Glossary
Glossary of terms
Plain-language definitions for document management, AI, compliance, and the acronyms that fill enterprise software.
A
Acceptance Workflow
A specific kind of workflow used to confirm receipt and acceptance of a document — distinct from an approval workflow.
Access Control List
A list of users, roles, or departments and the permissions each holds on a specific resource (document, folder, workspace).
Annotation
A non-destructive mark — highlight, sticky note, comment, drawing — added on top of a document without modifying its content.
Approval
A workflow action where a named individual or role decides to authorise (or refuse) further progression of a document or process.
Audit Trail
An immutable, append-only log of every action taken on the system — the canonical record of who did what, when.
B
C
Classification
Assigning a document to a known category (Invoice, Contract, Employee Record, etc.) — typically done by AI with a confidence score, sometimes confirmed by a human.
Clause Library
A curated collection of approved contract clauses — used to assemble new contracts and to compare against incoming third-party drafts.
Confidentiality Level
A label indicating how sensitive a document is — Public, Internal, Confidential, or Restricted. Drives permission and sharing policies.
Custom Field
A tenant-defined metadata field attached to a document type — extending the standard Papyrus extraction schema.
D
Data Classification
Synonym for confidentiality level — the sensitivity label that determines how a document can be handled.
Data Subject Access Request (DSAR)
A formal request by an individual to receive all personal data an organisation holds about them, under Kenya's DPA or GDPR.
Department
An organisational unit within a tenant — Finance, HR, Legal, Operations etc. — used to scope permissions and ownership.
Digital Signature
A cryptographic signature using a private key tied to a verified identity — the strongest form of electronic signature.
E
eForm
An electronic form — a structured data-capture interface that produces a document on submission.
eSignature
An electronic signature — typed, drawn, or uploaded — capturing intent to sign a document. Legally equivalent to wet signatures for most commercial contracts in Kenya.
eTIMS
Kenya's electronic Tax Invoice Management System — the KRA platform every VAT-registered organisation transmits invoices through.
Extraction
Pulling structured fields (dates, amounts, parties, references) out of an unstructured document — usually via AI.
F
File Hash
A cryptographic fingerprint of a file — a fixed-length string that changes if any byte of the file changes.
Folder
A named container in the document hierarchy. A document has exactly one folder; folders can nest.
Full-Text Search
Search that matches the literal words in your query against the words in the documents — the classic keyword-based search.
H
K
L
M
O
P
R
RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation)
An AI pattern where a language model answers questions by first retrieving relevant documents, then synthesising from them — used by the Papyrus Copilot.
Records Retention
The discipline of keeping documents for the period required by law or business, then disposing of them deliberately.
Redaction
Permanently obscuring sensitive content in a document — black bars, blurs, or removed sections — for safe sharing.
Retention Policy
A rule specifying how long a class of document is kept, what triggers the retention clock, and what happens at expiry.
Routing Rule
A condition that determines which workflow or approver a document goes to, based on its classification, metadata, or origin.
S
Semantic Search
Search by meaning rather than literal words — finds documents that talk about a concept even if they don't use the exact terms.
SLA
Service Level Agreement — a target time by which a workflow step must complete, measured against actual performance.
Stamping
Applying a visible mark — date received, paid, approved, certified — onto a document's rendered output.