Controlled documents, as most other records in iPassport, have an 'Actions:' dropdown menu, accompanied by a 'Go' button which triggers the selected action.

This article covers all the actions available during each stage of a document's lifecycle.  The visibility of the actions depends on the user's permissions so you can control what different members of staff can do with each type of document in a given OU.  Some actions only appear under certain circumstances, like when a review or publishing workflow are underway.

Controlling which Actions are available to users in Documents

In this article we will group actions according to the state of the document (there will be repetitions but these are intentional for quick reference):

• About Permissions and Preferences
• Actions for documents in 'Draft' state
• Actions for documents in 'Awaiting Authorisation' state
• Actions for documents in 'Pending Release' state
• Actions for documents in 'Authorised' state
• Actions for documents in 'Under Review' state
• Actions for documents in 'Superseded' state
• Actions for inactive documents

Some Actions are also available as a round blue button under the dark grey tab ribbon for convenience, like 'Controlled Print', which is equivalent to the action 'Print Document'.

Some buttons don't have an equivalent action, like 'Request Change', 'PDF Preview' or 'Review Settings'.

No permission, other than to be able to view the document, is required to raise a Change Request or produce a PDF Preview.  These are basic privileges granted to all viewers of a document.  However, the 'Request Change' button is not shown for superseded or inactive documents, or for document types that do not support change requests (External Documents by default).

To access 'Review Settings', the permission '<Doc Type>:Schedule Reviews' is required.

Some actions also change depending on the document:

• 'Print Bench Procedure' is available for Authorised and Under Review documents that have a bench procedure.
• 'Download Document' replaces 'Print Document' when no PDF preview is available.
• While a document's PDF is still being converted, the Authorise, Publish, Email Document, Request Authorisation and download link actions are shown as '... (disabled)' with the message 'Action Unavailable: PDF conversion in progress'.

About Permissions and Preferences

There are separate permissions for each type of document.  For example, to authorise a Policy, you need the permission 'Policies:Authorise Policies'; but to authorise an SOP, you need the permission 'SOPs:Authorise SOPs'.

For simplicity, and following the example, permissions will be quoted as '<Doc Type>:Authorise <Doc Type>'.

As well as through roles, document permissions can be granted through document sharing (to a user or to an OU), through skills, and through document ownership (see below).

There are also Organisational Unit Preferences which override permissions and will therefore affect which actions are available to users.

Under Organisational Unit Preferences, the 'Document Control' tab has the following preferences which affect the visibility of some Actions:

• "Allow Document Owners to perform any action on their documents, regardless of permissions" - when this is enabled, if users are the owners of a document, all actions will be available to them.  This only covers the document type permissions: actions controlled by other permissions, such as 'Skill Reissue Interval' (Organisational Units:Manage Settings) and 'Override Verifiers' (Skilled Groups:Can Manage Skill Verifiers), still require those permissions.
• "Allow external Document Download links" - if this is not enabled, the action 'Create Download Link' will not be available.
• "Enable 'Document Correction' " - this setting and corresponding permissions are required to allow the action, 'Document Correction'.

Under System Preferences, the 'Miscellaneous Settings' tab has the preference:

• 'Enable option to Request Authorisation' - the action, 'Request Authorisation' will not be available if the preference is disabled.

Actions for documents in 'Draft' state

Actions for documents in 'Awaiting Authorisation' state

Actions for documents in 'Pending Release' state

Actions for documents in 'Authorised' state

Actions for documents in 'Under Review' state

The buttons 'Review Settings' and 'Restart Review Cycle' do not appear in the Actions dropdown list.

Both require the permission '<Doc Type>:Schedule Reviews'.

Actions for documents in 'Superseded' state

Actions for inactive documents

Once a document has been set as inactive, the actions which depend on its state are hidden: Authorise/Publish Document, Request Authorisation, Start Publishing Workflow, Start Review Workflow, Review Document, Complete Review Cycle, Create new version, Release Document, Change Release Date, Cancel Document Authorisation and Unpublish.  Email Document, Change OU and Create Download Link are also hidden.

Some actions are still offered, for example Generate Link, Get Source Document, Change Document Type, Publishing Settings and Document Correction, as well as 'Set as Active' to reinstate the document.

One extra action is available for inactive documents: