Patent ID: 7590640

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for managing the flow of documents comprising: applying an attribute to a first business object; assigning to a file containing unstructured content a plurality of document properties comprising a semantic property and at least one of (i) a business process role, (ii) a subset category, (iii) an access policy, and (iv) a document template; associating the file with the first business object, based on the semantic property associated with the file; applying the attribute to a second business object to relate it to the first business object; applying at least one pre-configured attachment flow rule to determine, without user intervention, whether, based on the attribute applied to the first and second business objects and at least one of the plurality of document properties, the file is relevant to the second business object; and associating the file with the second business object if the file is determined to be relevant to the second business object.