Business object management

Traditionally, a document management system manages document content and the metadata, or properties, that further describe the document. Content Platform Engine provides document management capabilities plus the ability to manage other types of data.

Understanding business objects

A business object is any item the system stores and manages. Business objects include documents, folders, customer records, and data your organization tracks. Objects contain files (Word documents or images) or consist only of properties (customer information).

Work with business objects by using traditional interfaces like administration consoles and web applications, or by using AI agents in Content Cortex with conversational commands. Both methods access the same underlying objects.

Business object examples

Object stores manage traditional office documents along with customer information and loan documents. The following diagram shows four business objects: Loan, Loan Application, Customer, and Loan Policy.

Diagram showing four sample business objects

Objects can have content or exist without content. The Loan Application object contains an image in TIF format. The Loan Policy object contains a Word document.

The Customer object has no content - only a collection of properties that describe a customer. The Loan object is a folder that contains loan-related documents visible through the inherited Containees property.

The system includes predefined base classes: Document, Folder, Annotation, and CustomObject. These base classes define behavior for most business objects. Create subclasses to define variations of the basic class types. For example, the Loan class is a Folder subclass because it requires container behavior - it contains documents that are associated with a loan.

When you create a subclass based on a base class, you can define the following characteristics:
  • Custom properties that provide business-related metadata, for example Loan ID and Customer.
  • The default access rights for the object.
  • The default security policies that can be applied to the object.
  • Event subscriptions for performing custom actions that are executed when the object is added or updated.
  • Where the document content is stored, whether the document can be versioned, its lifecycle policy, and any automatic classification templates.

The Loan class includes a Loan ID and Customer property.

Content Platform Engine enforces the behavior of the base Document, Folder, Annotation, and CustomObject classes as described in the following sections.
Document
Most users think of a document as a file they create with an application like Microsoft Word. Users store documents in the document management system to maintain a history of changes and enable easy finding and editing.

Users who design or manage enterprise content management applications must understand how documents support various application needs. Documents maintain traditional electronic files and other data types, including XML documents or content in external repositories.

Documents:
  • Have system properties that the system manages automatically, such as Date Created.
  • Can have custom properties for storing business-related metadata about the document.
  • Are secured.
  • Can have content that can be indexed for searching.
  • Can point to content that is outside of the object store (external content).
  • Can have no content (metadata only).
  • Can be versioned to maintain a history of the content over time.
  • Can be filed in folders.
  • Can have a lifecycle.
  • Can participate in business processes as workflow attachments.
  • Can generate server events when they are created, modified, or deleted. These events are then used to customize behavior.
  • Can be rendered to different formats, such as PDF and HTML.
  • Can be published to a website.
  • Can be annotated.
  • Can be audited.
AI agents in Content Cortex provide conversational access to document operations. Users find documents by name or content, read and summarize documents, view and update properties, suggest classification, reclassify documents, and file documents in folders through natural language commands.
Folder
A folder groups other objects. Folders provide the primary mechanism for users to access documents. Users think of folders as a place where documents are stored. However, filing documents in multiple folders creates a logical association between the folder and document, not extra copies.
Folders:
  • Have system properties that the system manages automatically, such as the date created.
  • Can have custom properties for storing business-related metadata.
  • Are secured.
  • Are hierarchical, in the sense that a folder can have subfolders.
  • Can contain documents and custom objects.
  • Can generate server events when they are created, modified, or deleted. These events are then used to customize behavior.
  • Can be annotated.
  • Can be audited.

AI agents in Content Cortex provide conversational access to folder management. Users create folders, list folder contents, and update folder details through natural language commands without navigating traditional folder hierarchies.

Annotation
An annotation object represents incidental information attached to an object for annotating or footnoting. Associate annotations with custom objects, documents, and folders.
Screen capture showing annotations in an object
Annotations:
  • Are independently securable. Default security is provided by the class and by the annotated object. An annotation can optionally have a security policy assigned to it.
  • Can have subclasses.
  • Can have zero or more associated content elements, and the content does not need to have the same format as its annotated object.
  • Are uniquely associated with a single document version, and thus are not versioned when a document version is updated.
  • Can be modified and deleted independently of the annotated object.
  • Can be searched for and retrieved.
  • Can subscribe to server-side events that fire when an action (such as creating an annotation) occurs.
  • Can participate in a link relationship.
  • Can be audited.

Annotations support persistent text extraction, which stores extracted text as Text Extraction Annotation objects. AI agents read and summarize documents, perform content-based retrieval indexing, and support generative AI operations without re-extracting text for each operation.

Custom objects
A custom object stores and manages data without content (and therefore without versioning) or a lifecycle. For example, represent a customer in the object store as a custom object when content is not required.
Custom objects:
  • Have system properties that the system manages automatically, such as Date Created.
  • Can have custom properties for storing business-related metadata.
  • Are secured.
  • Can participate in business processes as workflow attachments.
  • Can generate server events when they are created, modified, or deleted. These events are then used to customize behavior.
Custom root classes
Custom root classes offer broadly similar functionality to custom objects, but are capable of superior performance and scalability. Like a custom object, custom root classes are used to create general-purpose objects of custom properties. Custom root classes:
  • Have system properties that the system manages automatically, such as Date Created.
  • Can have custom properties for storing business-related metadata.
  • Are secured.
  • Can participate in business processes as workflow attachments.
  • Can generate server events when they are created, modified, or deleted. These events are then used to customize behavior.
  • Do not carry content.
  • Are not versionable.
  • Do not support lifecycle functionality.

The following diagram shows the classes for the Loan-related objects.

Classes for Loan-related objects that are used in preceding examples

There are many additional object types beyond Document, CustomObject, Folder, and Annotation. For example, each custom class that is created (such as the Customer class in the previous example) is managed as an object in the system. This means that system capabilities, such as custom properties and custom event actions, can also be applied to these objects.

AI agents in Content Cortex provide conversational access to class structure and metadata. Users view classes, understand properties, and search objects through natural language queries without navigating complex class hierarchies or technical interfaces.