Managing Document Ownership

Managing Document Ownership

Introduction

Document owners receive notifications on all events relating to the document. The document owner is the person or people responsible for managing the document within iPassport. This may very well be a different person to the author. Use this feature to specify who should approve/reject change requests and manage the document’s review lifecycle.

When a user is added as an owner, they are given tasks for any change requests already pending on the document. When an owner is removed, their change request tasks on that document are removed. Added and removed owners are also emailed, provided they have the owner notification preference turned on and did not make the change themselves.

OU Settings

By default, document owners have permission (via Document Control settings) to perform any action with their owned documents, including authorising them. It might be preferable for some organisations (or their departments) to limit the number of users entitled to authorise documents so there are settings to control this in each Organisational Unit. When the setting is unchecked, the owners of documents in that particular OU will only enjoy the permissions they have been granted through user group membership in that OU and for the document type in question.

To enable/disable full document owner permissions in a given OU:

1. Navigate to Administration > Settings > Organisational Unit Preferences
2. Select an OU from the dropdown menu, Organisational Unit
3. Click the row for Document Control
4. Tick the checkbox for the preference, Allow Document Owners to perform any action on their documents, regardless of permissions
5. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click Save.

Assign Owner(s) to Multiple Documents

1. Use the Controlled Documents search screen (accessed via Laboratory Records > Controlled Documents), to search for and select the document(s) whose owner(s) need to be reassigned and click the Manage Ownership button.
   Documents can be selected individually by ticking their checkbox in the left column or all at once by ticking the checkbox in the header area.
   The Manage Ownership button is only shown to users with the permission Controlled Documents:Manage Ownership Transfer. This permission is also checked for each selected document in its own OU: any documents you do not have it for are skipped and listed in a feedback panel rather than updated.
   
   
   
2. Click the Manage Ownership button to open the Manage Ownership pop-up window.
3. Select either Add new owner(s) and/or remove owner(s) or Replace all current owner(s) with the chosen new owners.
   If you choose to replace the owners, the Owners to be removed field is hidden and the add field is labelled New Owners (Overwrites current owners).
4. Use the Owners to be added field to search for the user(s) to be applied as the new owner.
   This field can be used to select individual or multiple users at the same time.
5. Click Update Ownership to complete the process.

Removing Owner(s)

1. As above, use the Controlled Documents search screen to find and select documents with an owner who needs removing.
2. Click the Manage Ownership button to access the Manage Ownership pop-up window.
3. Use the Owners to be removed field to search for the user(s) to be removed from ownership.
4. Click Update Ownership to complete the process.

Edit Owner(s) on a single Draft Document

To change ownership on an authorised document or multiple draft documents use the above method from the Controlled Document search page.

When changing ownership from the search page:

• Superseded documents in the selection are ignored.
• Changing the owners of an Under Review document also changes the owners of its draft version.
• Changing the owners of a document also changes the owners of its previous version, unless that version is superseded. In practice, changing the owners of a draft also updates the authorised or under review version it was created from.
• If the search was filtered by OU or facility, a warning lists any selected documents that are primarily managed in other OUs.

To edit document owners on an individual draft document simply open the document and edit the Document Owner(s) field on the document’s General tab.

Search for Documents by Owner

To search for all documents owned by a particular user simply use the Document Owner field on the Search form.

This search can be particularly useful when transferring ownership from one user to another.

Search for the current owner, select all records from the search results then use the Manage Ownership button.