ThreadWare is built from modules - Sales, Production, Quality and so on. An administrator gives you a role in each module, for each company you work in. The menu is built from those roles. So if something in this guide is not in your menu, it has not been given to you yet. Ask your administrator, or log a support ticket. To see what you currently hold, click your initials in the top right and choose My Access & Roles.
This page is about the AI document library - general company documents that you want people and the assistant to be able to find.
Controlled quality documents - the ones with authors, reviewers, approvers, signatures and training records - live in the Quality module instead. See the Quality (QMS) guide. If your document needs to be signed off, it belongs there, not here.
Can I use it?
You need the Document Uploader or AI Admin role in the AI Assistant module.
| Role | What you can do |
|---|---|
| Document Uploader | Upload documents and see the list. You can set the access level to Public or Standard only, and you must choose a site. |
| AI Admin / Administrator | Everything: all four access levels, uploading to "Shared" (all sites), editing a document's details, deleting, re-classifying and re-embedding. |
Ordinary users do not come here at all. They find and download documents through the AI Assistant, which only shows them what their access level allows.
Where to find it
Menu ▸ AI Assistant ▸ Document Management
Uploading a document
- Open the page. The Upload Document panel is at the top.
- Choose the Category. This is the most important choice - see below.
- Choose the Site. Administrators can leave this blank, which means Shared (all sites). Everyone else must pick one.
- Check the Access Level. ThreadWare fills this in for you based on the category and site. Change it only if you are sure.
- Type a short Description. Do not skip this - it is searched, so a good description makes the document far easier to find later.
- Fill in the Revision if the document has one - for example
v2.1orRev C- and any Revision Notes. - Set the Status if it is not simply approved and in use.
- Choose the file and click Upload & Embed.
Accepted file types: PDF, Word (.doc, .docx), Excel (.xls, .xlsx), PowerPoint (.ppt, .pptx), plain text, CSV, HTML, and images (JPG, PNG, BMP, TIFF). Scanned images and scanned PDFs are read using text recognition, so a photographed procedure is still searchable.
Uploading takes a moment; the search indexing ("embedding") happens in the background afterwards. A newly uploaded document may take a few minutes before the assistant can quote from it. The Chunks column in the list tells you it has been processed.
Categories
The category decides which folder the document is filed in and, together with the site, what its default access level is. There are 22:
| Group | Categories |
|---|---|
| Quality and safety | Quality, Health_and_Safety, Risk, Company_Statutory |
| Operations | Production, Maintenance_and_Equipment, Product_and_Process_Development, Properties_and_Facilities |
| Commercial | Sales, Marketing, Contracts_and_Agreements, Insurance, Finance, Budgets |
| Management | Governance, Strategy, OKRs, Projects, KPIs, Minutes, Legal |
| People | Human_Resources |
Pick the one a colleague would look under. If it could be two, pick the one closest to who needs to read it.
Access levels
Every document has a level from 0 to 3, and every person has one too. You can only read a document at or below your own level.
| Level | Name | Who can read it |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | Public | Everyone in the company. |
| 1 | Standard | Managers and above. |
| 2 | Confidential | Senior managers and above. |
| 3 | Restricted | Executives and administrators. |
How ThreadWare chooses the default
- Legal, Budgets, Strategy and Governance are always Confidential (2), whatever site you pick.
- Marketing is always at least Standard (1). Brochures and artwork are internal by default; "Shared" there means shared across sites, not public.
- Anything else: Shared (no site) becomes Public (0); a specific site becomes Standard (1).
The level updates automatically when you change the category, so set the category first.
Public means every approved user in the company can read it, and the AI Assistant will quote it to any of them. That is exactly right for a policy everybody needs. It is exactly wrong for a supplier contract. When in doubt, go one level higher - you can always lower it later.
Revisions
Revision is free text: v1, Rev B, 2026-03
- whatever your company uses. Revision Notes is for what changed.
ThreadWare does not throw old revisions away. When the assistant finds a document, it also shows the other revisions of the same document, marks the newest with a latest tag, and recommends that one. That is deliberate - somebody asking "what did the procedure say last year?" gets a real answer.
Editing a document's description, revision or notes causes ThreadWare to re-index it in the background, because those words are searched too. Nothing for you to do; it just takes a minute.
Statuses
Status says where a document is in its life. There are six:
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Draft | Being written. Not to be followed yet. |
| In Review | Written, being checked. |
| Awaiting Signature | Checked, waiting for sign-off. |
| Approved | In force. This is the default. |
| Superseded | A newer revision has replaced it. |
| Obsolete | Withdrawn from use altogether. |
An Obsolete document is still found by search and still shown to the AI Assistant. It is labelled, shown with a line through it, and the assistant warns the reader not to follow it.
This is on purpose. Hiding it would make ThreadWare answer "we have no procedure for that" about a procedure the company plainly has on record. If you genuinely want a document out of search, delete it - that is what delete is for.
ThreadWare records who changed a status and when. A document uploaded without you picking a status is not stamped as approved by you - it just defaults to Approved with no claim about who approved it.
The document list
Below the upload panel is every document you can see. You can:
- search by file name;
- filter by Category and by Status;
- sort by clicking a column heading.
The columns are: Tenant, File Name, Category, Site, Access, Chunks, Modified, Uploaded Date, Uploaded By, Revision, Status and Actions.
| Column | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Access | The level, 0 to 3. |
| Chunks | How many searchable pieces the document was broken into. Zero usually means it has not been processed yet, or no text could be read from it. |
| Site | Blank or "Shared" means all sites in the company. |
A row with a line through it and a block icon is Obsolete. A row with a bin icon has been deleted.
Administrator actions
| Button | What it does |
|---|---|
| Refresh | Reloads the list. Anyone can use this. |
| Edit Metadata (row action) | Change the description, revision, notes, access level, status and status note. Does not replace the file. |
| Delete (row action) | Removes the document from search. This is how you take something out of circulation completely. |
| Re-classify | Re-runs the content check that suggests a higher access level for documents that look sensitive. It only records suggestions - it never changes an access level by itself. A human always decides. |
| Re-embed All | Rebuilds the search index for every document. Slow. Only needed after a major change, and normally on advice from support. |
Getting a lot of documents in at once
You do not have to upload hundreds of files one at a time. Your administrator can set up folders on the server: drop files into the staging folder for a category and ThreadWare picks them up on its own, usually within half an hour. Ask your administrator - it is covered in the Administrator Manual.
When something looks wrong
| What you see | What it means |
|---|---|
| The assistant cannot find a document you uploaded | Check the Chunks column. If it is 0, it is still processing, or no text could be read from the file. Also check the access level is not above the person asking. |
| You cannot pick Confidential or Restricted | You hold Document Uploader, not Admin. Uploaders can only set Public or Standard. |
| You cannot leave the site blank | Same reason. Only administrators can upload to Shared (all sites). |
| A document appears in an answer with a line through it | It is Superseded or Obsolete. That is intended - read the warning and find the current version. |
| Users say "information exists above my access level" | They found a real match they may not read. Either raise their access, or lower the document's level if it is not actually sensitive. |
Related guides
- AI Assistant - how people actually find and download these documents.
- Quality (QMS) - controlled documents with approvals and signatures.
- All guides