In Aline, labels are the primary way to organize your documents — not folders. Labels are more flexible, they power your reports and filters, and combined with AI search they make even a very large repository easy to navigate.

This guide explains how to label effectively, apply labels in bulk, and find anything fast.

In this article you'll:

A folder puts a document in exactly one place. A label can describe a document from several angles at once — its contract type, its counterparty, its status, its business unit — so the same agreement can be found however you're looking for it.

Because reports and filters read from labels, consistent labeling is what makes your whole account searchable and reportable.

💡 Best Practice: Treat labels as your categorization system from day one. A little consistency in how you label pays off every time you build a report or filter a view.

Add labels to a document to capture its key attributes — for example:

Use a consistent set of labels rather than inventing new ones per document, so filtering stays clean.

When you've just uploaded a batch of documents, you don't need to label them one by one. Use bulk labeling to select many documents and apply a label to all of them at once — the fastest way to organize a large upload or migration.

Aline can apply some labels automatically based on what it reads in a document. These are a helpful head start, but review them — automatic labeling occasionally needs a manual correction, and getting it right keeps your reports accurate.

Instead of clicking through folders, use AI search to find documents by what's in them. This is especially useful for teams moving off a folder-based system or a separate signing tool — you can locate an agreement by its content, counterparty, or terms without knowing exactly where it "lives."

Once you've filtered a set of documents by label, save the view so you can return to it without rebuilding the filter. Saved views are handy for recurring needs — an "active vendor agreements" view, a "corporate MSAs" view, and so on.

Labels also control who can see what. You can grant a group access to documents by label, so a team only sees the contracts relevant to them.

📌 For the full setup, see Setting Permissions for Groups via Labels.

Designing a label taxonomy for a large repository? Click the Support button in Aline — we've helped a lot of teams do this and can suggest a structure that reports well.