Next gen files & attachments features

[raveslave]

I'd like to see some UX and functional updates and more advanced features to the attachment feature of erpnext.

feature wish-list

• configurable file storage type
  • S3/MinIO/etc which brings support for redundancy, encryption, history etc
  • disk/volume with os-level encryption
• key based encryption incl. filename scrambling
  • important for sensitive files and data
  • key for a specific user can be erased to comply with 'GDPR', i.e. automatically making related files unreadable
• files paths/names must not be directly exposed
  • i.e. web/app-server shall never risk exposing a file on disk
  • store meta data in db for original filename, versioning, md5
  • proxy downloads to provide auth and trails
  • this also allows to store audit data for granular access log
• allow re-uploading the same file to create a new version of the same
  • user-interface to select add vs replace
  • keep full history to avoid accidental deletion
• allow secure locking (read only) for files that must be archived
  • configurable, but should be default for any submitted document
• files should offer a type or label
  • i.e. you might get 3-4 documents from a supplier along with a quote
  • one being the pdf itself, the doctype and ux should allow picking which one it is
  • other files are usually spreadsheets with details, terms and such that should be labeled as supporting files
• make use of weighted tree and/or logical grouping
  • suggest by doctype + date yymm segmentation by default

user experience wish-list

• attachment meta-info
  • attachments in the left-pane should have a way to display more info about the file itself
  • full filename, date created/modified, by who, version/revision
  • permissions: editable, read-only/locked, etc.
  • history for a given file, versions, datetime, author, etc
• attachment preview, being able to view an attachment side-by side with the form
  • text in pdf's should be selectable so you can copy invoice-no's and such
  • see reference issue here: https://github.com/frappe/frappe/issues/14720
• tile-view
  • sometimes you end up with lots of associated files to a specific quote or shipping document(s)
  • here it would be nice to show large thumbnails of each file in a grid-view (like a photo app) to allow quicker searching for a specific file associated
• free text search
  • global search for filenames and data inside pdf's
  • I tend to use spotlight on mac quite a bit to search for a quote-number or part-number and usually find the pdf in question immediately on my local drive.
  • I believe this solution would be best done in the web-gui of erpnext, being able to filter and group on doc-type, file-type and such.
  • another option would be to offer a mirror-function, exposing a logical filesystem using a virtual "kfs" mount, exposing something like this (based on user auth rights)

    erpnext-mount/
        Buying / 
            Supplier Quotation / 
                Supplier-XY/
                    Quote-170319-A01.pdf
                    Quote-220730-G14.pdf

[rasos]

We also should have a look at handling of e-mail attachments frappe/frappe#18615

[AlexanderF123]

The full text search should include email and document content, ideally also using OCR to read pictures and PDFs.

[raveslave]

anyone with great in-depth experience developing for erpnext that would be eager to work on this?

[raveslave]

ping, anyone interested?

[raveslave]

checking in!