Overview
You are uploading offering documents (rent roll, operating statement, financial pro forma, environmental report) while bidders are already in the deal room or queued to enter. The risk on every upload is exposure: a confidential document reaching a bidder before the deal team has reviewed it.
RealNex Vault eliminates that risk by routing every upload through the Internal Workspace first. Files do not appear in the participant-facing folders the moment you upload them. They land in the Internal Workspace, invisible to external participants and client team members, where Broker team admins review, tag, watermark, organize and approve documents before any external eyes see them.
This article covers the Build phase of the RealNex Vault deal room workflow. You load documents, set their access tier and watermark, and approve them through the admin review queue. Approved documents are visible only to the deal team during Build. Once you Publish the deal room, each document becomes visible to participants at or above its configured access tier.
The document publish flow has three parts:
- Upload: drag and drop files into the Upload Documents modal. Set Document Type and (optional) Internal Workspace landing folder per file. Files are staged for admin review.
- Configure: happens during admin review of each staged document. The L7 admin opens the document and sets the Target Published Folder, Access Level, watermark, tags, and any signature placements.
- Approve & Publish: a single click in the Review modal moves the document out of the Internal Workspace and into its target external-facing folder, visible to participants at or above the configured access level.
Prerequisites
- An active deal room in Build or Live mode.
- L7 admin access. Only an L7 admin (Broker Team) can publish files from the Internal Workspace to the participant-facing folders.
- The documents you intend to load. RealNex Vault supports PDF, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and image files. Watermarking applies automatically to PDF, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.
Note: NDA Templates are managed separately under Documents > NDA Templates. They persist across deal rooms and can be selected during the 3-step wizard. See Creating a deal room: the 3-step wizard for the NDA library option.
Understand the Internal Workspace
Every RealNex Vault deal room folder navigation pane is split into two sections. The top section is the Internal Workspace, the staging area for documents before they are published. The bottom section is the Published Folders, named after the deal room, which is the participant-facing folder tree built from your wizard template.
- Broker Team: working files for the broker team. Visible to Broker Team members and L7 admins. Client Team members do not see this folder.
- Client Team: working files for the client team. Visible to Broker Team, L7 admins, and Client Team members.
- Compliance: signed acknowledgements, and audit artifacts. Visible to L7 admins only.
- Participant Submissions: files submitted by participants. Visible to Broker Team and L7 admins; participants only see what they uploaded themselves.
Note: Participants never see anything in the Internal Workspace that they didn’t upload. Anything in this area stays internal until an admin approves and publishes it.
Upload documents
Step 1: Open the Documents tab
From inside the deal room, click the Documents tab. The folder tree appears on the left, with the Internal Workspace sub-folders at the top and the participant-facing folder structure below it.
Step 2: Click Upload
Click the orange Upload button. The Upload Documents modal opens.
Step 3: Add files
Drag and drop files (or whole folders) into the modal or click Choose Files or Choose Folder. The modal supports preserving folder structure if you drag a folder.
Step 4: Set Document Type and landing folder per file
For every file in the Selected Files list, set:
- Document Type: classify the file (e.g., Financial, Legal, Site Plan / Floor Plans). The dropdown lists the available types. This carries forward into admin review and helps streamline organization.
- Folder (L7 admins only): use this field to route a file into the Compliance sub-folder. By default, RealNex Vault routes uploads by uploader. Broker Team uploads land in the Broker Team folder, Client Team uploads land in the Client Team folder. The Folder picker is the override path for admins who need to drop a file directly into Compliance.
The Access Overview reminder on the modal confirms: Documents will be staged for admin approval. Only administrators (level 7) can review them until approved.
Step 5: Review Upload, then Start Upload
Click Review Upload. RealNex Vault shows an Upload Confirmation modal with the file count, landing folder, and total size, plus a final reminder of the staging behavior. Click Start Upload to commit. The files now sit in the Internal Workspace, awaiting admin review.
Admin review and publish
Step 6: Open the staged document from the Internal Workspace
An L7 admin navigates to the Internal Workspace sub-folder where the file landed and clicks the document. The Review staged document modal opens with a preview of the file on the left and the configuration panel on the right.
Step 7: Configure the document for publish
In the Review staged document modal, the L7 admin sets the following fields, working top-down through the configuration panel in the order they appear in the UI:
- Target Published Folder: required. Select the participant-facing folder the file moves to once approved.
- Access Level: auto-populates from the Target Published Folder you select (the destination folder's tier sets the default). Override if needed. Valid values are L0 through L4 external, L5 client, L6 broker, and L7 admin only.
- Document Type: confirm or change the type set during upload.
- Document Name: rename the file before publishing if needed.
- Tags: comma-separated tags for search and filter.
- Watermark published file: on by default. Click the chevron to adjust opacity, color, font size, and rotation per file. Leave on. (
- Signature requests: optional. Place signer fields on the file if it needs countersignature.
Step 8: Approve & Publish (or Reject)
Click Approve & Publish to publish the file. The document moves out of the Internal Workspace and into the Target Published Folder. Participants at or above the access level can now see it.
Click Reject if the file should not be published. The file is removed from the staging queue.
Note: Even when the L7 admin is the same person who uploaded the file, Approve & Publish is a separate deliberate action. This is intentional: nothing reaches participants by accident.
Watermarking
Dynamic watermarking is on by default. Every PDF, Word, Excel, or PowerPoint document a participant opens carries the viewer's name, email, and a document access timestamp. The watermark renders inline when the document is opened in the RealNex Vault viewer and persists when downloaded.
When at step 7, click the chevron next to the Watermark toggle to adjust:
- Opacity: how visible the watermark is on the page.
- Color: the text color used for the watermark overlay.
- Font size: how large the watermark text renders.
- Rotation: the angle of the watermark on the page.
Additional Options
Replacing a document
When a document changes (for example, a new version of the rent roll), use Replace from the action menu instead of deleting and re-uploading. Replace preserves the original file's view history and audit trail, so participants who already opened the old version are still recorded against the document.
Bulk approving documents
If you have uploaded a batch of files at the same access level and destination folder, you can Select multiple rows in the admin review queue and click Approve to publish in one action.
Tips and Best Practices
- Set the access level at approval, not later. The five minutes spent setting access levels at approval save you from re-permissioning every document when a bidder advances stages.
- Stage every document before you publish the room Live. RealNex Vault lets you load every offering material into the Internal Workspace in Build mode. Approve them from the queue once the deal team has reviewed.
- Leave watermarking on. The audit posture watermarking gives you costs nothing and protects every confidential document.
- Use Replace, not Delete-and-re-upload. Replace keeps the audit trail intact. Delete loses it.