Document Work Flow
The next release of MyDMS will feature a document work-flow for managing document review and approval. This is what I have been working on since the release of 1.5.0b a few weeks ago. I’m making reasonable progress — reviewers and approvers can be assigned when uploading a new document and the “View Folders” and “View Documents” pages now display status information. There are some significant changes to the database in order to support this new feature, which I’ll describe in a future post.
Related information: process flow diagram [PDF]
The work-flow looks something like this:
SUBMIT -> REVIEW -> APPROVE -> RELEASE
In addition, there is an EXPIRE stage and a REJECT stage. The flow is applied at the version level of a given document. This means that each version of a document is managed independently of any other versions. When a document is loaded into the system, the owner may optionally assign reviewers and/or approvers to oversee the document’s publication. Reviewers and approvers are notified by email that they have been asked to participate in the process. If no review or approval is required, the document is automatically marked as published.
Reviewers and approvers are asked to evaluate the document and indicate that they have completed this evaluation by marking the document as reviewed/approved or by rejecting the document draft. Comments can be left with each review or approval. If a document is marked as rejected, then the document owner must decide whether or not to force the document through or to prepare a new draft. In either case, the decision of the reviewers and approvers is recorded permanently in the database.
If a document version gets out-of-date, the owner can mark it as obsolete. Similarly, the document can still be assigned a pre-determined expiry date to indicate a finite shelf life for the document version.
The work-flow is based on a simplified version of one of the approval processes used within my organisation and was originally drafted by a colleague of mine, Iain MacLachlan (Thanks).