Document

Documents are very similar to screens regarding documentation. Both artifacts specify the data to be displayed to the user and the visual layout of how that data is presented. Although most documents are read-only, some can also prompt users to enter data (PDF forms, for instance), which makes them even closer to screens.

The core part of the documentation is the displayed data. As mentioned in the document artifact antipatterns, documents themselves do not load data; they must receive it in the form of a data object:

The input data is then used for two different purposes, as shown in the following example:

1. Data values displayed in the document (Recipient.Name on row 1)
2. Data values not displayed in the document but used to evaluate conditions (Payment.Method on row 7)
   • It defines whether certain parts of the document should be visible, handles conditional formatting, and so on.