As a Deltek Vision client, you may have heard the terms FILESTREAM and TDM thrown around and may be wondering what they are. To clarify, FILESTREAM and TDM are two different things but work hand in hand to provide the desired functionality in Vision.
FILESTREAM is a SQL technology introduced in SQL Server 2008 to facilitate the storing and management of unstructured or Binary Large Object (BLOB) data (image files, word documents, pdf documents, etc.), and ensures transactional consistency between the unstructured data stored in the network file system and the structured data stored in the tables.
Transactional Document Management is a Deltek Vision feature that facilitates the uploading of supporting documents (Expense Receipts, Vendor and Sub-Consultant invoices, etc.) and the ability to attach those supporting documents to transactions within Vision. With supporting documents uploaded to Vision it also gives the ability to easily review and print those supporting documents automatically when processing expenses or invoices. You can also attach several supporting documents to a single transaction or a single supporting document to multiple transactions for more flexibility.
The basics of getting TDM enabled in your Vision database are as follows and take about an hour to setup:
- Enable FILESTREAM on the Vision SQL Server
- Create the Vision FILES database to store the uploaded documents (the database must be named exactly the same as your Vision database with an uppercase FILES as the suffix - see screenshot below).
- Enable the FILESTREAM functionality for Vision in Weblink
- Start using TDM inside Vision
