A document is a carrier of information. This information is either for the user/person responsible or for exchanging between systems. A document contains information that can be stored and it can take many different forms (such as technical drawings, graphics, programs, or text). When complete, this information gives a full description of an object.

We use the term document info record to refer to the master record in the R/3 System that stores all the business information for a document. While the document info record contains the metadata for a document (such as the storage location), the original file (for example, the design drawing) contains the actual information in the document.

The document info record contains the following information:

• Data that is descriptive in character (for example, laboratory)
• Data with a control function (for example, document status)
• Original application file data (for example, processing application or storage location)
• Data that the system automatically copies (for example, CAD indicator)

Documents are identified in the R/3 System using the document key fields: