Document Reviews - Part 2 - Permissions & Settings

Permissions and Settings Required in Document Reviews

Permissions

The permissions required for the people who participate in document reviews, depend on the part they play in the process. They are grouped by these activities here:

Workflows and Administrative Settings Permissions

Administrators who manage the setup of the review processes in their organisations will need to configure document review workflows and other settings in the Administration area. For this they require Administration Editor privileges.

In particular, these permissions are required:

• Desktop:Show Settings Menu Item - access to the Administration > Settings area
• Manage Settings - allows editing System Preferences
• Organizational Units:Manage Settings - allows editing Organisational Unit Preferences
• Workflows:Create/Edit Controlled Document Workflows - allows viewing and editing workflows in the Administration area
• Workflows:View Controlled Document Workflows - gives view-only access to workflows through the Administration > Workflows menu

Document Owners Permissions

Unless adjusted, document owners are automatically granted full permissions over their documents. The setting which controls this is described below.

If this setting is disabled, document owners will only have the permissions they are granted through user group membership in the OU where the document resides. ‘Editor’ roles like Global Editor (excluding admin) (for all types of documents) or SOP Editor, Document Editor, H&S Editor, etc. (for specific types of documents), include the permissions they will need to perform their job.

Users with the permissions below don’t need to be document owners to manage reviews and review settings but they won’t be directly notified unless they are added to the ‘Notification List’.

Two groups of permissions are particularly relevant:

• Permissions to ‘manage review tasks’ - There is one of these permissions for each type of document (for example, ‘Policies:Manage Review Tasks’, ‘Documents:Manage Review Tasks’, etc.). These permissions are needed to,
  • approve or reject change requests (a ‘change request review’ task is issued to document owners when a change request is submitted)
  • verify approved change requests when the verification step is enabled (please see below)
  • Request Review Feedback in the Reviews tab
    
    
• Permissions to ‘schedule reviews’ - Document owners are also the first to be informed when a document becomes due for review so they need permission to view the workflow and intervene in some steps. There is also one of these permissions for each type of document, for example, ‘SOPs:Schedule Reviews’. They are needed to,
  • view the document review workflow within documents (the document’s reviewers, owners and publishers who can view the document can also see the workflow summary),
  • trigger ‘Review Document’ from the Actions menu within a document - when a review cycle is already in progress, this same option is labelled ‘Complete Review Cycle’. It is only shown on authorised documents which have no newer version and no pending, approved, verified or awaiting-verification change requests,
  • trigger ‘Start Review Workflow’ from the Actions menu within a document and,
  • if manual completion of the review cycle is set, these permissions are also required to be able to click the Complete Review Cycle button in a review workflow
    
    

Reviewers Permissions

Users added in review rounds of a workflow only require ‘viewer’ access to the document that generates a ‘review feedback’ task for them (please see Note below). They can complete a review feedback task by requesting changes to the document (as anyone with viewer access to a document can) or they can state that no changes are required.

Review Approval Permissions

Users added in approval step of a workflow only require ‘viewer’ access to the document that generates a ‘review approval’ task for them.
Only users added to the approval step in a workflow can complete a ‘review approval’ task. This makes it easy and safe when a lab director is required to sign off document reviews. No special permissions need to be granted and only the people added in the approval step can perform this step.

Settings

There are some settings which predetermine how the system will handle document reviews. They are all configurable at Organisational Unit level and they are discussed in more detail in the user guide, Organisational Unit Preferences. The following preferences are all found by navigating to Administration > Settings > Organisational Unit Preferences.

Document Control Preferences relating to reviews

The Document Control area includes three preferences of interest:

Allow Document Owners to perform any action on their documents, regardless of permissions

• The implications of this preference are detailed above in the Document Owners Permissions section. This preference is set by OU and based on the OU where the document belongs; it covers all types of documents.

Disable verification step for the document reviews

• When this preference is ticked, change requests will only require approval. If it is un-ticked, a verification step will be added after any change request is approved.
  
  As stated above, users with permissions to ‘manage review tasks’ can verify an approved change request.
  
  To make the process more traceable, it is also possible to nominate one or more users as ‘verifiers’ by adding them to a distribution list of the type ‘Review Verifier’ and selecting that list in the Settings area. When a change request is approved and the verification step is enabled, these users will receive a task to verify the change request (Change Request Verification task). Please see Review Feedback below.
  
  To complete a verification task, the verifier also needs the ‘Manage Review Tasks’ permission for that type of document (unless they are a document owner and the preference above allows document owners to perform any action). Without it, they will see a message saying they do not have access.

Enable online document editing

• This preference controls whether the online document editor can be used to edit documents. If it is disabled, new or edited versions of documents can be uploaded after they have been updated externally.

Document Review Settings

Two default workflows for new documents can be set for each type of document in this area: a Default Review workflow and a Default Publishing Workflow.

It is also possible to enforce and lock the chosen workflow on any existing documents of the relevant type in the OU selected. Each default has its own lock (‘Lock the selected review workflow...’ and ‘Lock the selected publishing workflow...’). A locked workflow applies to new and existing documents, and it can’t be changed from the document or from the Workflows area. Changing a lock asks for confirmation and restarts any workflows which are in progress.

This is also the area where the review window is set for each type of document. A number of days can be entered to define when to start a review cycle ahead of the next review date, using the setting ‘Mark <Type> as due for review this many days before review date:’. It defaults to 30 days for each type of document, and reminders are sent from that point.

Review Feedback

When the preference, Disable verification step for the document reviews is un-ticked (i.e., the verification step is enabled), a list of verifiers can be set for each type of document in the OU of interest. Verifiers are not picked individually: each document type’s Review Feedback preference selects a single distribution list, and tasks are only created if that list’s type is ‘Review Verifier’. Its members will then be issued a task to verify any change requests which have been approved, except the user who approved the change request. If this feature isn’t used, no tasks will be generated for change request verifications.

Details on how to set this up can be found in the section, Review Feedback of the use guide, Organisational Unit Preferences.

Next step:

The next article covers Configuring Document Reviews

Previous step:

The previous article covers Introduction