Using the Folio Document Editor

The Folio Document Editor is the large-format, fully-featured side of Folio’s editor platform — a click-and-drag, rich-formatted, keyboard-shortcut-enabled block editor tuned for structured documentation and workflows. It’s where account plans, close plans, executive summaries, technical write-ups, and other long-lived content get written, all in the context of the Salesforce records they describe.

The editor is divided into six regions:

• 1 Document Header
• 2 Utility Bar
• 3 Left Sidebar
• 4 Outline Pane
• 5 Related & Tags drawer
• 6 Document body
• 7 Footer

This page walks through each of the seven sections so you know exactly how to get the most out of the Folio Document Editor.

The editor experience is identical whether you open a Document from the embedded editor on a Salesforce record page or from Folio Home. The seven regions, the layout, and every action below behave exactly the same. The only thing that changes between the two entry points is what you see in the Left Sidebar — covered in that section below.

1. Document Header

The Document Header runs across the top of the editor and contains:

• Document title — click to rename. Saves with Enter or clicking anywhere outside the title.
• Star button — mark this Document as Starred or Unstarred for yourself. Stars are personal: starring a Document marks it for you only, but anywhere you view it later (Folio Home, an Account page, etc.) it will show as starred. See Browse Folio Home for how starred items surface.
• Open / close sidebar button — toggles the Left Sidebar on and off, giving the editor more horizontal room when you want to focus on the body.

• Save indicator — a Saving… badge appears whenever the Document has edits being saved. It switches to a green cloud icon once changes are successfully saved, signalling it’s safe to exit without losing data.

• Save protector — if you try to close the Document’s expanded view while a save is still in flight, Folio shows a “Saving your Document” spinner until the save is complete, then it exits for you.

2. Utility Bar

The Utility Bar sits in the upper-right corner of the Document Header and groups the per-Document controls in one place. This section will go through each utility in order from left to right.

View mode

A dropdown that toggles between Editing and Viewing mode for the current Document.

• Users with Read access are always in Viewing mode — the Editing option is disabled in the dropdown for them.
• Users with Edit access default to Editing mode. If they switch to Viewing, that preference is remembered: the next time they open the same Document, it loads in the mode they last selected.

What Viewing mode locks down. In Viewing mode the Document body itself is not editable — text, blocks, and Mentions cannot be modified. Live Fields and Related List columns that have Write-Back enabled remain editable, however, as long as the viewing user has permission to edit the underlying Salesforce field on the linked record. Write-Back always respects Salesforce object-, record-, and field-level access — Folio will never grant a user edit access they don’t already have on the source record.

Document information

Hover over the i icon to open the Document information panel. It includes:

• Copy link — a button that copies a deep link to this Document. Opening that link launches Folio Home with the Document in expanded view, ready to read or edit immediately.
• Owner — the user who currently owns the Document.
• Created by — the user who originally created the Document.
• Created date — when the Document was first created.
• Last modified by — the user who most recently edited the Document’s content.
• Last modified date — when the Document’s content was most recently changed. This tracks content changes specifically; non-content changes (such as sharing updates) do not bump this timestamp.
• Template — either Not from template if the Document was created from scratch, or the name of the source Template if the Document was instantiated from one.
• Word and character counters for the Document body, shown at the bottom of the panel.

Wide View

Click the Wide View button to toggle Wide View on or off. Wide View expands the horizontal width of the Document body to fill the full width visible in the window. Disabling Wide View returns the body to a regular Document width — roughly the width of standard printer paper.

Related Records & Tags

Click the linked-circles icon to open the Related Records & Tags popout. The popout is where you add or remove related records and Tags for the current Document. Use the search field to find a record on a Linkable Object or to find/create a Tag, then select to apply.

The search-field results can be selected with the mouse or navigated entirely from the keyboard — use the up and down arrow keys to move through suggestions and Enter to submit. Pressing Enter on a Tag name that doesn’t exist yet immediately creates that Tag and links it to the Document, so users are never limited to the existing Tag list — they can seamlessly create new Tags inline as they go.

Open / exit expanded view

Expanded view is a full-screen overlay of the Document that takes up your whole screen for distraction-free reading and editing — everything else on the Salesforce page is hidden behind it.

Open expanded view. Every Document you click into from Folio Home opens in expanded view automatically — that’s just how Folio Home presents Documents for editing, no button needed.

When you’re working from the embedded editor on a record page, the editor is sized to fit whatever region the admin placed it in (typically a tab on the main content area). That smaller surface is great for in-context editing, but when you want more room, click the Open expanded view button to overlay the same Document at full screen, without leaving the record page.

Close expanded view. Three ways to close — they all do the same thing:

• Click the Exit expanded view button (the same button as Open, with its label flipped).
• Press the Escape key on your keyboard.
• Click anywhere outside the Document, in the gray gutter around the popout.

Where closing returns you depends on where you opened the Document from:

• From Folio Home: closing expanded view closes the Document and returns you to the Folio Home page.
• From a record page: closing expanded view returns you to the record page, with the embedded editor still in view where you left it.

3-dots overflow menu

The 3-dots button at the far right of the Utility Bar opens an overflow menu with the remaining utilities:

1 Transfer ownership — available to the Document Owner and to system admins. Transfer the Document to another user with Folio Docs access. By default the prior owner retains Edit access on the Document after the transfer; they’re no longer the owner, but they can still view and edit it.

2 Sharing — opens the Sharing panel where you can grant Edit or Read Only access to Users and Groups. To share a Document:

1. Open the 3-dots overflow menu → Sharing.
2. Search for a User or a Group.
3. Choose the access level of either Edit or Read Only.
4. Click Share to submit the sharing.

To change the access level of a User or Group, click and drag between the Edit and Read Only sections for Users and Groups respectively. You cannot drag a User into the Group section or vice versa. To remove sharing with a User or Group, hit the X icon in the User or Group’s pill container, and sharing will be revoked immediately. Note you cannot share with the user who is already the Owner, since they get de facto access to the Document by virtue of being its owner.

Group sharing is dynamic. When a Document is shared with a Group, every User who is a member of that Group gets access to the Document at the level configured for the Group — as long as they have the Folio Docs User permission set. Group membership is evaluated continuously: if Users are added to or removed from the Group, their access on Documents shared with that Group updates immediately to match.

Items 3–5 share one new tab. Print, Download PDF, and Save to Files are three distinct actions, but clicking any of them from the 3-dots overflow menu opens the same new browser tab — a Salesforce tab that ships with the Folio package, with three buttons at the top labeled Print, Download PDF, and Save to Files. Whichever button you clicked in the overflow menu auto-triggers its action as soon as the new tab loads. From that page you can also click any of the three buttons manually if you want a different action without going back. When you’re done, click Close on the page (or just close the browser tab) and you’ll be returned to the tab you came from.

3 Print — opens the shared new tab and immediately surfaces your browser’s default Print dialog so you can print the Document. If you cancel or close the Print dialog, you’ll still be on the shared page and can pick a different action from there.

4 Download PDF — opens the shared new tab and immediately downloads the Document as a PDF to your computer. A green success toast appears once the download is complete.

5 Save to Files — opens the shared new tab, turns your Document into a PDF, saves that PDF as a File inside Salesforce, and attaches the File to every Salesforce record this Document is linked to. The page then takes you straight to the new File so you can see it. It’s the same PDF you’d get from Download PDF — just stored inside Salesforce instead of downloaded to your computer.

6 Delete — deletes the Document from Salesforce. To prevent accidental deletions, clicking Delete first shows a confirmation popout asking you to confirm; the Document isn’t actually deleted until you confirm in that popout.

3. Left Sidebar

The Left Sidebar lists Documents in context, and is also where you create new Documents directly from the editor.

Create new from the sidebar

Two buttons at the top of the Left Sidebar create new Documents without leaving the editor:

• New Document — starts a blank Document. Auto-linked to your current parent record context if you’re on a record page; unlinked if you’re in Folio Home (add record links from the Related & Tags drawer or by @-mentioning records inline).
• New from Template — opens the Template picker. See Create Documents from Templates.

Documents shown in the sidebar

The rest of the Left Sidebar is a list of Documents related to your current context. A core design principle of Folio is to always keep Documents at your fingertips, in the context where they belong — that means surfacing not just the Document you opened, but also its siblings: other Documents that should naturally be seen alongside it because they share linked parent records. What you see depends on where you opened the editor.

From a parent Salesforce record (Account, Opportunity, etc.)

The sidebar lists every Document linked to that record — what your team has attached or created from this page.

From the expanded view of a Document opened from Folio Home

When you open a Document from Folio Home, the sidebar shows related Documents that share at least one linked record with the Document you’re viewing — a network-style view.

The Document you initially clicked from Folio Home becomes the anchor Document, and the relationships that pull other Documents into the sidebar all originate from that anchor. For example, if your anchor is linked to both an Opportunity and an Account, the sidebar lists every other Document that shares that Opportunity or Account, giving you the surrounding context without leaving the page.

Sidebar interactions

• Open Document — click any tile to open that Document. The currently viewed Document stays highlighted in the Left Sidebar so you always know which one you’re on. Click between tiles to easily switch between Documents.
• Open / close sidebar button — toggles the Left Sidebar open or closed. See the Document Header section for more on this button.
• Star / Unstar — just like the Star button in the Document Header, you can also star or unstar any Document directly from its tile in the Left Sidebar. Stars are personal and follow you anywhere you view that Document.
• Sorting — when viewing under a parent record, the sidebar is reorderable via drag-and-drop. You can also drag-and-drop between the starred and non-starred sections to update the star setting at the same time.
  • Sort order is saved only in the context where you applied it. Sort under “Account A” and the order is preserved next time you’re on Account A — but it doesn’t carry over to Folio Home or other contexts.
  • You cannot drag-and-drop in the Folio Home expanded view — only when viewing under a parent record.
• 3-dots action menu — opens a small menu on each tile with Rename, Clone, and Delete actions.

4. Outline Pane

The Outline Pane is an automatic table of contents built from the headings in your Document. It updates as you add, rename, or remove headings.

• Jump — click a heading to scroll to that section. Especially helpful in long Documents.
• Active tracking — the outline highlights the section you’re currently viewing as you scroll or edit.

For how to add and style headings in your Document body, see Formatting Documents and Jots.

5. Related & Tags drawer

The Related & Tags drawer is an inline strip that sits just under the Document Header, keeping the Document’s related records and Tags visible in the flow of editing. Expand or collapse the drawer to your preference.

The drawer shows the same Related records and Tags as the Related Records & Tags popout opened from the Utility Bar — they are two views into the same data, and edits made in either location are immediately reflected in the other.

Clicking the Add button on the right-most edge of the drawer opens the Related Records & Tags popout for adding new relationships or Tags.

Visual distinction. In both the drawer and the popout, Related records appear as blue chips and Tags appear as white chips, so you can tell at a glance which is which.

Template-locked items. When a Document is created from a Template, any Related records or Tags that were configured on the Template come over with the new Document and are locked — they can’t be removed from this individual Document. Instead of an × on the chip, you’ll see a small lock icon, indicating the relationship or Tag is enforced by the Template and isn’t deletable here. (Removing it would require editing the Template itself; see Manage Templates.)

Related

The Related section lists every Salesforce record this Document is linked to. From here you can:

• Add a record link — search for any record on a Linkable Object and select it; the link is created immediately.
• Remove a record link — click the × next to any linked record to drop the link.

Record links also appear as inline chips in the Document body whenever you @-mention a record there — see Insert Mentions with @. Whether the link was added inline or from the drawer, both views reflect the same underlying relationships.

Tags

Apply Tags to organize Documents and Jots and make them findable in Folio Home. Tags in Folio are simple — there’s no “org-wide” vs. “personal” distinction. Every Tag works the same way for everyone.

• Apply — type the Tag name. If it doesn’t exist, hit Enter or click the + to create and link it. If it already exists, pick it from the suggestions.
• Multiple Tags are allowed per Document or Jot.
• Remove — click the × next to any Tag chip.

Tags become powerful in Folio Home, where you can view them, search by Tag name, or filter the entire table by one or more Tags.

6. Document body

The body is the main editing surface — a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) block-style editor, meaning the formatting you see while editing is exactly how the Document will look when read, shared, or printed.

The Document Editor and the Jot Editor are built on the same base editor platform and share a common set of formatting capabilities. The Document Editor adds the heavier features built for structured, long-form, Salesforce-aware documentation.

Shared formatting (works the same in Documents and Jots):

• Headings (1, 2, 3)
• Bullet, numbered, and task lists
• Inline formatting — bold, italic, underline, strikethrough
• Links / hyperlinks
• Quote blocks and code blocks
• Slash commands (/) for inserting blocks and formatting
• Markdown syntax that converts on the fly (# , - , **bold**, etc.)
• Keyboard shortcuts for all common formatting
• Highlight any text to open a popout formatting menu inline

For the full formatting reference, see Formatting Documents and Jots and Use Keyboard Shortcuts.

@ mentions (Record Links work in both Jots and Documents; Live Fields and Related Lists are Docs-only):

• Record Links — clickable chips that point to a Salesforce record. Available in both Jots and Documents.
• Live Fields — inline chips that display a current Salesforce field value, with optional write-back. Folio Docs only.
• Related Lists — embedded, filterable Salesforce lists of child records. Folio Docs only.

For full details on the @ menu — how to insert each chip type, chip behavior, and admin configuration — see Insert Mentions with @.

Folio Docs adds (not available in Jots):

• Inline images
• Tables with rich formatting
• Font color and text size options
• Live Fields and Related Lists in the @ menu (above)

7. Footer

At the bottom of the editor are two small buttons:

• Shortcuts — pops up a panel listing every keyboard shortcut available in the editor for quick reference. The shortcuts shown automatically adapt to your operating system, so Mac users see Cmd-based combos and PC users see Ctrl-based combos. See Use Keyboard Shortcuts for the full list.
• ? — opens this Help Center (foliosolutions.net/docs) — the same site you’re reading right now — so users can find documentation without leaving Salesforce.

Related: Using the Jot Editor · Browse Folio Home · Formatting Documents and Jots · Insert Mentions with @ · Use Keyboard Shortcuts · Create Documents from Templates