Because most work is a journey, every document knows where it came from and what came after it: its upstream references and its downstream dependencies, each shown with its status. It is the journey, seen from one document.
- How a document traces its upstream and downstream
- Why this is the engine behind the cancellation guard
- How it relates to the Journeys section
Upstream and downstream
Every document carries a link to what generated it. Follow those links upstream and you see the lineage that led here, a quotation became an order, the order became this invoice, many levels deep. Search for everything that points back to a document and you see its downstream: an order and the deliveries and invoices raised from it. Each linked document shows its current status, so the whole chain is legible at a glance.
It powers the dependency guard
This is not just a viewer, it is the engine behind the cancellation guard. When the system stops you cancelling a document that still has live dependents, it is walking this same downstream chain to find them. So the chain is load-bearing: it keeps cancellations safe as well as showing you the lineage.
The per-document journey
Where the Journeys section tells the cross-module flows as narratives, the document chain shows the same lineage from where you actually stand, one document, looking up at its origins and down at its consequences. It answers the two questions you ask most of a live document: “what is this waiting on?” and “what depends on this?”.
Opening the chain
A button on the document opens the chain viewer: a panel that lays out the lineage, the documents that led to this one above, the documents raised from it below, each shown with its live status. From any document you can see the whole journey it sits in, and jump straight to any link in it.
Related
- Reference: Document Lifecycle (which uses the chain)
- Reference: Journeys (the same lineage as narratives)