# About Perforce products

Perforce is a software configuration management tool you can use to manage source files and other documents, such as multiple revisions of a manual, Web pages, or operating system administration files. The files managed by Perforce reside in a depot. To work on files, you open the files and edit them in your workspace. When you're done, you submit changed files to the depot using a changelist. The depot keeps track of all the current and previous revisions of a file.

Perforce uses a client/server architecture. Perforce client applications, which include P4V and the P4 command line interface, communicate with the Perforce server using TCP/IP.

Perforce includes the following features:

- Branching: multiple copies of the same file can evolve separately, while maintaining a relationship to each other.
- Version control: multiple revisions of a file are always accessible.
- Concurrent development; multiple users can edit the same file and reconcile their changes.
- Defect tracking: bugs and system improvement requests are tracked from entry to fix using the Perforce jobs feature.