Knowing When It's Read
Once you have shared a document, FlowEdge shows you whether your client has opened it, how many times, and how long ago. It is the signal that tells you when a follow-up is worth sending.
You do not have to keep checking: FlowEdge also emails you the first time a shared document is opened — see Getting an Email When It’s Opened. This page covers the count itself, which is what that email is drawn from.
Where to Look
The read summary appears in three places, all showing the same wording:
- In the share dialog — open the document and click Share
- In the editor header — once the document has been opened at least once
- On the client’s page — beside each document in the client’s document list
What It Says
If nobody has opened the document yet:
Not opened yet
Once it has been opened:
Opened 3 times · last 2 hours ago
The time is always relative — just now, 5 minutes ago, 2 hours ago, yesterday, 4 days ago — rather than an exact timestamp.
💡 Tip
A proposal opened several times over a few days usually means it is being shared internally or discussed. That is a good moment to follow up — and a better one than following up on silence.
What Does Not Count
Some things deliberately never register as an open:
- Your own preview. The Preview button in the share dialog opens the same page without recording anything, so you can check your work freely.
- Opens while the link is revoked. Nobody can see the document, so nothing is counted.
- A second open within two minutes of the previous one — see below.
What the Count Can and Cannot Tell You
Read tracking is a useful signal, but it is not an audit log. Three things are worth knowing before you rely on it:
Opens within two minutes count once. This stops a refresh, a double-click, or a redirect from inflating the number. The trade-off is that two different people opening the document inside the same two-minute window are recorded as a single open.
A link preview can register an open before a human reads it. Some email and chat apps fetch a link to build a preview card. If that fetch loads the page fully, it can be counted — so an open occasionally appears slightly before your client actually looks at the document.
FlowEdge does not record who opened it. No IP address, no browser, no device, no location. That is a deliberate design choice, and it means the count cannot distinguish your client from their colleague, or from you opening the live link instead of using Preview.
⚠️ Important
Treat the open count as a signal, not as proof. It is a good reason to pick up the phone. It is not evidence that a specific person read a specific thing at a specific time, and it should not be used as though it were.
Using It Well
✅ Best Practice
Let the tracking decide the timing of your follow-up, not its tone. “Just checking you got this” works whether or not it has been opened. Telling a client you know they read it three times rarely lands well.
Next Steps
- Get told instead of going to look: Getting an Email When It’s Opened.
- Record the outcome in Deal Status.
- Not shared a document yet? Start with Sharing a Document.
- See your wider activity in the Dashboard Overview.