Overview
Harborline Freight was drowning in PDFs spread across email threads and shared drives. Staff lost up to an hour a day hunting for bills of lading and customs forms. We built a single searchable home for every document, with folder structures that mirror how the team actually works.
Challenge
Files arrived in five formats from a dozen senders, naming was inconsistent, and the office internet was slow. Search had to feel instant on modest hardware, and uploads had to survive dropped connections without losing work.
Approach
We prototyped the search-first layout in Figma and tested it with dispatchers before writing code. The build uses chunked resumable uploads, full-text indexing on ingest, and keyboard-first navigation so power users rarely touch the mouse.
Deliverables
- Web app with workspaces, tags and saved searches
- PDF, image and Office previews in the browser
- Role-based sharing with expiring guest links
- Admin guide and staff training videos
Outcome
Average document retrieval dropped from minutes to seconds, onboarding a new dispatcher takes an afternoon instead of a week, and the team retired three overlapping tools. Harborline now runs the whole paperwork flow from one tab — see the web design service for how we scope builds like this.
