AskVAVA
Back to all guides

For admins and document managers

Document Management

AskVAVA's Document Management System (DMS) provides enterprise-grade document control with versioning, 30-day recovery, granular permissions, secure sharing, and multi-format exports.

1. Upload & Storage

Uploading Documents

Navigate to Dashboard → Documents and use the upload card to add files. Supported formats:

  • PDF — contracts, invoices, receipts, reports
  • Word (DOC/DOCX) — letters, templates, meeting minutes
  • Images (PNG/JPG) — scanned documents, photos
  • Max file size: 10 MB per upload

Google Drive Integration

Connect your Google Drive to sync entire folders. Click Connect Google Drive in the Documents page, authorize AskVAVA, and select folders to mirror. Changes sync automatically.

Email-to-DMS (Coming Soon)

Forward documents directly to your org's unique email address: docs+your-org@askvava.com. Attachments land in your Documents library automatically.(Requires provider configuration — contact support to enable.)

2. Versioning & History

Version Control

Every time you Replace a document, the old version is archived automatically. View version history by clicking the document row → History icon.

What's captured per version:

  • File name, size, MIME type
  • Upload date & user
  • Reason (replaced / deleted / manual archive)
  • Full file content (stored separately for download)

Restoring Old Versions

In the History dialog, click Restore next to any previous version. The current file is snapshotted (creating a new version entry), then replaced with the selected historical version.

3. Trash & 30-Day Recovery

Soft-Delete (Trash)

Clicking Delete on a document moves it to the Trash — it's hidden from the main list but still recoverable for 30 days. During this window:

  • The document is excluded from search results
  • Version history is preserved
  • The file remains in storage (not purged)
  • Only admins/owners can see trashed items

Restoring from Trash

Go to Documents → Trash (scroll to bottom of page). Click Restore next to any item. It returns to the main Documents list with all versions intact.

Permanent Deletion

After 30 days, trashed documents are hard-deleted automatically by a weekly background task. A final version snapshot is saved to document_versions with reason='deleted', then the file is removed from storage.

To force immediate permanent deletion, click Permanent Delete in the Trash view. This cannot be undone.

⚠️ Restore Behavior

If you delete → restore → delete again within 30 days, the most recent deletion timestamp controls the 30-day countdown. Each restore→delete cycle creates a new version snapshot.

4. Permissions & Visibility (Coming Soon)

AskVAVA supports 4-tier document visibility:

  1. Public — All org members can view (default)
  2. Department — Only members of specific departments
  3. Role — Only users with a specific system role (e.g., Finance, Admin)
  4. Personal — Only the uploader + admins

Note: The data layer + RLS policies are fully implemented, but the role-assignment UI picker is disabled pending Phase 2. All documents are currently Public by default.

5. Secure Sharing

Time-Limited Share Links

To share a document externally (with clients, auditors, or partners who don't have AskVAVA accounts), click the document row → Share icon. Choose a validity period:

  • 1 hour
  • 24 hours
  • 7 days (maximum)

A signed URL is generated and copied to your clipboard. Anyone with the link can download the file (read-only) until the expiry time. After expiry, the link returns a 403 error.

Security Notes

  • Cannot be revoked early — once issued, a share link remains valid until TTL expires. Set shorter TTLs for sensitive documents.
  • Audit-logged — Every share link creation is recorded with user, document name, TTL, and expiry timestamp.
  • Soft-deleted documents cannot be shared.

6. Export & Backup

Metadata Export

Scroll to Export & Backup card on the Documents page. Choose from:

  • CSV — Excel-compatible spreadsheet
  • XLSX — Native Excel format
  • XML — Structured data for integrations
  • TSV — Tab-separated values

The export includes: file name, size, MIME type, source, uploader, upload date, and document ID. Does not include the actual file bytes.

Full Backup (ZIP)

Click Download Full Backup to generate a ZIP archive containing:

  • manifest.csv — metadata spreadsheet
  • manifest.xml — metadata in XML
  • files/ folder — all document files with original names

Use this for:

  • Disaster recovery (off-site retention)
  • Regulatory compliance (PDPA export requests)
  • Migrating to another platform

7. AI Features

Semantic Search

Every uploaded document is automatically:

  1. Text-extracted (OCR for images, native text for PDFs/Word)
  2. Chunked into 500-token segments
  3. Embedded with OpenAI text-embedding-3-small
  4. Indexed in pgvector for semantic search

When you chat with VAVA Assistant (web or WhatsApp), it retrieves relevant document snippets to answer questions like "What's our refund policy?" or "When's the next AGM?"

Smart Extract

For invoices, receipts, contracts, and employee records, AskVAVA can auto-extract structured data using GPT-4 Vision. Extracted fields appear in the Pending Extractions queue for review before importing into your accounting/HR modules.

AI Import (CSV/Excel)

Upload spreadsheets with heterogeneous column names — AskVAVA's AI maps them to canonical fields automatically. Supports: employees, customers, FAQs, journal entries, bank transactions.