'Approval Workflow' is available inside project folders on the users' own files. The approval workflow action is not available on the files of other Owners, on files from private projects, and files from the ‘My Documents’ folder. The approval workflow is a feature that allows specific users to review and approve, or decline a document in the Storage, processes, and forms. Files, processes, and forms that are waiting for approval cannot be deleted, updated, or modified by any means.
Send a document for approval
If you want to send a file for approval, go to Storage (Document Management Module), choose Project, and select the document you want.
- To send a file for approval, please right-click on the file and select 'Approval Workflow'.
- Choose Approval Workflow. File Approval Workflows can be configured by PTOs, Managers of the project, and by administrators.
In the 'Attach approval workflow', please select the workflow you want to attach and choose Expiry date.
Expiry date is not a mandatory field, as not all actions are QMS related actions.
Purpose of Expiry date filed:
a) In the case of processes and forms, once they get expired (in a month, or a year, etc. you're free to set your timeline) they will get into a "frozen" stage,
in order to be able to use them again, they will have to be sent for a re-approval.
b) In the case of documents, the expiry date will not limit their usage, but once expired a red explanation mark will appear next to their version number, indicating that the version is now obsolete and it should be sent for a re-approval.
PTOs and Managers of the project can create a new approval workflow in the 'Attach approval workflow' window by clicking on the ‘Or create a new workflow’ link below the drop-down list.Click here to learn How to create an Approval Workflow in Administrator Settings.
When approval is arriving at its expiration date, the user will get notifications about it. This notification schedule can be configured by the user on the Organization level (1 setting for the whole organization).
When approval expires for example for a process, that process cannot be started anymore (Project/Processes):
In the Settings/Processes list, this process is marked as well:
Approval expiration notification settings
In the Settings/System/Approval Expiration Notification page the user who has permission can change the approval notification preferences.
By default, the notifications will start 4 weeks before the approval expires and it is repeated weekly until it expires. No notifications will be sent after that.
- The document is now Pending. In the 'Approval' column of the Storage, there’s a yellow ’Pending’ symbol next to the document.
Until a document is pending, it cannot be edited, deleted, moved to another location, or uploaded again.
Likewise, updating the Approval Workflow while it is in use is also unavailable.
- The document sent for approval, now appears by the designated user's (who is defined in File Approval Workflow steps) Dashboard in the Approvals - Waiting for me section.
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To preview the document, click on the ’eye’ symbol.Only the following files can be opened for preview:
- plain text documents (with extensions .txt, .php, .csv … and other text based documents),
- pdf files,
- image files (.jpg, .jpeg, .png, .gif, .bmp)
To preview file details, click on the ‘three dots’ button and select ‘File details’To see the current flow, click on the “Approval status” or “Waiting for” text rows.
'File details’ window will appear and it contains three sections. In the first section, the user can see information about the file: name, type, size, location, owner, date when is created and modified, version number (Revision), approval status, and waiting for (approval). Next is the ‘Revision’ section where the user can see all versions of the file and download each of them. In the ‘Approval history’ section user can see if the file is approved, which version of a file is approved and who approved it.
Approval History items are clickable to show the approval flow for that version.
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The user can see the approval workflow steps and the decisions made by the users in that step. The current ongoing step has a blue background; the upcoming steps are just white.
- To go to the Storage location of the document, select ‘Reveal in Storage’.
- Open with Desktop Application – to open file with Wrapper File App.
- To download the document on your computer, select 'Download'
- To approve or decline the document, click on either 'Approve' or 'Decline'.
In the 'Additional information' window, please enter your 4 digit Document Approval PIN, and optionally add any comments about your decision. Click 'Approve' or “Approve and Vault”. Both buttons will approve the file, but the “Approve and Vault” makes the file QMS and moves to QMS Vault.
"Approve and Vault" is available on the last Approval step.
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When you approve or decline the document, it disappears from the 'Approval - Waiting for me' section.
- Re-assign is the option that you can use if you want to forward someone else that document, process, form, etc. for approval.
Approval list
The approval list can be accessed by anyone from the dashboard approvals section.
The list shows all the objects which involve or are involved with approval. That means the user can find for example the files what was approved/declined or currently waiting for someone.
Approved document/process/forms
The Approved document will get the "Approved" icon.
Right-click on the file, and choose "Details" to see info about that file. You can also choose "Export approval info".
Approved processes (in Settings/Processes) will get an "Approved" icon, but won't be an active jet. The responsible person will need to set the process as "Active" so that you can use it in your projects.
The same principle applies to Forms as to Processes.