Approving A Document

This feature is only available with the policy & procedure add-on.

Sometimes Documents need to be approved before they are published. You can set up a publishing approval process before a new Document or a new version of an existing Document is published. 

• Publishing Approvers are full users who must approve a Document before it is published. 
• Publishing Approvers will always approve a Document one after another in the sequence that they have been selected to approve the Document. 
• Every Document can either have No Approval Required or can have its own publishing approvers specified. 
• A Document will remain a Draft, before it has been published, before approval is requested, when approval has been requested or approval has been rejected. It will become an Active Document and be visible in Hub and the Document List Screen once it has been published and if approval is required, all publishing approvers have approved. 

Setting up Publishing Approvers

• When creating a new Document or editing an existing Document you will see the “Publishing Approvers” field. This field can either be set to: 
  • No Approval: This option means that no approval is required to publish
  • Approval Required: Publishing Approvers must be selected. 
• On selecting, Approval Required, you will need to select the approvers in the order of approval to publish. Publishing Approvers will approve the Document one after another in the sequence that they have been selected to approve.

Requesting Document Approval

• When you are ready to publish a new Document or replace the current version of an existing Document, you can click on Publish or Replace Current Version respectively to request the Document’s approval.
• The URL, Attachment or Composed Document cannot be changed once an approval has been requested. The approval request must be canceled by clicking on the Cancel Approval Request button and then changes can be made, the approval must then be requested again. 
• The other fields on the Document record may be changed though without canceling the approval request. 

Approving a Document

• Publishing Approvers of a Document can Approve by viewing the approval
  • In an Approval Request Email or Daily Digest.
  • Or on the To Do list.
• The approval process works in sequence, the first approver will receive an approval request email and he will also see the approval request in his To Do list.

• After the first approval, the email will be sent to the next approver in the sequence and the approval request will also appear in his To Do list.
• On the draft document to approve the approver will be able to see the Approve & Reject buttons. The last approver will see the Publish button instead of Approve because his approval will publish the document.

Rejecting a Document

• If an approver wants to reject the approval request then they can click on the Reject button.
• On clicking the reject button a modal will appear to enter the reason of rejection. The reason for rejecting the approval could be that there are some more changes required in the document or some information is missing or is incorrect. 
• The user who requested the approval will receive an approval rejection email with the reason:

• The requester can refer to the rejection reason, make updates and request the approval again. Please Note: When approval is requested again the approval will start again from the first approver i.e. all approvers need to approve the document even though they have approved it before.

Canceling an Approval Request

• If an approver wants to cancel the approval request then they can click on the cancel request button. The reason for canceling approval requests could be that approval was requested with the wrong set of approvers and needs correction. That is why the option of canceling the approval request is provided

Publishing the Document after all Approvers have approved

• The approval is complete when the last approver in the approval  sequence clicks on Publish to approve the document.
• On approval of a new document it becomes an Active Document and is visible on Hub, version details appear on the Document’s Version tab.
• On approval to replace the current version of a  document the draft replaces the current version and is visible on Hub. The previous version is made inactive on the version tab and the new version becomes the current version of the Document. 

The different Statuses of Draft Documents

During the approval process the draft document can sit in below approval status and these status are reflected on the Draft Status popsicle:

1. No Approval: When the draft document does not have any publishing approvers.
2. Not Requested: When the draft document has publishing approvers but it is not submitted for approval yet.
3. Requested: When the draft document with publishing approvers is submitted for approval.
4. Rejected: When the draft document with publishing approvers is rejected by the approvers.