Document control: folders, versions, approval, transmittals and retention

#Purpose and scope

This chapter covers the document life cycle in Document Management: organising files, versioning and check-out, the review and publishing states, transmittals, sharing, retention rules and recovery. Other modules also attach files to their own records; those files are stored in the same document store and appear under automatically created attachment folders.

#Before you start

1. Define document categories in Categories (code, name, colour, icon, sort order).
2. Decide who may approve documents. Approvals and publishing use the workflow engine (see “Workflow automation”); the publishing workflow is linked to the record type DMS-DOC and transmittals use DMS-TRANS.
3. Check the denied upload extensions with your administrator. The upload guard rejects files on the extension denylist and files whose content is an executable, whatever their extension.

#1. Organise and upload files

1. Open Browse. Create folders in the tree, then upload files into a folder.
2. Open a file to see its properties, versions, comments and tags. Details and grid views are available, and you can filter by lifecycle status.
3. Folders can be renamed, copied, moved, pasted and downloaded as a ZIP. Deleting a file or folder sends it to Trash.
4. Folder permissions are set per role (view, upload, download, delete, folder upload, folder download, edit metadata, check out, approve, share, print, comment).

#2. Versions and check-out

1. Upload a new version from the file. The previous version stays in the history and the new one becomes the latest version, keeping the folder, lifecycle status, category and custom metadata.
2. Check a file out before editing it offline. Only one user can hold a check-out at a time.
3. Check it in when finished. Uploading a new version as the person who holds the check-out also clears the check-out.

#3. Complete the document register

1. Open Document register. Search by name, document number, code or author, and filter by status, type or confidentiality.
2. Double-click a row to edit: name, document number, revision, status, type, confidentiality, author, category, department, source, language, physical location, effective, expiry and review dates, description.
3. The footer shows the number of documents, the total size and counts per status and type.

#4. Lifecycle, review and publishing

1. A new file starts as Draft. In Browse choose Submit for publishing on a draft file and confirm. This starts the workflow linked to DMS-DOC and sets the file to Review.
2. When the workflow is approved the file becomes Published. When it is rejected the file returns to Draft and the reason is appended to its description.
3. Other status changes follow the allowed moves in the table below; a move that is not allowed is refused and the allowed list is shown.

#5. Per-reviewer approvals

1. Open Approvals. Each row shows the file, who requested it, the approver, status, comments and dates.
2. The designated approver chooses Approve or Reject and may add a comment. Only pending approvals assigned to you can be decided, and a decided approval cannot be decided again.
3. Deciding also sets the file’s lifecycle status to Approved or Rejected.

#6. Transmittals

1. Open Transmittals and create one with a subject, from and to company, attention, sent by (required), sent and due dates, purpose, priority and remarks.
2. The Items column shows how many documents are on the transmittal.
3. Track the status through draft, review, approved, sent, acknowledged and closed.

#7. Follow-ups

1. Open Follow-ups and add one for an official document, a document transmittal, a shipment or a shipping container.
2. Set the owner, next action, due date, priority (low, normal, high, urgent) and, if needed, who to escalate to.
3. Move the status through open, in progress, blocked, completed or cancelled.

#8. Share links, retention and recovery

1. Share links lists links with their token, file or folder, creator, downloads (against any maximum), expiry and status. Revoke a link after confirming.
2. Retention policies defines a number of retention days, an action (Archive, Destroy or Review) and optional notify-before days.
3. Trash has separate tabs for deleted files and folders; choose Restore to bring an item back.
4. Access logs records time, user, action, file, folder, details and IP address. Storage statistics shows totals for files, folders, storage, uploads in the last 7 days and checked-out files.

#Other tools in this module