Add documents to library or assign them to items?

Question

We have a checklist for projects, this list is represented as a project tasklist so we can track to progress.

At the moment we add documents to a document library on the same page, but this way they are not directly associated with the checklist.

Another way to do it would be to add the documents to the list items, but there are no document management system features like versioning available then.

Which way do you prefer? Is there some best practice for this? Any (simple) way to associate the files in the library with the list items (Maybe add a dropdown list with the items of the tasklist to the upload document form and view the associated files in a new column at the project tasklist somehow)?

Answer 1

Best practice wise, I would manually create a lookup field to your project task list (pointing the task id and displaying the task title). On your document library, you could add that field (mandatory if it's sole purpose is to store project task documents) so that whenever someone upload a document, that person has to fill the associated project task.

In your project task detail page, you can add a webpart that will filter all documents from that library based on the current task id.

I'd better not overload the ability to attach documents (or anything else) to a list item. You'll have issue with versioning and this is not the way the system was thought to be used.