident record of everything that happens to a document: who created, modified, approved, or deleted it, and when. Regulators require one because a rule you cannot prove you followed is, for an auditor, a rule not followed. Frameworks such as FDA 21 CFR Part 11, ISO 9001, SOX, and the EU's GPSR all expect organizations to reconstruct events and demonstrate timely action. A complete trail turns an inspection from an investigation into a lookup.

SharePoint and Google Drive stores and shares files; a document management system governs them. Governance adds what storage lacks: a defined owner and status for each document, approval workflows, version control that designates the version in force, retention rules, and a complete audit trail. Teams typically keep working in Drive while the management layer enforces these controls on top, which is exactly how AODocs operates on Google Workspace.

Yes, at three levels. AODocs runs natively on Google Workspace and integrates with Microsoft 365. For SAP, its connector is certified for SAP Cloud ERP (S/4HANA): teams create, attach and manage governed documents directly inside SAP, with version control, permissions and audit trail preserved. Salesforce and other business applications connect through the AODocs API. The pattern is always the same: users stay in the application they already work in, while AODocs enforces document governance behind it.

Since December 2024, the EU General Product Safety Regulation requires retailers (not just manufacturers) to track defects, act on alerts and prove they did. In practice this means capturing every alert (lab reports, customer claims, supplier notices) into one system, classifying it, and driving it through a formal lifecycle: registration, corrective action, sign-off. The full trail must be producible when a regulator asks.