How Papercurve Works

This article explains how Papercurve works as a set of rules rather than as a set of screens. Other articles show you where to click. This one tells you what the platform will and won’t do, so you can understand why a button is there, why it isn’t, and what happens next.

The workspace in one paragraph

Everything in Papercurve is content: a document, a slide deck, a spreadsheet, an image or a video that your team needs to review. Content starts life as a draft. A draft has an owner and a review team. When the review team has approved it, the owner releases it into a library. Libraries hold released content and are what your organization searches, shares and asks Paige about. Your Drafts tab shows the content you are working on. Your Approved tab shows the libraries you have access to.

The life of a piece of content

• Uploading a file creates a draft. Every draft belongs to exactly one library from the moment it is uploaded, even though it doesn’t appear in that library until it is released.
• A draft is visible only to its owner, its review team and Admins. Nobody else can open it.
• A draft has one review team. The owner adds reviewers to it and can add more at any time.
• Content is released when the owner releases it. Release requires that every reviewer on the team who is not an observer has approved. Papercurve will not release content while any required approval is missing.
• Released content appears in its library, where every member of that library can open it.
• Released content can be revoked. Revoking sends it back to draft, removes it from the library and lets the review continue.
• Uploading a new file to existing content creates a new version. All versions stay together under one piece of content, and only the newest version is current.
• Deleting content deletes all of its versions.

Review teams and approvals

• A review team is the list of people whose approval a piece of content needs, plus any observers. A person can be on a review team once.
• Every reviewer has one status: Pending, Approved, Approved with Changes, Changes Requested or Submit New Version.
• Approved and Approved with Changes both count as approval. Pending, Changes Requested and Submit New Version all block release.
• An observer is a member of the review team whose approval is not required. Observers see the content, get the same notifications and can comment, but their status never blocks release and never counts toward it.
• Content needs at least one person on its review team before it can be released. That person can be an observer. If nobody needs to formally approve a piece of content, add one person as an observer and release it.
• Auto-approve is the owner approving their own content. It records the owner’s approval using their password and, if nothing else is outstanding, releases the content in one step.
• Content can also be set to release automatically. When that setting is on, the content releases itself the moment the last required approval comes in.
• Approving with changes means the reviewer approves on condition that minor edits are made. The owner makes the edits and uploads a new version, and the approval stands.
• Submit New Version means the reviewer wants to see a revised version before approving. Their status resets to Pending when the new version arrives.
• A reviewer who is deactivated no longer appears in the review status, but their pending approval still blocks release until they are removed from the team.
• Content can have a due date. Reviewers with a pending approval are reminded by email two days before, one day before, on the day, and every day it is overdue.
• External reviewers can be added by email address. They receive a personal review link, valid for six months, through which they review, comment and approve without a Papercurve account.

Versions

• Each new version keeps the review team and every reviewer’s status, the tags, the content properties, the linked reference documents, favourites and the due date.
• On a new version, Submit New Version becomes Pending and Changes Requested becomes Approved with Changes. Approved statuses stay approved.
• Comments do not carry over unless the person uploading the new version chooses to migrate them. Only unresolved comment threads can be migrated. Resolved threads stay with the version they were resolved on.
• Reference annotations also carry over only when chosen at upload time.
• Attachments belong to the content as a whole. Attachments from every version are listed together.
• Electronic signatures, form values and claims stay with the version they were made on.
• Existing share links move to the newest version automatically.
• Older versions stay available in Version History and are read-only. You cannot comment on, annotate or change the status of a thread on an old version.
• A single version can be deleted. If the newest version is deleted, the previous one becomes current again.

Roles and access

• Every user is an Admin, an Author or a Viewer.
• Admins can do everything, including managing users, libraries and tags, and seeing all content in the workspace.
• Authors create and upload content, manage their review teams, add attachments and templates, and can revoke content they own or review.
• Viewers review, comment and approve content they are added to. They cannot upload content, delete content or manage libraries.
• Access to released content is by library. A person sees the libraries they have been given access to, and every released document in them.
• Access to drafts is by involvement. A person sees a draft if they own it or are on its review team, whatever their role.
• A reference document attached to a draft is visible to that draft’s review team. A reference attached to released content is visible to the members of that content’s library.
• A user who has been deactivated cannot sign in and receives no notifications. Their past approvals and comments are kept.
• Guests are people without a Papercurve account who take part through a link: external reviewers through a review link, and readers through a share link. Guests only ever see the content their link points to.

Sharing

• Anyone with a Papercurve account can create a share link to a piece of content. A share link lets people without an account view and download that content in a browser.
• Share links expire six months after they are created and can be reactivated for another six months.
• Every view and download through a share link is recorded, with the time spent viewing. The person who created the link can see this activity and is emailed about it if their notification setting is on.
• When a new version is uploaded, share links point to the new version.

Libraries, content properties and tags

• A library holds released content. It has a name, a set of content properties, and a list of members.
• A library can only be deleted when it is empty.
• Content properties are the fields you fill in when uploading to a library, such as a product, a date or a job number. Each library has its own set, and the set can only be changed while the library is empty.
• Property types are text, long text, single choice, multiple choice, date and job number. A job number is generated automatically from a pattern that can include the date and a running counter.
• Content keeps its property values across versions.
• Tags are labels for finding content within a library. A tag name is unique in your workspace regardless of capitalization, and deleting a tag removes it from all content.
• Library search finds released, current-version content in one library by title, tags and property values. Searching by several tags returns only content that carries all of them.
• Workspace search, from the search bar, finds drafts, released content, references, attachments and templates that you are allowed to see.

Comments and annotations

• Comments are grouped in threads. A thread is either the content’s General Comments, which every piece of content has, or an annotation placed on a page: a pin drop, a highlight, a shape or an arrow. On a video, an annotation is placed on the timeline.
• Every thread is Unresolved until someone marks it Resolved. Resolved threads can be reopened.
• Threads can only be resolved or reopened on the current version of a draft. Once content is released, its threads are frozen.
• You can edit or delete your own comment for twelve hours after posting it, while the content is still a draft. Admins can delete any comment.
• Mentioning someone with @ in a comment sends them an email, if they have that notification on.
• Everyone who took part in a thread is notified of new comments in it, and the content owner is notified of every new thread.
• Comments and annotations can be exported with the content as a PDF with sticky notes.

References and attachments

• A reference document is content uploaded to support other content, such as a study or a source file. It is not reviewed or released; it exists to be cited.
• A reference is either tied to one piece of content or shared with a whole library, so that any content in that library can cite it.
• A reference is cited by highlighting a passage in it and linking that passage to a point in the main content. Each highlight has a label that is unique within the reference.
• A reference cannot be unlinked from content while any annotation still points to it, and a reference document cannot be deleted while any of its passages are cited.
• Content cannot be moved to another library while any of its versions cites a shared reference.
• Attachments are supporting files added to content without being reviewed. They can be added, renamed and removed by Authors and Admins.

Electronic signatures

• Anyone with access to a draft can sign it, by drawing, typing or uploading a signature. Saved signatures can be reused.
• Each signature records who signed, and when. Signatures cannot be edited by anyone else, and cannot be added once content is released.
• Adding, changing and removing a signature is recorded in the activity log.

Notifications and the activity log

• Each person controls their own email notifications: mentions, due date changes, new versions, approval reminders, deleted content, rejected content, content released to a library, all approvals completed, and share link activity.
• Mentions, due date changes, new versions, reminders and share link activity are on by default. The others are off by default.
• Every action on content is recorded in the activity log with who did it, when, and the version it applied to: uploads and new versions, reviewer changes, approvals, property and tag changes, release and revoke, comments, references, signatures, share links, downloads and views.
• The activity log can be exported for a date range as a spreadsheet.
• Every change to content, approvals, comments, libraries and users is also kept in version history, so earlier states can be recovered.

Files

• Papercurve accepts PDF, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Visio and Publisher files, images (GIF, JPEG, PNG, BMP, TIFF, WMF, EMF), text and CSV files, ZIP archives, and video.
• Documents are limited to 100MB and videos to 500MB.
• Office files and images are converted to PDF for viewing after upload. The original file is kept and is what gets downloaded.
• Videos are converted for playback after upload and show as processing until they are ready.
• Every page is rendered as an image after upload, which is what the viewer, the thumbnails and Paige use.

Paige

Paige is the name of Papercurve’s AI features. All of them work only on content in your workspace.

Ask Paige

• Ask Paige answers questions about a document or a whole library. Every answer cites the pages it came from.
• A library conversation searches only released, current-version content in that library. Drafts and older versions are never searched, so the answers reflect what your organization has approved. Admins can choose to include drafts.
• A document conversation searches that one document, released or not.
• A document can be asked about once Paige has finished processing it, which happens automatically after every upload and new version. Videos cannot be used with Ask Paige.
• Conversations belong to the person who started them and are private to them.
• When Paige cannot answer from the content, it says so and points you to the right next step rather than guessing.

Paige Translate

• Paige Translate produces a translated copy of a document in any of 29 languages. The copy is a separate document, titled with the target language, and the original is unchanged.
• A translation is pending, processing, completed or failed. Completed translations are listed with the original document.

Paige Review

• Paige Review checks content against a set of rules, such as the PAAB code for Canada or FDA requirements for the United States, and lists findings by page with the rule, the severity and a recommendation. Each finding is also marked on the page where the problem is; findings about a picture or chart are marked with an approximate area or a pin.
• Paige Review is set up per library. In a library where it is on, every new upload and new version is reviewed automatically.
• The rules a review applies are called a rulebook. A rulebook can follow a published code or be written around an organization’s or a team’s own approval rules. Each library uses one rulebook, set up by Papercurve.

Papercurve Office

• Word, Excel and PowerPoint drafts can be edited inside Papercurve. Only the current version of a draft can be edited. Released content has to be revoked first.
• Saving in the editor creates a new version. It keeps what an uploaded version keeps, and it always carries over unresolved comments and reference annotations, which an upload only does when chosen.
• Everyone editing the same content works in one live session and sees each other’s changes.
• The editor does not save automatically. Changes are kept when the person saves or exits the editor.
• New Office content can be started from a blank document, spreadsheet or presentation, or from a template added to the library. Its first save is version 1.
• Content started this way is created without content properties and without a Job ID. Content properties can be added afterwards from the draft.

Paige recommendations

• While reviewing, Paige can suggest references and product claims that match selected text, learning from the references and claims already in your libraries.