Handling of Linked Document relationships during document versioning depends on your Vault’s settings. This article addresses how Vault handles links if the Bring Forward Linked Document Relationships to new versions feature is on. Otherwise, Vault does not copy the Linked Documents relationships during versioning.

When this feature is enabled by an Admin, Vault copies any Linked Document relationships from the previous version of a document into the newly created version. Note that Vault only copies the relationship. Any annotations, including the link annotations that created the relationship, are not copied. Relationships appear in the document fields under Linked Documents.

Vault brings forward Linked Document relationships regardless of how the new document version is created, including by a workflow step, check out/check in, creating a new draft, uploading a new version, or creating a new version via the API. Vault also manages the Linked Document relationships for each version independently. This means that edits you make to document links on a new version will not affect the relationship on the previous version, and vice versa.

Deleting Linked Documents Relationships

Users with the Edit Relationships permission on a document can delete relationships that Vault brought forward from a previous version. To delete a relationship, click the delete icon in the Linked Documents area of the fields panel.

This delete option is disabled for relationships that are associated with an annotation. If a document includes a relationship brought forward from a previous version and a user creates a new annotation linked to the same target document, the delete option under Linked Documents becomes disabled. The option is re-enabled if you delete the associated annotation.

Additional Notes

  • When you use Make a Copy on a document with Linked Document relationships brought forward from a previous version, Vault only copies the relationships if you choose to copy content or content and fields. If you copy only fields, Vault excludes Linked Documents relationships.
  • When a document contains multiple annotations with links pointing to the same version of a document, Vault only brings forward a single relationship item during document versioning. If the document contains links to multiple versions of another document, Vault brings forward a distinct relationship item for each version.