Documentation, categories, and versions

Documentation brings procedures, instructions, and technical knowledge together inside the organization. Information starts private and can describe either the organization itself or a Related company acting as a customer or provider.

Availability: Professional and Company organizations. Visibility and actions depend on role and category. Level: Intermediate.

Purpose

Use a page for one procedure and a manual to arrange several pages or plans as a single work. Each library clearly identifies its subject: My organization or a Related company from the organization's own records.

A Related company may still be symbolic. Its documentation works normally as internal information, but it cannot be shared with the counterpart until that record is linked to a registered Company.

Requirements

An active membership and the View documentation permission.
To create categories, pages, manuals, or plans: Edit documentation and Edit access in the category.
To create an official version: Publish documentation.
To change category levels or share: the corresponding administrative permissions.

Owners and administrators have these capabilities. Other roles receive them separately under Settings, Roles. A role may, for example, read procedures without being able to edit or publish them.

Reading and Advanced mode

The library opens in Reading mode so you can find and consult content without editing controls surrounding it. Navigation, categories, filters, documents, attachments, exports, details, and history remain available.

If your role has a commenting, editing, or management capability, a Reading / Advanced selector appears in views where applicable tools exist. Advanced reveals creation, access, archiving, editing, sharing, comments, suggestions, working structure, and publishing. Your choice is remembered for the current tab session and separately for each person and organization. Opening the editor always displays the complete workspace and does not change that preference.

The Shared with me list remains in Reading mode. When you open a shared document with Comment or Edit access, the selector appears so you can use the authorized tools.

This selector only organizes the interface: it neither grants permission nor hides content your role may read. If it does not appear, your role has no applicable advanced actions in that view.

Create and organize content

Open Documentation.
On the first visit, choose Own or one of the available Related companies. Opening this landing area does not create a library by itself; when none exists, ReportArea explicitly offers creation to members with permission.
Choose an existing library. ReportArea distinguishes a library that exists from one your role may access; an invalid or inaccessible reference never silently falls back to the own library.
Create a category or select an existing one.
Choose New document, then select page, manual, or floor plan.
Enter a title and category and, for a page, write its Markdown content.
Save a checkpoint whenever you want a recoverable reference.

In Own or a specific counterpart context, the landing area opens or explicitly offers to create the corresponding library. In General, the selector shows Own and grouped companies with symbolic or linked badges, role, status, and secondary information when it helps distinguish duplicate names.

Categories can be nested up to eight levels. A manual contains ordered pages and plans, but not other manuals. Each page or plan can belong to only one manual and keeps the manual's subject and category.

The library shows every document you can consult, including pages and floor plans contained by a manual. Each manual heads a group with its children ordered underneath, while documents that do not belong to a manual appear in a separate section. If a search, filter, or result page shows a child without the rest of its group, a contextual header identifies and links to its manual. Title search and the type filter also include manual children. Categories remain in a separate block because they organize topics and permissions but are not documents.

Documentation views use a wider workspace on large screens. Full names wrap across lines instead of being cut off. On phones and tablets, manuals and their children become an ordered vertical list, controls adapt to the available width, and horizontal scrolling is not required. Pages retain a comfortable text measure even though the overall workspace is wider.

To add content inside a manual, open the manual, take the editing turn, and use Add page or floor plan in its structure. The new item becomes visible to editors in the library; users with View access receive it when the new manual revision is published. When you open a manual page or plan, the breadcrumb leads back to the manual; the structure editor also provides direct links to open or edit each child.

Write and review

The editor stores Markdown as its source and provides tools for headings, lists, tables, links, code, and private images. Preview removes embedded HTML, unsafe links, and remote images. This prevents a page from loading external tracking or unexpected code.

You can attach PDF, JSON, Markdown, text, JPEG, PNG, and WebP files. Files remain private and every download checks authorization. A PDF can be kept as an attachment, but the plan editor cannot draw on top of it.

Editing uses turns. One person holds the turn for a page, plan, or manual structure while everyone else sees who is working. They may request handoff; only an expired turn can be taken without an answer. If pending changes exist, ReportArea first creates a recovery checkpoint.

Versions and publishing

Autosave protects the working copy but does not replace history. Create checkpoint creates an immutable recovery point. Publish creates another official revision that readers can access.

Restoring a revision does not erase later work: it creates a new version based on the selected one.
Archiving preserves versions, comments, and activity; it does not physically delete the document.
Publishing a manual fixes all child revisions at the same time so the result stays consistent.
If a published manual receives a new page or another change, editors see Unpublished changes and a Structure in progress. Users with View access continue to see and open only the version pinned by the previous publication until a new revision is published; Comment access retains its corresponding history permissions.
If someone changed the document after your view became stale, the application asks you to reload instead of overwriting their work.

Comments and suggestions stay attached to the revision that was reviewed. A suggestion that no longer matches the current text or plan is marked for manual resolution.

Permissions and privacy

Each category gives roles one of these levels: No access, View, Comment, or Edit. A rule set on a subcategory replaces the rule inherited from its parent. The level can never exceed the role's general permissions.

All content is private by default. Documenting a Related company does not grant that company access, even if it already uses ReportArea. Sharing is a separate action, available only between linked Companies and explained in the plans and collaboration guide.

A symbolic company may be documented as an internal subject, but it is not a sharing recipient because no receiver profile exists. Selecting it as context neither grants anyone access nor changes category rules.

Practical example

A company creates an Operations category, a Branch opening manual, and pages for safety, inventory, and setup. Support can comment, Infrastructure can edit, and only Management publishes. When an older instruction is restored, the new history still shows who made the change and which revision it came from.

Current limits

There is no simultaneous editing of the same content or offline work; collaboration uses turns.
There is no automatic translation. A page can identify its language and link to a translation created by the team.
Markdown is limited to 2 MiB. Each document accepts 25 attachments of up to 20 MiB each.
There are no anonymous public links for a library or document.
Archiving preserves history and the interface does not offer permanent deletion.