M-Files document management in practice: setup, metadata, workflows, integrations, client applications and compliance features.
In my previous article, M-Files AI: From Intelligent Metadata to AI Agents, I explored how AI in Enterprise Content Management has evolved. We have progressed from automatically classifying documents and suggesting metadata, to AI that can understand information, answer questions and reason about business context. Increasingly, it can also perform tasks. This evolution is exciting! Imagine an AI agent that…
In my last blog post, I wrote about the importance of ownership of information. Today, I would like to consider what it means when we decide to start a migration project. We have 2 million documents in our current ECM. We need to migrate them to the new platform. It sounds simple. At least, it does when you put it…
I often see this pattern in organizations. The ECM project was an overall success: the migration is complete, and users are happy with the new solution. But after a year or two, the magic faded. Search results are cluttered with duplicates, metadata is inconsistent, permissions have drifted, and nobody dares to delete anything. Some users have gone back to using…
A user needs a contract in order to respond to a customer. They open the ECM, search for it, but can’t find it. The contract exists, but they don’t have access to it. They therefore send a message to a colleague, who finds the contract, downloads it, and sends it as an email attachment. The permission model has done exactly…
When discussions about implementing an ECM system begin, a lot of the talk is about documents. However, there is another crucial consideration: Is everything we need a document? Or should it be something else? In a traditional document management mindset, we tend to think about everything as a file. But the file is often just one representation of something that…
For years, the primary role of artificial intelligence in enterprise content management (ECM) has been to analyse documents. This involved extracting information, classifying documents, suggesting properties, and identifying similar content or patterns. To be honest, that was already quite useful. For years, M-Files has offered capabilities such as Text Analytics, Matcher, Smart Metadata, and Smart Classifier. These intelligent services analyze…
In many people’s minds, an Enterprise Content Management System (ECM) is just a shared folder on steroids: enhanced security, lifecycle tracking, and more efficient search capabilities. This is broadly true and can encourage user adoption by explaining what obscure acronyms like DMS, ECM, and IMS mean. However, this definition is too restrictive. A good ECM can do much more and…
Recently, I decided to conduct an initial test involving a review in one of our test environments. The aim was twofold: to explore the new features and to verify the update process. You can read about my experience and the outcome in this blog post. In week 29 of 2026, M-Files released a new version of its widely known and…
When organizations evaluate an Enterprise Content Management (ECM) solution, the conversation usually revolves around Artificial Intelligence, workflow automation, and integrations. Yet the feature employees use more than any other is rarely the one showcased in demonstrations or marketing brochures: search. The reality is simple. Most users don’t spend their days creating workflows or configuring metadata. They spend it looking for…
Over the past few weeks, I’ve addressed philosophical questions related to enterprise content management (ECM), such as “What should be done?” and “Why?” Now, it’s time to focus on the “how.” When discussing user adoption of M-Files, the conversation often centers on training, change management, and automation. While these aspects are important, another factor immediately impacts the user experience: the…
In this blog post, I will outline the steps required to enable and configure the M-Files Outlook Pro add-in. This includes configuring Microsoft Outlook rules to automate email handling. It took me some time to configure the rules, as they were not working as I expected. I hope this blog helps others save time. Installation The installation is very straight…
After several posts of theory, it’s time to build something. In this post, I will walk you through a Visual Designer tutorial to create a complete Contracts dashboard on the M-Files Sample Vault. Therefore, no JSON editing is required at all. The Visual Designer is the primary authoring path for most administrators. Power users who prefer hand-editing JSON can write…
