M-files Guide

[Jennifer Kovachick]

MFiles users can visually navigate to the information stored in M-Files and they are guided to the right information in a way that is natural in the data context. M-Files Process Maps provides an editing environment to create graphical process descriptions as flowcharts, but also hierarchical menue structures, cheatsheets, workflow maps and job aids can be created.

This guide aims to instruct on how to implement and use the M-Files add-on to create maps with advanced functionalities like commands, anchors and viewports. M-Files basic user and vault administrator knowledge is required. If you are unable to find the guidance or support you need in this guide, please see the M-Files user guide or contact M-Files support.

This video describes how the M-Files Desktop user interface works. When you log in to a document vault, you are first greeted with the home screen of the vault. The home screen comprises the quick view area on the left and the Pinned tab on the right.

When using M-Files, you no longer save documents in a single folder but on the M-Files drive, which can be found on your computer like a hard drive. You do not need to specify any other location than the document vault, as M-Files locates the document in the correct views on the basis of the metadata you define in the metadata card.

This video explains how documents are edited in M-Files via first checking them out for editing and then, when you are done with your changes, checking them back in to the vault. It also explains the version history functionality of M-Files.

In M-Files, documents and other objects can be categorized into different views according to their metadata. Creating views is largely based on specifying the metadata used for searching and categorizing documents.

The most efficient way of finding your documents and other objects is to use the M-Files search functions. This is especially useful when you remember only a single detail about the document or object, such as the creation date or the user who created the document.

Use of templates in M-Files is really easy. Just select what you want to create and M-Files offers you the templates available. You can select from the ones created specifically for your company and for the specific class chosen, or you can choose from the blank templates.

Assignments transfer information and responsibility for task execution to the correct person. Assignments can be used, for instance, to request a colleague to look over a proposal before it is sent to the customer.

You can access the help documentation anytime M-Files is active by pressing the F1 key on your keyboard. Opening the user guide via F1 adds the advantage of directly accessing a topic that is related to what you are doing at the moment in M-Files.

Files of the object can be automatically converted into PDF form on the server when the object changes state. Conversion to PDF on the server can be done for files in such source formats as Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint, Microsoft Outlook, and Visio, as well as RTF and OpenOffice files.

With M-Files, several users can edit a document at the same time. You can check out a document for co-authoring via Microsoft Office for the web when the Microsoft Office for the web tools and co-authoring have been enabled for your vault or vaults.

You can add various comments and stamps, as well as draw arrows, boxes and other shapes to your documents. The feature supports most common file types, including Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint and Visio documents, email files, RTF files, HTML and web archive files as well as OpenDocument files and PDF documents.

M-Files automatically detects if there are documents with identical file contents in a vault. M-Files shows the file content matches for existing and new documents. You can see only the duplicate files that you have rights to.

With workflows, the routines of the organization can be widely automated and tasks can be assigned to the right people at the right time. Users receive e-mail notifications about task-related issues, and managers can monitor task progress and approve completed tasks.

You can use automatic permission settings to pass permissions for an object when the object has a property value, object type or class that uses automatic permissions. The object receives automatic permissions when a value with automatic permissions specified is added to the object metadata.

This video describes how you can make content available offline, how editing documents works in the offline mode, and what happens when you go back online. You can start using M-Files without a network connection by pressing the Alt key and selecting "Operations" then "Go Offline" from the menu bar, or by clicking your username in the top-right corner of the user interface and selecting "Go Offline" from the context menu.

By using relationships, you can define metadata connections between objects, just as via the metadata card. For example, you can link a customer with an object. The customer then also appears in the metadata of the object. Likewise, the relationships entered via the metadata card will appear in the Relationships dialog.

This tutorial describes the steps you need to perform in both M-Files and Microsoft Entra ID to configure automatic user provisioning. When configured, Microsoft Entra ID automatically provisions and deprovisions users and groups to M-Files using the Microsoft Entra provisioning service. For important details on what this service does, how it works, and frequently asked questions, see Automate user provisioning and deprovisioning to SaaS applications with Microsoft Entra ID.

If you have previously configured user provisioning in M-Files Manage with your own Entra ID application, you cannot change the configuration to use the M-Files application from the Microsoft Entra application gallery. If you want to use the M-Files application instead, delete the existing configuration from M-Files Manage and disable or delete the related Entra ID application. Then, follow these instructions to create the new configuration.

Add M-Files from the Microsoft Entra application gallery to start managing provisioning to M-Files. If you have previously set up M-Files for SSO you can use the same application. However, it's recommended that you create a separate app when testing out the integration initially. Learn more about adding an application from the gallery here.

The Microsoft Entra provisioning service allows you to scope who will be provisioned based on assignment to the application and or based on attributes of the user / group. If you choose to scope who will be provisioned to your app based on assignment, you can use the following steps to assign users and groups to the application. If you choose to scope who will be provisioned based solely on attributes of the user or group, you can use a scoping filter as described here.

Start small. Test with a small set of users and groups before rolling out to everyone. When the scope for provisioning is set to assigned users and groups, you can control this by assigning one or two users or groups to the app. When the scope is set to all users and groups, you can specify an attribute based scoping filter.

This section guides you through the steps to configure the Microsoft Entra provisioning service to create, update, and disable users and/or groups in TestApp based on user and/or group assignments in Microsoft Entra ID.

Under the Admin Credentials section, enter your M-Files Tenant URL, Token Endpoint, Client Identifier and Client Secret. Click Test Connection to ensure Microsoft Entra ID can connect to M-Files. If the connection fails, make sure that the values you entered are correct and try again.

In the Notification Email field, enter the email address of a person or group who should receive the provisioning error notifications and select the Send an email notification when a failure occurs check box.

Optional: If you want to synchronize additional user information, you can define two additional fields to be synchronized to M-Files Manage. The information is shown in Additional information 1 and Additional information 2 on the User information page.

This operation starts the initial synchronization cycle of all users and groups defined in Scope in the Settings section. The initial cycle takes longer to perform than subsequent cycles, which occur approximately every 40 minutes as long as the Microsoft Entra provisioning service is running.

It should be an OPTION to have CANVAS override the (in my case, carefully specified) names of the students' submitted files, when I come to download them. (They are computer m-files; I need to run them through a program that depends on the naming convention). What should be a simple "download" becomes hours of additional programming and general messing around, to undo this. A simple email attachment down-loader does the job far better, but oh no, my organisation has bought into this second-rate ILE, and insists on its use. What a waste of time.

Problem now solved, using email. (Amazing, isn't it, how email systems miraculously manage quietly to do their thing, and handle large numbers of file attachments without messing things up). I came here thinking this was Canvas Support. And 24 hours later, it does indeed seem to be the closest thing on Earth to that. Thanks to the two chaps who tried to help.

I assume you are referring to the bulk download from the assignment page, which downloads as a zip folder. If you think about it, it has to add a student name to each file, or how else would you be able to differentiate between student files within the folder? Not everyone requires students to use the same file naming conventions that you might. What if a student uploaded a file with an incorrect name, or another student's name? Canvas adding the student's name ensures integrity.

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