Organising Documents with Folders and Tags
When to use folders, when to use tags, and how to set up smart folders that populate themselves.
Organising Documents with Folders and Tags
Folders vs tags — the rule of thumb
- Folder = where the document lives. A document has one folder.
- Tag = a property the document has. A document can have many tags.
If you're tempted to put a document in two folders, you want tags.
Folder design
Good folder structures mirror your organisational hierarchy, not project hierarchies:
Finance/
Invoices/
Suppliers/
Customers/
Tax/
HR/
Active Staff/
Off-boarded/
Legal/
Contracts/
Active/
Expired/
Avoid:
- Folders by date (
2026/Q1/) — use date filters instead - Folders by project name (those change too often) — use project workspaces
- Mirroring your shared-drive structure exactly — you're not migrating chaos
Tags — the flexible layer
Tags are how you slice the same document multiple ways:
urgent,confidential,do-not-shareclient-acme,project-orion,region-mombasaq1-2026,fy-2026audit-2025,dpa-relevant
Papyrus's AI auto-suggests tags when documents are uploaded. Confirm or modify them.
Smart folders
A Smart Folder is a saved search dressed up as a folder. Examples:
- “Invoices over KES 500,000 awaiting approval”
- “Contracts expiring in next 90 days”
- “Documents touched by [User] last week”
- “All documents tagged
confidentialmodified in May 2026”
To create one:
- Go to Search
- Build the query with filters
- Run it
- Click “Save as Smart Folder”
- Name it; it appears in your folder list
Smart folders update themselves continuously — anytime a document matching the query is created or modified, it shows up automatically.
Folder permissions
Folders carry permissions. By default:
- The folder creator owns it
- The department the folder is rooted under has read access
- Specific users / roles can be granted: View, Edit, Share, Delete
Permission inheritance flows downward unless explicitly overridden.
Bulk operations
Select multiple documents in any view to:
- Move to another folder
- Bulk tag / untag
- Bulk apply retention policy
- Bulk change classification