The site may be navigated using the navigation tree, the My Workspace tool, searching, using the Recent Items portlet, or using the links in the Entities or Documents tabs in Areas, Entities, or Sections.

Usually users can use any means to navigate the site, but where there are large volumes of content, there will be times when some means and not others are appropriate.

Most sites would generally have a small number of Areas, Sections and Engagements within their respective containers. The significant volume issue is usually the potential number of Entities within an Area. In this case there may be hundreds or thousands.

At all levels, other than levels containing large numbers of Entities, the navigation tree is useful to navigate. The Navigation tree is also necessary to demonstrate to users the tree structure of the site, on which the security model is based. Therefore, the OpenEngagement DMS, at all times, shows the complete navigation tree, going to the document level (assuming the Navigation Settings have their default values).

When looking for, say, an Engagement, within an Area, Entity, and Section, the navigation tree may not always be useful to find the Engagement. For example, if the user is currently located on an Area, and wishes to go to an Engagement, and this Engagement is in a Section, which is within a Entity, which is within the Area, and if the Area contains 5,000 Entities, which each contain four Sections, it would be difficult to use the navigation tree to navigate down the tree to the desired Engagement. This would require scrolling through up to 5,000 Entities in the Area to get to the relevant Entity.

However, the navigation tree will always be useful to show where in the tree (i.e., in the site) the user currently is. For users with very few permissions, this may be irrelevant (e.g., they can only prepare a few engagements, all of which are deep in the tree, and it is not relevant to them where in the overall site organization these Engagements are), but since it's impossible to programmatically determine who will wish to see the navigation tree and who will not, the OpenEngagement DMS shows the navigation tree for everyone at all times. The breadcrumbs have a similar purpose and limitations, but may be optionally disabled in the OpenEngagement configuration. This will disable the breadcrumbs, until they are re-enabled, site-wide for all users.

When a user navigates to an Area which has, say, 5,000 Entities, the navigation tree will show where the user currently is, but won't help them find the Entity they are looking for. To do this, the user is better to use either the OpenEngagement DMS's searching functionality, the My Workspace tool, the Area's Entities tab, or to select the Documents tab for the Area, and apply a filter to the contents displayed on the View tab of the Area. Using the filter, possibly in combination with the tables' sort functionality, may be a very practical method to navigate to the desired Engagement.

Where sites do not have large volumes of content at any level, navigating entirely using the navigation tree may be perfectly satisfactory. In this case the other means of navigation may be convenient, but are not necessary.

Future releases of the DMS will also allow users to define favorites, so they can mark certain Documents in a favorites list they maintain. In the meantime, it is possible to bookmark Documents or other objects within the DMS using a web browser's bookmarks. 

The My Workspace tool shows all Engagements where the current user has the Site Manager, Engagement Manager, Reviewer, Preparer or Reader role. For most users, this is a convenient page where they may quickly see all the Engagements which they should be working on. It will only list Engagements which contain CaseWare client files, as it is assumed that work on these files is the main task which must be scheduled by staff.

The My Workspace page will filter Engagements based on their state. For example, if a user has the Preparer role on an Engagement, and it is in the Completed state, the Preparer role does give the user any permissions on the Engagement, and the Engagement is no longer relevant to the user. Therefore, it will not be shown. Similarly, where a user has the Reviewer role on a given Engagement and they have marked the Engagement as accepted, they will not see the Engagement listed in the My Workspace page. In this case, the Engagement may still be in the Review state, but it is considered to no longer be a Engagement the current user needs to work on.

The Entities tab will appear for Area and sometimes for Entities. It will appear for Entities when that Entity has sub-Entities.

The Entities tab may be used to navigate to a given Entity, possibly by an Entity Manager who wishes to navigate specifically to that Entity, or by a Preparer or Reviewer who wishes to navigate to a Document within the Entity.

The Entities tab would generally be used when there are a very large number of Entities within an Area and it is not practical to use the navigation tree.

The navigation portlet will usually be the main tool to navigate the DMS, though there are several other means to navigate. The navigation portlet covers the entire site, including all DMS and KMS Areas.

The navigation portlet lists the items within the root in the order in which they are defined in the root's Contents tabs. That is, users may navigate to the Contents tab for the root and may change the order of the items, and this will control the order they are shown in the Navigation portlet. There is no other reason to change the order of these items, though.

The items within Areas, Entities and Sections are listed in the navigation portlet ordered first by type, then alphabetically by title. The types should be in the order: Area, Entity, Section, Engagement, File, Image, Page, Link.

The navigation portlet will not appear if the site has no DMS Areas or KMS Areas. Normally this will not occur and user will not see this.

The navigation portlet will always show all DMS Areas, Entities, and Sections. In some cases where there is a very large amount of content, the navigation portlet may be impractical to use, but no logged-in users will be restricted from using it to navigate to any given Document because of permissions. It is only with Documents (and some KMS content) that each user may or may not be able to view the item in question.