How do I assemble a technical dossier?¶
Audience: quality managers and regulatory affairs — anyone who has to hand a notified body, an auditor or a customer "the technical file for device X".
An auditor does not receive your database. They receive a curated, version-pinned, regulatory structured set of documents. LQMS calls that a technical dossier: you pick a regulatory skeleton, pin the exact document versions that fill each of its slots, and then issue it — which freezes the whole thing as a baseline you can export and hand over.
1. Dossier or audit pack? — they answer different questions¶
Both live in this system and they are deliberately not the same thing:
| Scope audit pack | Technical dossier | |
|---|---|---|
| Question it answers | "What is in this project right now?" | "What is the technical file for device X?" |
| Contents | every effective released document you can see | only the versions you chose |
| Structure | the folder tree | a regulatory skeleton (MDR Annex II, IEC 62304 …) |
| Versions | always the currently effective one | the exact versions pinned at curation time |
| Point in time | now, every time you export | frozen at the moment you issued it |
The audit pack is nearly free and it is the right answer for "show me your QMS". It cannot be the answer for a technical file, because a technical file is a claim: these versions, arranged under these clauses, as of this date. See PDF exports & the audit pack for the pack itself.
And a folder is neither. You may well keep a folder that gathers a device's documents — that is authoring organisation, and it is useful. It is not a dossier: it has no clause structure, it has no pinned versions, and it is never frozen. Nothing in the folder tree ever becomes a technical file.
2. Where it is¶
Dossiers is a top-level entry in the toolbar navigation (inside the more menu at narrow widths). Any member of a project can open it and read its dossiers — a dossier is content in its project. Creating and curating one needs the manage dossiers permission there; exporting an issued one needs nothing beyond being able to read it.
The page reads the project context from the toolbar, like every other per-project view. With All projects selected it shows a project picker rather than a merged list, because a dossier belongs to exactly one project (even though its pins may reach into others — §5).
3. Starting one: the skeleton is the consequential choice¶
New dossier asks for two things, and the first one matters far more than the second.
A skeleton is a fixed template of slots — a heading, the clause it answers, a hint at what fills it, and whether the clause treats it as mandatory. Three ship today:
- MDR Annex II — the technical documentation a legal manufacturer assembles: six slots (device description, information supplied, design and manufacturing, general safety and performance requirements, benefit-risk and risk management, verification and validation), all mandatory, because Annex II names each of them for every device.
- IEC 62304 software file — the software lifecycle by clause, which is the supplier's file rather than the manufacturer's. Every lifecycle slot is mandatory except detailed design (§5.4), which 62304 requires for Class C only.
- Custom — no slots at all. You build the structure yourself, section by section.
The dialog previews the chosen skeleton by its slots, and that is on purpose: the slots are copied into your dossier at creation, and from that moment the dossier is self-contained. A later change to the catalog can never reach into it — least of all into an issued one. So this is the last cheap moment to choose, and you choose having seen the structure you are committing to.
Name it after what it is the technical file for — typically the device or product.
Only these three skeletons exist today, and they are house-authored rather than configurable. If you need a fourth (an IMDRF submission table of contents, say), that is a decision to take deliberately, not a field to fill in.
4. Curating: pinning versions into slots¶
Each section shows its clause reference, its heading, its filled by hint, whether it is mandatory, an optional note, and the versions pinned into it.
Pin a released version is the core act, and it is a two-step choice on purpose:
- Find the document — a search across everything you are allowed to see, in any project.
- Confirm the version. The newest released version is filled in for you — that is nearly always the one you want — but it is filled in visibly, in a dropdown you can change, and nothing is pinned until you press Pin version. There is deliberately no "latest" option that would follow the document forward: an issued file must name the exact evidence it was built on, and "latest" is not evidence, it is a moving target. So the pin records a version you saw and confirmed, never a standing reference.
Only released, undisposed versions are offered. A working copy is not evidence; a version whose content has been disposed has had its content severed and can no longer be rendered into the deliverable. If a document has no such version, the picker says so by name rather than showing you an empty dropdown.
You can also add, edit, reorder and remove sections — a custom dossier is built entirely this
way, and even a skeleton-based one may need a slot the template did not anticipate. Removing a
section removes its pins with it; the documents themselves are untouched.
Adding many documents at once¶
A clause is often answered by a dozen files, and pinning them one at a time is the tedious part. Beside Pin a released version, each slot offers Add released documents…: a checklist of every released, undisposed document in the project — id, version, title, category, effective date — that you tick and add in one act.
What it removes is the clicking. What it deliberately does not do is decide where anything goes: the destination slot is the first control in the view, it is the slot you opened it from, and it never guesses. The system cannot know which clause a document answers — nothing in the model says so — and a tool that guessed placement into a regulatory submission would be confidently wrong in exactly the cases that matter. So it helps you collect; you do the placing.
Each tick pins that document's newest released version, and the row names the version it will pin, so a bulk act is still a named-version act. Need a different version of one document? That is what the single Pin a released version picker is for, and it is still there.
The note is where "not applicable" lives¶
Every section takes a free-text note, and it earns its place. A technical file is read by someone who was not in the room, and the two things they most need are "why is this slot empty" and "why does this evidence answer that clause". The classic "not applicable because…" belongs here — and it survives into the issued baseline and into the export, because it is part of the file.
5. Pins can cross projects — and what a reader sees when they may not¶
A dossier's pins may point at documents in other projects. That is the motivating case, not an edge case: a device project's documents are governed by the QMS project's procedures, and the technical file has to carry both.
Two rules follow, and the screen shows both:
- You pin only what you can see. The search offers what you may already read, and the server enforces it again on the act. There is no way to pin your way to a document you have no access to.
- A reader who cannot see a pinned document still sees the pin. It renders named but inert: the document id and version number the dossier itself recorded, marked "not visible to you", with no title and no further detail. Never a silent omission — an issued baseline that quietly shrinks for some readers is not a baseline — and never a leak.
An inert pin carries no "up to date" or "out of date" verdict either way. From where that reader stands, the answer is genuinely unknowable, and the system does not guess.
6. Two advisory signals: unfilled slots and superseded pins¶
Two numbers follow a dossier around — on the list, on the page, and inside the issue confirmation:
- Unfilled mandatory slots — mandatory sections with no pin.
- Superseded pins — a pinned document has released a newer version since it was pinned. The pin still names the version you chose; the flag tells you the world moved. It is computed fresh on every read, never stored, so it can never be stale.
Neither of them blocks anything. They are the same kind of advisory evaluator as a coverage rule: they inform, they do not gate. That is deliberate — an Annex II slot may genuinely not apply to your device, and pinning an earlier version can be entirely correct when that is the version the file is about. What the system insists on is that you decide these things knowingly, which is why both numbers are put in front of you at the moment you issue (§7) and why the note exists (§4).
7. Issuing: what freezes, and the one thing that refuses¶
Issue… opens a confirmation that states the consequences plainly:
- the sections, notes and pins can no longer be changed;
- the pinned versions become the baseline this technical file claims;
- advancing it later means creating a new draft from it and issuing that as the next version (§11), never editing this one.
The dialog also lists the gaps by name — each unfilled mandatory slot, and the count of superseded pins — and then lets you proceed anyway. Showing them at the moment of the irreversible act is what turns an incomplete issue into a visible decision instead of an accident.
Exactly one thing refuses: a dossier that pins nothing. An empty baseline claims nothing and would export to an empty file, so the confirm button is disabled and says so. Everything else is yours to judge.
8. The issued baseline, and its two exports¶
An issued dossier is read-only. It carries the issue stamp — who issued it and when — and its curation controls are gone rather than greyed out, because on this object they can never come back. Its notes and structure stay exactly as they were.
This is the only state in which both exports are live, and there are two — the same pair as the audit pack:
- Merged PDF — the reviewer's copy: a cover, a table of contents, and every pinned version in one navigable file. Its internal links work in every PDF viewer, which is why it leads.
- Evidence zip — one PDF per pinned version plus a SHA-256 manifest, the verifiable bundle. As with the audit pack, cross-file links between the PDFs resolve only in Acrobat-class viewers, so keep the files together in one folder — or hand over the merged PDF for reading.
Both render through the same PDF path as every other document export, with the same identity header, the same uncontrolled copy band and the same audit event (see PDF exports & the audit pack). A pin nobody could see stays named but inert in both bundles too — listed, never dropped, never disclosed.
For an issued dossier these downloads are no longer rendered on demand: they are the stored file written when you issued it (§9) — unless your own access is narrower than the issuer's, in which case you get a marked copy instead (§10).
Exporting a draft, and why it is not the record¶
A draft exports too — but only the merged PDF, and it comes out stamped with a large diagonal
DRAFT watermark, with _draft in its file name. It exists so you can read the assembly the way a
reviewer will before you freeze it: unfilled slots, superseded pins and all, rendered honestly.
The watermark is the whole safety, and the rule is worth learning as one sentence: a watermark means this is not the record. A draft export is regenerated on the fly every time you ask for it, carries no hash, and is an uncontrolled reading aid. The issued baseline is the opposite of each of those. The page says so in words beside the button, so a file you send on can never quietly become someone's evidence.
The evidence zip does not widen to drafts, and the button says why: its SHA-256 manifest is a verifiable claim about specific bytes, which is only truthful over a frozen baseline.
9. The artifact of record: which bytes are the dossier¶
An issued dossier is not just a state — it is a file. At the moment you issue, the merged PDF and the evidence zip are rendered once, stored, and their SHA-256 is recorded on the dossier. Those bytes are the artifact of record, and their hash is the issued dossier's identity.
The page states it, quietly, under the frozen note:
Artifact of record — SHA-256
c4f9a1d70b23…· rendered 25.07.2026, 14:20
Details opens the full 64-character hash of both files, selectable so you can paste it into a submission cover letter or a hand-over record.
What that buys you is the property a regulatory submission actually needs: every download of that issued dossier returns exactly the same bytes, with exactly the same hash, forever — independent of any later change to the renderer, the fonts, or a dependency. You can point at the file you handed over on a given date, and anyone can verify they hold the same one. Before this, each download was a fresh render carrying a fresh "generated at" stamp, so the same dossier hashed differently every time — reproducible in content, but never the same file.
Two honest details:
- A dossier issued before this rule existed has no stored file yet. The page says so: "the first download creates it, and it is fixed from then on." For those dossiers only, the artifact of record is what the first downloader rendered, not what was handed out on the issue date — and the rendered timestamp says which, rather than disguising it.
- The trail records it separately.
Technical dossier issuedsays when the baseline was frozen;Dossier artifact of record storedsays which bytes are the record. Two questions, two entries — which is also the only way the late backfill above can be recorded truthfully.
10. Who receives the record, and who receives a marked copy¶
A dossier's pins may reach into other projects (§5). The person who issued it could read all of them — that is why they could pin them — so the stored file contains content from those projects. Handing those bytes to every reader of the dossier's own project would hand them documents they have no access to. Project separation wins that argument, always.
So the download you get depends on your own reach, and the page tells you which one it will be, beside the export buttons:
- You can see every pinned version → "You receive the artifact of record." You get the stored file: the exact bytes, the hash shown above, byte-identical every time.
- You cannot → "You receive a marked partial copy — N pinned versions are outside your access."
You get a copy rendered fresh under your own access: every pin is still named — nothing is
silently dropped — but only the ones you can reach are reproduced, and the file is stamped
PARTIAL COPY on every page, carries a cover notice, has
_partialin its name and today's date.
This is the rule worth carrying out of this page, and it is the same one the draft watermark states:
A watermark means this is not the record. An unmarked issued PDF is the one file whose SHA-256 is that dossier's identity.
DRAFTandPARTIAL COPYboth mean: useful, honest, and not it.
The count on the details row ("not reproduced") is a different number and is labelled as one: it is what the issuer could not reach, a fixed property of the stored file. What you receive is decided by your reach, which is why the two are never shown as the same fact.
11. Advancing an issued dossier: create a new draft from it¶
An issued dossier can never be edited and can never be deleted — it is a record. What it can do is be continued. Create a new draft from this copies its sections, notes and pins into a fresh draft you then work on normally.
The dialog asks one thing — the name — and tells you live what that choice means:
- Leave the name as it is (the default) → the new draft becomes the next version of this
dossier: same name,
version + 1. This is the "updated submission of the same deliverable" path, and it is what you want for a re-submission of the same device's file. - Type a different name → a new dossier at version 1, same structure and same pins. The "start one like this" path, for a sibling deliverable.
Three things are worth knowing before you press it:
- The source is untouched — including its stored file. That is the whole point: the previous issue stays a precise copy of what was delivered, and you end up with a lineage of issued records rather than a rewritten one.
- The pins are copied exactly as they stand, including the ones that have since been superseded. That is deliberate, not sloppiness: the new draft flags them immediately (§6), and re-pointing them is your decision. Whether a newer version is the one this submission should cite is a regulatory question, and the system does not answer regulatory questions on your behalf.
- This is also how you correct a mistaken issue. You cannot delete it. You create a new draft from it, fix what was wrong, and issue that as the next version. The erroneous issue stays in the trail, superseded — because erasing a record is itself an integrity failure.
The act needs manage dossiers in the project, and it is offered on issued dossiers, which is where it means something. On a draft you simply edit, and New dossier is the way to start another one from a skeleton.
12. What this deliberately does not do yet¶
- No item-level pins. A pin is a document version. Requirement- and risk-level trace lives in the traceability workspace, which is where that question is answered properly; the deliverable a notified body receives is document-level.
- No cross-project roll-up. Every dossier belongs to one project, which keeps the access boundary a real one.
- No governed disposal of an issued dossier. "Cannot be deleted" is today's rule and it is absolute. Retention-driven disposal — a retention period, a legal hold, an audited act — is the only route by which a record ever leaves the system, and it is deferred until dossier retention is a real need rather than a hypothetical one.
Governing decisions: ADR-0083 (the TD dossier — pins are document versions, the shipped skeletons, both export shapes, the live superseded flag, coverage-style completeness, and the cross-scope disclosure rule), ADR-0104 (the issued dossier is a persisted artifact of record: rendered once at issue, served verbatim, never deletable — plus clone-to-draft, and the amendment's partial-copy rule for a reader who cannot reach every pin), ADR-0074 (the single PDF render path every export goes through, and the named-but-inert treatment of a reference that does not resolve), ADR-0021 (version-precise references and "you pin only what you can see"), ADR-0049 (coverage rules inform rather than block), ADR-0042 (disposal — why a disposed version cannot be pinned), ADR-0075 (version continuity, the basis of the clone act's lineage), ADR-0092 (the content store the artifacts live in, and the governed-disposal path that stays deferred). Regulatory frame: EU MDR Annex II (technical documentation), IEC 62304 §5 (software development process), ISO 13485 §4.2.4 (control of documents).