Step by step

1. Open the Documents list

   In the left-hand navigation, find the Documents group and click Documents beneath it. This takes you to the documents list, which shows each record's title, category, visibility, and date created. You can search the list by title or description.

2. Click 'Create New Document'

   Select the Create New button at the top-right of the list. The CMS checks that your account holds lodge-admin, secretary, or website-editor on at least one organisation before showing the button. If you have the right role the form opens immediately.

3. Upload your file

   Use the upload widget at the top of the form to select a file from your device. Accepted formats are PDF, Word, Excel, plain text, CSV, JPEG, and PNG.

4. Fill in the title and an optional description

   Type a title in the required Title field; this is the name that appears throughout the back office. The Description field is optional but worth filling in, because its content is included when someone searches the documents list.

5. Choose a category

   Select a category from the required Category field, which defaults to General. The other options are Bylaws and governance, Forms, Meeting documents, Committee files, Newsletters, Minutes, History, and Financial. Category is for organisation and filtering only and has no effect on who can read the document.

6. Set Visibility to control who can read the document

   Choose one of the four visibility levels: 'Private — administrators only' (the default), 'Leadership', 'Members', or 'Public — may appear on the website'. The field defaults to 'administrative', labelled 'Private — administrators only', meaning the document is hidden from everyone except operations-role users unless you deliberately broaden access. Unauthenticated visitors can only ever reach documents set to Public; members see up to Member-level documents; operations-role users see everything belonging to your organisation; platform administrators see all documents regardless of visibility.

7. Optionally link the document to a meeting or member

   Use the optional Related Meeting or Related Member fields to associate the document with an existing record from those collections. The CMS enforces that any record you link to belongs to your own organisation, so you cannot accidentally link across tenants.

8. Save the record

   Click Save to write the record to the database. A beforeChange hook stamps your user ID as the uploader when the record is first created and leaves that value unchanged on any future update. The tenancy hook also sets the tenant field to your organisation, so the document is always scoped to the correct tenant.

What happens next

Your document record is saved, the uploaded file is stored, and access is enforced immediately according to the visibility level you chose. A document left at the default 'Private — administrators only' setting is visible only to operations-role users (lodge-admin and secretary) in your organisation, as well as platform administrators who can see all documents across all organisations regardless of visibility setting.

Good to know

Only lodge-admin and secretary roles can delete a document. If your account holds only the website-editor role you can create and update documents but you will not see a delete option.

The Documents label in the back-office navigation is fixed platform terminology. Your organisation's public-facing site may use a different word for the same content, but that does not change how you manage records here in the office.