Docs in Businessmap: How They Work and How to Use Them

Table of Contents

What Are Docs?

How Docs Are Visualized in Businessmap

Creating Your First Document

Special Document Sections

• Personal Documents
• Important Documents
• Favorites
• Docs Without Owners
• Authored by Me
• Recently Viewed
• Docs Without Locations

Document Sharing, Roles and Permissions

• Permissions Overview
• Permission Inheritance (How Parent Permissions Work)
• Sharing Documents
• Managing the Main Document List

Comments and Collaboration

Document Locations

Revisions and History

Additional Considerations When Creating, Editing, Moving and Reordering Documents

• Creating Docs
• Editing, Moving, and Reordering Documents

Key Takeaways

Introduction

Docs in Businessmap are designed to help teams collect, organize, and share knowledge in a clear and structured way. They act as a shared documentation space where information can live independently or be connected directly to boards and cards.

At their core, Docs combine written content, visuals, and collaboration features with a flexible structure. You can use them for internal documentation, processes, onboarding materials, policies, or any information your team needs to reference and maintain over time.

What Are Docs?

Docs are documents you can create, organize, and share within Businessmap. Each Doc can include text, images, whiteboards, and comments, making them suitable for both detailed documentation and lightweight notes.

Docs are organized in a hierarchical structure, meaning documents can have parent and child relationships. This allows you to group related content together and build clear documentation trees.

Docs are commonly used to:

• Store team and project documentation
• Define processes and workflows
• Share policies and guidelines
• Keep long-term reference materials
• Collaborate through comments
• Track changes through revision history

How Docs Are Visualized in Businessmap

Before diving into features, it’s important to understand how Docs are shown, because this depends on how you open them.

There are two different ways Docs are visualized in Businessmap.

When you open Docs outside the context of a board, you will see only the Main Docs List. This is the primary, hierarchical structure where documents live by default.

When you open Docs from inside a board, the left-side menu changes. In this case, you will see two sections:

• Current Board, which shows documents added specifically to that board
  
   
• Main Docs List, which shows the full document hierarchy
  

This distinction helps you quickly focus on board-related documentation while still having access to the full documentation space when needed.

Creating Your First Document

Creating a document is straightforward. You open the Docs section, click the "+" button in the left sidebar, give your document a title, and start adding content.

Another option is to create a child document by clicking the + icon of the parent document:

By default, a newly created document:

• Has you as the Owner
• Is not shared with anyone
• Appears at the bottom of the selected location

Sharing and organizing come later, once the content is ready.

Special Document Sections

Beyond the Main Docs List, Businessmap provides additional sections to help you find and manage documents more easily.

Personal Documents

Personal documents are documents that are visible and manageable only by you. They are intended for drafts, notes, or information you are not yet ready to share with others.

Personal documents:

• Are completely private and visible only to you
• Give you full control over editing, deleting, and reordering
• Include full revision history and version restore capabilities

You can convert a personal document into a regular document when it becomes relevant for team use. When converted:

• All revisions and history are preserved. The document appears in the Docs without locations section until you assign it to a location.
• The conversion is recorded in the document history.

Once converted to a regular document, a personal document cannot be converted back.

Important Documents

Important documents are highlighted in a dedicated section. These are typically documents that require frequent access or represent critical information, such as policies or key processes.

Once a document is marked as Important, it becomes visible in the dedicated section on the Docs dashboard.

Only Doc Owners can mark documents as Important, and they are visible only to users the document is shared with (more about roles and permissions follows in the content below).

Favorites

Favorites are personal and visible only to you. They allow quick access to documents you open often, without affecting other users.

Docs Without Owners

Sometimes documents lose their owner (if users get disabled or deleted), which limits what can be done with them. These documents appear in the Docs without owners section, which is visible only to Doc Managers (more about Doc Managers to follow in the content below).

Doc Managers can:

• View these documents
• Assign a new owner

Once an owner is assigned, the document disappears from this section.

Authored by Me

This section shows all documents you created. It’s useful for managing your own documentation and quickly finding content you’re responsible for.

Recently Viewed

This panel shows the 5 most recently viewed documents (out of the last 20). Clicking on the eye icon shows all 20 recent docs.

Note: the list of recent docs is stored in the browser's local storage, which means that on different browsers the user may see different docs.

Docs Without Locations

These are documents that are shared with you but are not placed anywhere:

• Not in the Main Docs List
• Not on boards
• Not on cards

This section exists to ensure shared documents are never lost and can be placed in the correct location later.

Document Sharing, Roles and Permissions

Once documents are created and organized, the next important step is controlling who can access them and what they can do. Every document has roles that define what different users can do. These roles ensure that documents stay controlled while still allowing collaboration.

Permissions Overview

The table below summarizes what each document role can and cannot do.

Permission Inheritance (How Parent Permissions Work)

Docs use permission inheritance, which means child documents automatically receive the permissions of their parent documents. This keeps access consistent and prevents important documents from becoming accidentally restricted.

Here’s how inheritance works in practice:

Imagine you have three documents:

• Document A has a set of Owners, Editors, Commenters, and Viewers.
• Document B is created under Document A.
• Document C is created under Document B.

When Document B is created:

• It automatically inherits all users and roles from Document A.
• These inherited permissions cannot be removed from Document B.
• You can only add more users or roles on top of what was inherited.

When Document C is created:

• It inherits permissions from both Document A and Document B.
• In other words, Document C contains everyone from A plus everyone added on B.

In short:

• Every document inherits all permissions from its parents
• Inherited permissions cannot be removed
• You can only add additional permissions at lower levels

This inheritance model ensures that access flows down the document hierarchy and that no child document becomes more restricted than its parent.

Sharing Documents

Sharing determines who can access a document and what they can do with it. Documents can be shared with individual users, teams, boards, workspaces, board roles, or even everyone in the account.

When setting permissions, it’s important to understand that Owner permissions work differently from all other roles.

Owner access can be assigned only to specific users. You cannot assign the Owner role to everyone, teams, boards, or roles. This ensures there is always clear, individual responsibility for each document.

For all other roles (Editors, Commenters, and Viewers), you can choose between two permission modes:

• Everyone – grants access to all users in the account with the selected role.
• Custom – allows you to define exactly who gets access and how.

The Custom configuration is very flexible. It lets you combine multiple access sources, such as:

• Specific users
• Teams
• Board members
• Workspace members
• Users with specific roles

This makes it possible to fine-tune document access to match how your organization works.

Managing the Main Document List

To ensure order and prevent document scatter, it is possible to configure which users are "Document Managers". These users can manage the first-level documents in the Main Doc List in the Docs menu on the left. This permission only affects the first-level docs, all other docs are governed by the standard rules and permissions.

Account owners (the super admins of the account) always have the Document Manager permission.

Note: Account owners and Doc Managers are the only users that can create new docs in the Main Doc List. 

Also, they are the only ones who can reorder the Main Doc List, but they can only see the documents that they have been explicitly added to.

Comments and Collaboration

Comments allow team members to collaborate directly inside documents without changing the actual content. They are best used for discussions, feedback, clarifications, and review conversations that should stay connected to a specific part of the document.

Comments are always contextual. You can highlight text in a document and add a comment to start a discussion thread tied to that exact section, making conversations easy to follow later.

Who can use comments depends on their document role:

• Owners, Editors, and Commenters can view and add comments
• Viewers cannot see or add comments

When working with comments, keep the following rules in mind:

• You can edit or delete only your own comments
• You can delete an entire comment thread only if all comments in the thread are yours
• If other users have replied in a thread, the thread cannot be fully deleted

Comments follow document permissions. If a user loses access to a document, they automatically lose access to its comments as well.

Comments are ideal for collaboration and discussion, while document edits should be used for finalized content changes.

Document Locations

Documents can exist in multiple places at the same time.

There are three possible locations:

• The Main Docs List
• Boards
• Cards

To see which locations the document is added to, expand the menu in the top right corner and click "Locations". From the modal that opens, you can add/remove the document from/to the Main Docs List, Boards and Cards.

Only document Owners can manage where a document appears.

When added to boards, documents appear in a flat list, with the option to expand child documents. 

When added to cards, documents appear in a dedicated section and can be opened only by users who have permission to view them.

Revisions and History

Docs keep track of changes so nothing is lost. Revisions allow Owners and Editors to:

• View previous versions of content
• See who made changes and when
• Restore earlier versions if needed

There are two types of history:

• Document History, which shows detailed changes for a specific document
• Account History, which shows document-related events across the account (without exposing sensitive content)

Additional Considerations when Creating, Editing, Moving and Reordering Documents

Creating Docs

Top-level (first-level) documents can be created only by Doc Managers and/or Account Owners.

Child documents can be created by Owners or Editors of the parent document. The creator automatically becomes the Owner of the new document.

There are a few important rules:

• Maximum hierarchy depth is 20 levels
• You cannot create documents under archived parents
• You cannot create visible documents under hidden parents
• New documents appear at the bottom by default

Editing, Moving, and Reordering Documents

Editors can change titles and content, while Owners can also manage structure, sharing, importance, archive status, and locations.

Archived documents cannot be edited unless they are unarchived.

Moving documents requires ownership of:

• The document itself
• The current parent
• The target parent

Moving first-level documents requires Doc Manager permissions. Reordering works through drag and drop or position settings and follows the same ownership rules.

Key Takeaways

Docs in Businessmap are a flexible way to manage knowledge across your organization. Understanding how documents are visualized, shared, and structured helps keep information accessible, secure, and easy to maintain.

With clear ownership, thoughtful sharing, and regular maintenance, Docs become a reliable source of truth for your team.