Printing Mgmt. Pt.3 - Controlled Document Prints

Modified on Tue, 10 Sep at 9:21 PM

This article covers many settings, options and descriptions of the processes to produce and manage prints of controlled documents in iPassport.

Please use this table of contents to jump to any section of interest.

Controlled Document Prints

Controlled Document Prints

Types of Document Prints

There are three types of document prints:

Preview prints - These are available to any user who can open the document and are triggered with the blue 'PDF Preview' button or the link, 'Download Document Preview'.
- Preview prints always include a cover page.
Controlled Prints - The corresponding 'Print' permission is required from the list above (e.g., 'SOPs:Print SOPs'); each print is assigned a token so it can be tracked and destroyed when it becomes superseded.
Uncontrolled Prints - These prints also require a permission but they don't carry a token; they are appropriate for forms and other documents which are repeatedly printed and don't need tracking.

You can assign different cover pages, footer information, spine information, and watermarks to each type of print.

Note on External Document Prints
External documents don't carry a source file in iPassport so there is nothing to print. External documents can be added as attachments or external links and they can be printed to paper by obtaining a copy. If a controlled print of an external document is needed for official use in the workplace, a 'Barcode Label' can be printed from the Actions menu of the document to accompany it. This page includes a barcode and the controlled information of the document in iPassport.

Note on External Document Prints

External documents don't carry a source file in iPassport so there is nothing to print. External documents can be added as attachments or external links and they can be printed to paper by obtaining a copy. If a controlled print of an external document is needed for official use in the workplace, a 'Barcode Label' can be printed from the Actions menu of the document to accompany it. This page includes a barcode and the controlled information of the document in iPassport.

Settings

Controlled Documents have four areas in 'Administration > Settings' where printing settings can be adjusted:

Under 'System Preferences' -
- Paper Sizes and Options - In this area you can set the paper size and the position of the footer information (bottom or top of the page).
  Click the following link for more detail: Settings - Part 3 - System Preferences
Under 'Organisational Unit Preferences' -
- Cover Pages - Each type of document in each OU can be assigned a different cover page.
  In this area, if the fields for cover page selection are left blank, the system will assign the default cover page. You can prevent cover pages from being added to controlled and uncontrolled prints (but not preview prints) at the time of printing.
  Click the following link for more detail: Cover Pages
- Document Control - There is a section of Printing Settings which relate to the protection of PDF copies, default preferences and rules when producing prints. These are discussed below.
  Click the following link for more detail: Printing Settings
- Watermarks - Each type of document in each OU can be assigned different footer information, spine information, and a watermark stamped diagonally across the page. Furthermore, these items can be assigned according to the status of the document - draft, authorised, under-review, and superseded.
  There is a large collection to pick from but if none meet your requirements, please contact our support team (support@genialcompliance.com) and we can produce bespoke watermarks for you.
  Click the following link for more detail: Watermarks: Controlled-Documents

Producing Preview Prints

Preview prints are equivalent to 'uncontrolled' prints in that they are not tracked, and as stated in the previous article, they are not permission driven. Any user who can open a document is entitled to produce a preview print.

Under Printing Settings in the Document Control tab of Organisational Unit Preferences, you can adjust the following preference to control whether these prints can be put to paper:

Disable Preview printing

When printing is disabled, the PDF files are delivered with the 'Print' command greyed out and inaccessible.

'PDF Preview' and 'Download Document Preview'

To access 'Download Document Preview', you might need to expand the metadata section by clicking the light grey ribbon labelled, 'Click to view document details'.

A cover page is always included in preview prints but you can select which cover page to assign to all documents of the same type in the same OU.

The watermarks, footer and spine information can also be adjusted, so if the default settings are not used, appropriate watermarks should be selected to help identify the nature of the print.

Every preview print is logged in the 'Print History' of the document.

Note
Print logs in general can't be deleted, but controlled prints can be marked as destroyed.

Clicking PDF icons in document lists to produce preview prints

You can also produce preview prints from the 'Recently Viewed', 'Search', and 'Review Centre' tabs by clicking the PDF icon found in the Actions column of the search results.

Non-previewable Documents

If a document on the list has no PDF icon, and it's not an External Document, this indicates it's source file is in a format which cannot be previewed in iPassport, such as Excel™️. Prints of the type 'Preview Print' cannot be generated for this type of document.

Printing Documents in Draft State

For previewable documents in draft state, it is not possible to produce controlled prints and only preview prints ('PDF Preview' and 'Download Document Preview') can be generated. By default, the watermark stamped on these prints will say "Draft", but it can be changed in the preferences area.

Non-previewable documents can be downloaded while in draft state, and the action can be logged as a controlled or uncontrolled download, depending on the settings and permissions implemented.

Producing Controlled/Uncontrolled Prints

Controlled and uncontrolled prints are permission driven and the following printing settings influence how they can be generated.

General Printing Settings for Documents

This section covers the printing settings available in the 'Document Control' tab of 'Organisational Unit Preferences'.

Defaults for Previewable Document Prints

To reduce the amount of clicking and potential mistakes, you can declare default selections when producing prints:

"Include Authorisation Sheet" selected by default
"Print Appendix" selected by default
"Print Cover Page" selected by default
"Print Introduction/Scope as separate page" selected by default

As an example, these settings...

Will produce this pop-up window:

Protection for Previewable Document Prints

To protect the PDF files delivered as prints, you can enable any of the following preferences to prevent printing to paper, editing, filling forms or extracting content from controlled prints:

Controlled Prints - Prevent editing of the PDF
Controlled Prints - Prevent form filling or annotations of the PDF
Controlled Prints - Prevent printing or copying the contents of the PDF

When these preferences are enabled, the PDF files will not allow the related actions. They will be protected with an undisclosed password.

Appearance of Previewable Document Prints

Depending on how source files are managed, you can choose to allow the system to add page numbers or not:

Disable page numbering for all document prints

Page numbering is independent from footer note information settings.

Depending on where controlled print PDFs are stored, the length of the file path can be too long once the title of the document is added to the string. You can choose to apply the system's default nomenclature for printed documents, which only includes the index and version, or include the title of the document for clarity:

Include the document's title in the filename of prints

When a document title is very long, it might be truncated.

Printing Settings for Uncontrolled Prints

These settings are especially helpful to manage non-previewable document downloads and in general, for documents which are frequently downloaded, such as forms, and don't need to be tracked.

Allowing Uncontrolled Prints

There are individual settings to enable uncontrolled prints in each OU:

Allow uncontrolled prints of COSHH Documents
Allow uncontrolled prints of Documents
Allow uncontrolled prints of External Documents
Allow uncontrolled prints of Health and Safety Documents
Allow uncontrolled prints of Job Descriptions
Allow uncontrolled prints of Policies
Allow uncontrolled prints of SOPs

Users will need the corresponding permission (e.g., 'Policies:Uncontrolled Print') when these preferences are enabled.

Default Print Settings for Non-previewable Documents

There are two printing settings which also reduce clicking and potential mistakes when uncontrolled prints of documents which can't be previewed are frequently generated.

When uncontrolled prints are enabled, you can choose the default type of print to produce with this preference:

Enable Controlled Print Flag by Default When Downloading Files Without a Preview

When the checkbox for this preference is ticked, the 'Download' pop-up window opens with the 'This download should be controlled?' checkbox ticked:

To further expedite the operation for frequently downloaded files, you can remove the requirement to add a 'Reason' by disabling this preference:

Require a reason for uncontrolled file downloads

Tip
As an example, a form created in Excel™️ and which is frequently downloaded for equipment maintenance logging, could have settings to, allow uncontrolled prints (with the corresponding permissions enabled), with the 'Controlled Print Flag' disabled, and not require a reason for downloading it. This would provide the quickest path to retrieve a copy of the Excel form, and reduce maintenance of the account as the 'prints' wouldn't have to be marked as destroyed once the document version was superseded.

Tip

As an example, a form created in Excel™️ and which is frequently downloaded for equipment maintenance logging, could have settings to,

allow uncontrolled prints (with the corresponding permissions enabled),
with the 'Controlled Print Flag' disabled,
and not require a reason for downloading it.

This would provide the quickest path to retrieve a copy of the Excel form, and reduce maintenance of the account as the 'prints' wouldn't have to be marked as destroyed once the document version was superseded.

Generating a Controlled Print of a Previewable Authorised Document

When a user has no print permissions for a given type of document within a given OU, only preview prints can be produced.

With permission to produce controlled prints (e.g., "Policies:Print Policies"), the button 'Controlled Print' and the equivalent Action, 'Print Document', will become available.

Actioning either of the options will produce a pop-up window like this one:

When 'Print' is clicked, and if a reason has been entered, the system will generate the print file, stamped with the pre-defined watermark, footer and spine information, and with the additional sheets selected.

The ‘Print cover page’ option attaches the cover page for the controlled document type and OU to the front of the document.
The ‘Print introduction/scope as separate page’ option adds the ‘Introduction and Scope’ from the controlled document as a separate page after the cover page. This is only added if the introduction has been added to the associated field within the controlled document. If this is left blank, then nothing will be printed even if the field remains selected.
The ‘Print appendix’ option attaches an appendix to the end of the document. The attachment contains all of the controlled document history, review history, and lined records. If the version has gone through a number of reviews then this appendix can become very long.
The 'Include Authorisation Sheet' option adds a page with the list of users who authorised the version printed. It can include electronic signatures if they have been set up for use.

To download the print, click the PDF icon which appears once the file is ready.

The action is logged in the document's print history as a controlled print, with a token (which is a unique reference number), the user who produced it, the date and time when it was printed, and the reason.

When permissions to produce uncontrolled prints (e.g., "Policies:Uncontrolled Print") are also granted, a checkbox gets added to the pop-up window to allow choosing whether the print should be controlled or not.

To allow producing uncontrolled prints of documents which can be previewed within iPassport, the permission to produce controlled prints (e.g., "SOPs:Print SOPs") is also required. Otherwise, the print commands are not displayed.

Uncontrolled prints are also logged in the document's print history. They don't get assigned a token, but the user who produced them, the date and time when they were printed, and the reason if one was required, are recorded.

Adding a Location

This field is intended to declare where the print being produced will be kept. When the document becomes obsolete or superseded, the print can then be tracked down and destroyed.

Note

A location in iPassport does not have to be a physical place; it can refer to and be accordingly named as ‘Drive G’ or ‘Online Storage’, for example.

For locations to be available when printing a record, they need to be associated with the record’s OU and they need to have the tag, ‘Print’. Information on how to create and manage locations’ OUs & Tags can be found in the user guide, Locations - Sections.

The dropdown list of locations will only include appropriately tagged locations.

Downloading a copy of a Non-previewable Authorised Document

The permissions to produce controlled prints (e.g., "SOPs: Print SOPs", "Documents: Print Documents", etc.) are not required for non-previewable documents. With only permission to view the document, the source file can be downloaded by clicking the text-command, 'No Preview Available - please click here to download this document' at the top of the page, or the text-command at the bottom of the 'General' tab, 'Please click here to download the Document'.

Clicking either command will invoke this pop-up window:

The action is logged in the document's print history as a controlled print, with a token, the user who downloaded it, the date and time, and the reason entered.

When permission is granted to produce uncontrolled prints, and they are enabled in the printing settings area, a checkbox labelled 'This download should be controlled?' is added in the pop-up window, to allow choosing whether the download should be controlled or not:

As described in the Tip above, with correct settings, only the 'Continue' button will need to be clicked to obtain an uncontrolled download of the document, not tracked by the system.

Print History

Within iPassport all controlled document printing, including previews, controlled and uncontrolled prints, are recorded within the print history along with a user, date & time stamp.

The ‘Print History’ is accessed from the drop down menu, if permission has been granted.

Selecting this action and clicking 'Go' will bring up the ‘Print History’ pop-up window.

Controlled prints still in circulation are easily identified by the trash/bin icon displayed on the right, and because they are highlighted in light grey. They are also marked with a unique reference number (token). This number is stored in the print history as well as on the controlled document footer or spine information, according to settings. Hard copies and PDF files with this token can then be tracked down and destroyed when required.

Destroying a Controlled Print
When new versions of documents are released, controlled prints from previous versions become superseded and should be destroyed.

Clicking the trash/bin icon found in the 'Print History' records of controlled prints will expand the area to display a text field where confirmation of having deleted/destroyed the prints must be entered before clicking 'Mark Destroyed'.

The print record will then lose its grey background, and expanding it (by clicking the chevron on the right) will display the print history along with the destruction history.

Inspection Prep

Under 'Quality Managament > Inspection Prep', the tab 'Controlled Prints' collects all controlled print records across the account. It has tools to filter superseded prints and mark them as destroyed in bulk, and you can find more information about this in the article, Inspection Prep.

This is the last article in this series.

The previous article covers printing permissions: Printing Mgmt. Pt.2 - Permissions