The strength of a document management system is not in storing documents. It is in helping you find them again using the information you already know, even when you never knew the filename or the folder.

Profiles are your customized filing categories

A Profile in IMS is an electronic filing category built around how your business actually works. A Profile might represent customer accounts, vendor files, human resources records, or any other group of documents that share a purpose. Instead of fitting your documents into someone else's folder structure, you define the categories that match your operations.

Index fields are the meaningful details

Each Profile is built from index fields, the searchable pieces of information associated with every document inside it. The fields are where the power comes from. With the right fields, a document can be located by what it is rather than where it was saved.

Common examples of index fields include:

• Customer or vendor name
• Invoice or reference number
• Account number
• Document type, such as contract, invoice, or correspondence
• Date or date range

An example: the invoice you almost cannot find

Suppose someone needs a specific invoice but only remembers the customer's name and roughly when it was sent. In a folder system, that can mean guessing which directory it lives in and opening file after file. In IMS, you search by the customer name and a date range. The matching records come back regardless of who scanned the invoice or what it was originally named.

That is the difference in a single sentence: you search using the details you actually remember instead of the details someone else chose when they saved the file.

Encouraging consistent data entry

Search only works well when the index fields are filled in consistently. One way IMS encourages that is through fixed-choice drop-down fields, which let users pick from predefined values instead of typing free text. A drop-down for document type, for example, keeps everyone using the same labels so searches return reliable results.

Which field types are available, and how they can be configured, depends on the edition and configuration you choose. The goal is the same regardless: a well-designed Profile reflects how your employees actually look for information, so the system works the way people think instead of forcing people to think the way the system stores things.

Multiple ways to retrieve the same record

Because each document carries several index fields, there is usually more than one way to reach it. You might find an invoice by vendor name, by invoice number, by date, or by account number. The same record answers several different questions, which is what makes retrieval flexible instead of rigid.

You can also combine criteria to narrow results. Searching by customer name and a date range together is more precise than either field alone, which matters when a Profile holds thousands of records.

Ready to see it in action? Watch the IMS overview to see how indexing leads to retrieval, or read Database vs. File Server for how a database differs from ordinary folders. The Products & Features page lays out which capabilities belong to which edition.