Uploading and Organising Documents in the Intranet

A well-organised Intranet is the difference between a document library people actually use and a digital filing cabinet they avoid. By following a clear structure for uploading and organising documents, you make important information easy to find, easy to maintain, and easy to govern.

Who this is for: Administrators and Intranet Authors with publishing rights

Read time: 6 minutes

Why structure matters

The Intranet is often where employees go for the operational knowledge they need to do their jobs — policies, procedures, forms, site-specific information, and templates. If documents are hard to find, employees stop looking and start asking, which puts unnecessary load on managers and HR.

A clear structure delivers four things:

Findability — employees can locate documents in seconds, not minutes.
Maintainability — you and other administrators can update content without guessing what lives where.
Governance — versioning, audience scoping, and acknowledgement are easier to manage.
Trust — employees believe what they find is current and authoritative.

Prerequisites

You must be a member of a User Group with content rights in the Intranet. See Managing Intranet Audiences and Permissions.
The Intranet module must be enabled for your organisation.
You should have a clear idea of where the document belongs before you upload.

Planning your folder structure

Before uploading anything, take 10 minutes to plan or review your folder structure. A good Intranet structure is:

Shallow rather than deep. Aim for documents to be no more than three clicks from the Intranet home. Deeply nested folders are where content goes to be forgotten.
Organised by how people search, not how the organisation is structured. Employees look for "Annual Leave Policy", not "HR Department / Policies / Leave / Annual". Group by topic, not by team.
Consistent. Use the same naming conventions across folders. Mixing Policies, Policy Documents, and HR Policies in different places confuses users.
Audience-aware. If a folder is site-specific, name it that way. If it's organisation-wide, make that obvious too.

A starting structure that works for most organisations

Policies & Procedures — Workplace Health & Safety, HR, IT, Finance
Forms & Templates
Training & Development
Company News & Updates
Site Information (one subfolder per site)
Department Resources (one subfolder per function)
Compliance & Legal

Use this as a starting point, not a mandate. Adapt to how your business actually works.

How to upload a document

Step 1 — Navigate to the right folder

From the Prosper main menu, open the Intranet.
Browse to the folder where the document belongs.

Step 2 — Upload the document

Select Upload from the toolbar.
Drag and drop the file into the upload area, or browse to select it.
Wait for the upload to complete.

Step 3 — Configure acknowledgement (if required)

If the document requires formal acknowledgement (for example, a policy update), enable acknowledgement and configure the audience, statement, and due date. See Intranet and Document Acknowledgement for the full process.

Step 4 — Publish

It's now live and visible to its audience.

Document naming conventions

Consistent naming makes documents findable and signals professionalism. A few principles:

Lead with the topic. Annual Leave Policy beats Policy — Annual Leave for sorting and scanning.
Include the document type only when useful. Manual Handling Procedure is clearer than just Manual Handling.
Avoid internal jargon. Use the term employees would search for.
Include versioning where it matters. WHS Policy v3 — Effective 1 March 2026. Don't version every document — only the ones where the version genuinely matters for compliance or operations.
Be consistent within a folder. Pick one approach and apply it across similar documents.

Examples

✅ Manual Handling Procedure
✅ Annual Leave Policy v2 — Effective 1 July 2026
✅ New Starter Checklist
❌ policy_final_FINAL_v2.pdf
❌ Untitled Document (3)
❌ Jane's draft — Don't share

Organising documents into folders

Creating a new folder

Navigate to where the folder should live.
Select New Folder from the toolbar.
Name the folder using a clear, topic-led convention.
Configure the folder's audience and any default permissions.

Moving documents between folders

Locate the document.
Under Actions, select Move.
Choose the destination folder and confirm.

Moved documents retain their acknowledgement history, version history, and audience configuration.

Managing audiences and visibility

Every document and folder has an audience — the set of users who can see it. Audiences are typically defined by:

All employees
By Team
By Location
By Position
Custom list

A few principles:

Default to open. Most documents should be visible to all employees. Restrict only when there's a specific reason.
Folder audience cascades. If a folder is restricted to one site, documents in that folder are scoped by default. You can broaden a specific document if needed.

Document versioning

When you update a document, you have two options:

Option 1 — Upload as a new version

Replaces the file in place. Use this for minor updates that don't change the substance of the document.

Open the document.
Select Upload New Version.
Add a brief version note describing what changed.
Save.

Option 2 — Upload as a new document

Creates a separate document with its own history. The previous version remains accessible. Use this for significant policy changes, particularly where you need a clear audit trail.

For documents requiring acknowledgement, see Intranet and Document Acknowledgement for guidance on when to require re-acknowledgement.

Tips and best practices

Build for search. Most employees will search for what they need rather than browse. Strong titles pay off every day.
Schedule a quarterly review. Walk through your most-used folders every quarter to archive outdated content and update anything that's drifted.
Lean on PDFs for policy. PDFs are harder to edit accidentally and render consistently across devices — well-suited to compliance documents.
Keep templates separate from finished documents. A Forms & Templates folder prevents employees from confusing the template with the live document.
Don't let folders sprawl. If a folder has more than 30 documents, consider whether it should be split into subfolders by topic.

Troubleshooting

I can't see the Upload Document button.
You don't have content rights in this folder. Check your User Group memberships in People & Skills Finder, or ask an administrator to add you to a group with the right permissions.

The upload fails or times out.
Most uploads fail because the file is too large or in an unsupported format. Try converting unusual formats to PDF before uploading.

A document shows the wrong version.
Refresh the browser. If the issue persists, open the document's version history and confirm the latest version is set up.

Can I restore a deleted document?
Deleted documents are recoverable in the Trashed folder within a short retention window.

Can I upload multiple documents at once?
Yes — drag multiple files into the upload area. Each will be uploaded with default details, which you can edit afterwards.

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