Custom Attachment Table?

[benjaminnuttin]

I am looking for ways to enrich an attachment record with a field called "Attachment Type", which describe what kind of document the user is uploading (e.g. "Test Plan", "Test Results", etc.) The idea is that I can then have a workflow run against those records to, say, prevent a release ticket from moving to the next step if a certain kind of document has not been uploaded.

I am wondering what the best of doing that would be.

I know the attachment table is not supposed to be extensible, so maybe I should add a field to it and then modify the "attachment" UI Page to add a drop down for this new Type column and save the attachment with that column filled out? Or maybe create a new table that would be an "attachment record" and which would then have the type as a column, and have a UI page that uploads an attachment to my release record and automatically copies it to the "attachment record"?

I am trying to not impose too many extra clicks on the end users...

Any help/ code samples would be greatly appreciated!!

[Mark Stanger · Accepted solution]

One simple option for this that I've used in the past would be simply to create a new 'Type' field on the attachment table with the options you need.   Then just add the 'Attachments' table as a related list to the form.   When it's a related list you can show the 'Type' column you've added and allow users to list edit the record to update the type.   With the right kind of messaging on the form to guide the users as to the proper usage, that's a pretty clean solution that won't take much effort.

The UI page/custom attachment dialog would probably be the next route I would pursue but that would be quite a bit more complex I would think.

[gyedwab]

If the customer wants a workflow against the type of document, you should also evaluate the Managed Documents application -- it allows checkin-checkout of documents, versioning, etc, and then the workflow on the MDOC could affect the parent record.

That will probably involve more clicks than just putting a field on the attachment table.