Linked Documents Explained

The Microsoft Office suite and other applications allow users to directly refer to an external file from within a document. Once this is done, users can click on a link to open the other file.

As an example of this process, insert a link into a Microsoft Word document. To do this, open an existing file or create a new document. Click on Insert, then Hyperlink (1). Under Text to display, enter the words you would like to show as the text for the link to the second document, then browse to the file you'd like to link to in the file dialog (2). Click OK to create the link.

Once this is complete the document link will resemble the following in the original document:

Holding the Ctrl key and clicking the link will open the linked document.

fileplan and Linked Documents

Because fileplan is a cloud based application, documents that come from fileplan are downloaded to a user's machine when editing. When a document is opened it is downloaded to the following folder on a Windows system:

C:\Users\[USERNAME]\Documents\FilePlan\[INSTANCENAME]\LocalCache

In the above line, [USERNAME] is the Windows login of the user opening the file, and [INSTANCENAME] is the name of the instance that the user is logged in to, which can be seen in the URL of fileplan:

https://[INSTANCENAME].fileplanapp.com/

What this means for fileplan users is that a Document Link to a fileplan document will not be able to access that linked document, as the path to the file that is specified in the link includes the user's name.

For example, if John on the ICONICO instance has created a link to a fileplan document called meetings.docx, this link will be configured to point to:

C:\Users\John\Documents\FilePlan\ICONICO\LocalCache\meetings.docx

However, when Mary (who is also using the same fileplan instance) accesses the file with this link, this folder does not exist on her machine and the document will not be found.

How to link to fileplan documents

The only way to resolve this issue is for all users of an instance to use a mapped network drive to link to documents in the fileplan working folder specified above. This operation is best performed by a system administrator. This administrator must map a network drive using an unused drive letter for all users on the network. The mapped folder will be to:

C:\Users\[USERNAME]\Documents\FilePlan

Using our example above and assuming that the mapped dive will be assigned the letter F, then documents that are opened in fileplan by John will be downloaded to the folder:

F:\ICONICO\LocalCache

(C:\Users\John\Documents\FilePlan\ICONICO\LocalCache)

When John uses this mapped network drive to create a document link, he should ensure that he uses the mapped drive as in the following example:

F:\ICONICO\LocalCache\meetings.docx

When Mary opens the file, it will be downloaded to her local folder and she will be able to access it normally as she also uses the mapped network drive F: