The Approval Process



Before documents are published, they need to go through an approval process. The system offers you the ability to define different kinds of approval processes. You can control how complicated the approval processes are, and how many persons need to approve the document. This can be configured in the settings menu for approval processes, see chapter 7.2. If all stages of the approval process are used, the process looks something like the following example.

Example

In the sample process in the figure below, you have an author, differently defined roles for approvers, a person responsible for the document and a publisher. It should be noted that this is in no way a definitive version of an approval process, there are so many ways you can design it. Whether all stages of the process are utilized or how many people must approve the document before it’s completed, depends on the company and its preferences.

A typical approach can be seen in the flowchart here on the right. When a document has been marked as Completed, the approval process kicks in. The editorial committee (or approvers) and person responsible must read the document over and either approve it or reject it. Everybody’s approval is compulsory for the publication of the document. If an editor approves the document, his electronic signature is added and sent to the person responsible. If he rejects it, the document is returned to the editors, its status is changed to In progress again and all approvals previously added are deleted. Then the necessary changes are made, the status is changed to Completed and the approval process starts all over again.

This procedure is repeated until everybody has given the document their approval, and the person responsible deems the document qualified for publication. Finally, the document is sent to the designated publisher, who finally publishes the document.


Approve / Reject

When a quality document is completed by the editorial committee, its status is changed to Complete in the General information tab. There’s a certain functionality – a couple of buttons – that appear below the grey metadata field when the document is completed. The buttons, Reject and Approve, are only visible to the individuals that are in some way responsible for the document, i.e. the people that are authorized to approve and publish the document. Finally, when everyone has given their approval and the approval process has concluded, the editor responsible for the document needs to validate and publish it.


Publication

When a quality document has been approved by the persons responsible, the publisher gets a notification saying it’s ready for publication. The message contains a link to the document. When publishing a document, you have the option of publishing right away or on a specific date.

A copy of the document is then moved to the Published documents view. If you select a future date, the document is marked as published but it doesn’t appear in the Published documents view until the date is due. Finally, the people on the document’s mailing list receive an email notifying them of the publication.