User Interface

Papermerge user interface is designed to be very intuitive. However, it is a good idea to know major interface areas by their name because they are referenced many times in this manual.

Figure 1. Main user interface elements

Document Browser

In Figure 1. marked with number 1.

Document browser is designed to have similar look and feel of modern desktop file browsers. This is the place where you browse your documents and folders. The huge different between Papermerge’s Document Browser and usual desktop environment’s file managers (e.g. Windows File Manager) is that in Papermerge there are only two times of items - folders and documents. Documents are mainly PDF, jpeg, png and tiff file formats. There is no such thing as audio files or video files.

Right Side Widgets Panel

In Figure 1. marked with number 2.

Details of selected folder or document appear in so called Right Side Widgets Panel or simply Widgets Panel. There may be many different widgets, but three most important ones are:

• OCR Language Widget

• Info Widget

• Metadata Widget

Figure 2. Right Side Panel’s Widgets display additional information about selected documents or folders.

OCR Language Widget will always be displayed (when in Document Browser). OCR language indicates in which language your documents will be OCRed.

Basic Info Widget displays basic information about currently selected document or folder. Among basic information like title, owner and creation date, it will display folder or document’s associated tags. In Info Widget there is (an extra obvious) download button. Note that with download button in Info Widget you will download only latest version of selected document (or folder content). In order to download older versions of the document you need to open document in document viewer.

Metadata Widget will display metadata of the currently selected folder or document.

Left Side Navigation Menu

In Figure 1 marked with number 3.

This is main navigation menu. Immediately after sign in you will land in Documents menu which will display Document Browser. Depending on your role and permissions you may or may not see some menu items visible on Left Side Navigation Menu illustrated in Figure 1. For example if you don’t have permissions to view/change other users, roles and groups - menu items user, roles and groups won’t be displayed.

User Menu

In Figure 1 marked with number 4.

It is almost a standard practice in almost any modern web applications to place their user sign out, user preferences menus in upper left corner of the application. In this regard Papermerge follows this best practice. Besides usual Sign out and Preferences menu items there will be Change Password menu item and link to (this) online Documentation. Depending on your role and permissions you may see additional menu items.

Breadcrumb

In Figure 1 marked with number 5.

Figure 3. Breadcrumb example. Indicates full path to currently opened document receipt_5.pdf

Breadcrumb indicates current (document or folder) path. It is usual part of any desktop file manager to have one sort of “current path indicator” - it is just called differently. For web applications such location indicator is usually called breadcrumb.

Note

The term breadcrumb is a reference to the trail of bread crumbs left by Hansel and Gretel in the German fairy tale of the same name.

Display Mode

In Figure 1 marked with number 6.

With display mode drop down menu you can switch between different modes in which folders and documents will be displayed in Document Browser. Currently two display modes are supported:

• list

• grid

Besides obvious visual difference there is one very important distinction between two display modes: Metacolumns are displayed only in list mode.

Figure 4. Display mode drop down menu.