Documents can hold more than uploaded files. Articles, Events, Retrospectives, and Whiteboards can appear in the same library, close to the folders and space areas where people expect to find them. These entries are app files: selecting one opens the Visual Space experience that owns the content rather than treating it as a generic download.
Publishing an upload uses a related but importantly different path. The uploaded file and the article-style document created from it remain separate library items. Each can be opened, moved, edited, or removed through its own lifecycle without silently changing the other.
Choose The Kind Of Document You Need
Start with the result you want people to use. Upload an existing file when preserving and sharing the original asset matters. Create an app file when the work should begin in a Visual Space editing experience and later become a published document.
The New menu currently offers these app-file choices:
The menu can present a common starting point, but each feature still applies its own eligibility checks. If your role or the space's access does not include the selected experience, Visual Space stops the creation flow rather than creating an inaccessible draft.
Goals are created and managed in Goals, so they are not a current Documents creation choice. They may connect with document-backed content elsewhere, but they do not appear alongside Article, Event, Retrospectives, and Whiteboard in this menu.
The menu starts app-file drafts in the current Documents location, while existing app files remain visible beside ordinary folders.
Placement Starts With Your Current Location
Open the destination before creating anything. A new app file is placed in the space, subspace, activity, or folder currently open in Documents. If you are browsing a nested folder, the draft begins there; if you are at an activity's Documents root, it begins in that activity.
This matters for both discovery and access. The draft keeps the space-area context of its location, and the published result remains available only to people who can access that area. Creating another folder does not create a separate audience, because folders inherit the access rules of their owning space, subspace, or activity. The Documents Library and Folders explains that relationship in detail.
An archived activity is different. It remains available for reading where access allows, but it cannot be used as a route around its read-only state. Inside an archived activity, users cannot:
Move to an active activity or ask an eligible coordinator about the intended location before beginning new work.
Drafts Stay With Their Authors
New articles and app files begin as drafts. Documents adds the result to the current library view immediately and marks it as a draft, so the author can distinguish unfinished work from published content.
A draft is visible to its author, not to other users browsing the same Documents location. The area's normal access rules still apply, but membership in the area does not make someone else's unpublished draft visible. This gives an author room to prepare the title, content, timing, or app-specific work before releasing it.
Selecting the draft resumes the experience appropriate to it. An article-style draft opens the publishing editor instead of the public reading page. A linked Retrospective or Whiteboard opens its dedicated workspace, where the author can continue the work in context. Event drafts continue through the connected editing and publishing experience. Once published, a regular article-style entry opens in its reading view rather than returning readers to the draft flow.
Draft visibility is also why unpublished entries are not eligible for public curation. A draft must first become a published document before it can be treated like normally visible content elsewhere in the space.
Publish An Upload Without Replacing It
An uploaded PDF, image, video, or other supported file is a stored asset. It may already be useful as a previewable or downloadable item, but sometimes it needs an introduction, explanation, or published presence that a raw file card cannot provide. Choosing Publish begins that second layer.
The flow creates an article-style draft using the source file as its topic, adds the draft to Documents, and opens the Publish Document editor. The original upload remains where it was. This gives the author two distinct items to work with:
Visual Space does not promise to convert the complete contents of an uploaded office file into a polished article body. Complex formatting, tables, and embedded media often need deliberate editing. Treat the draft as a place to present the file well, not as an automatic replacement for the source.
After publication, both items may remain visible beside each other. That is expected, not an accidental duplicate. Moving or deleting the original file does not silently move or delete the published document, and editing the published document does not rewrite the upload. If you want to reorganize them, make that choice explicitly for each item.
For the complete creation and verification journey, use Create and Publish from Documents. Files and Previews explains what remains available from the original file card.
What Publication Changes
Publishing ends the author-only draft state. The document becomes normally listable and openable for people who can access its space area. Publication does not override a private area's membership rules, so a link to the document still cannot grant entry to someone outside that audience.
Published document-backed content can also carry reactions across the places where it appears. Readers can see emoji and reaction counts, inspect who reacted when that information is available to them, and add or remove their own reaction when their access permits it. Those reactions stay associated with the published content rather than with a separate copy in each view.
The published item can participate in other eligible space workflows, while the raw upload continues to serve as the original asset. For ways to share a document, save it for later, or understand published curation, continue with Sharing and Revisiting Documents.
Common Questions
Is an app file the same as an uploaded file?
No. An uploaded file preserves an asset from your device or another supported source. An app file belongs to a Visual Space experience such as Articles, Events, Retrospectives, or Whiteboards and opens in the interface suited to that content.
Why can I see my draft when another member cannot?
Drafts are author-only until publication. Other members may have access to the same folder or activity without being able to browse your unfinished document.
Where will a new app file appear?
It is created in the Documents location you currently have open, including the current folder when you are browsing one. Check the destination before choosing New.
Why can I start an Article but not an Event or Retrospective?
Article drafts are available to signed-in users. Events and Retrospectives require coordinator eligibility, and Whiteboard creation depends on the space's Whiteboard access.
Can I create a Goal from Documents?
No. The current app-file menu does not include Goals. Create and manage them in Goals.
What happens to the original file when I choose Publish?
It stays in Documents as a separate file. Visual Space creates a new article-style draft and opens the publishing editor; it does not replace or automatically convert the original upload.
Why do I see both the upload and a published document?
They have different purposes and lifecycles. The upload is the source asset, while the published document presents it through an article-style experience. Organize or remove each one separately.
Can I publish from an archived activity?
No. Archived activities are read-only for this workflow. App-file creation, uploads, folder creation, and publishing are unavailable there.
Who can open a published document?
People who can access the space, subspace, or activity that owns its Documents location. Publication makes the item normally visible within that boundary; it does not bypass private-area access.