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The release process of documents is only relevant to controlled documents. Uncontrolled documents will be released automatically after creation and after creating a new version of an existing uncontrolled document.

 

Controlled documents require a 3-step release process: Check, Approve, Release. According to international document management standards these three processes can be assigned to different users by giving the necessary access rights in the user management. The system will track for each step in the approval process when a certain approval was given and who did the approval.

 

Check

 

A newly created document or a new version of an existing document have always the status "new". Click the button Check to set the status of the document to "checked".

After setting a document to status "checked" only users with the approval or releasing access right will be able to modify the content of a document.

 

Approve

 

Click the button Approve to set the status of the document to "approved". Only users with the access right for releasing a document will be able to modify the content of a document.

 

Release

 

Click the button Release to set the status of the document to "released". As soon as a document reaches to "released" status it will be automatically distributed to all sites that are assigned to the section that holds the document. A document with state "released" can no longer be modified. If a released document needs to be change, a new version needs to be created with the function New Version. This will create a copy of the existing document and attached document files, the version number will be increased and the status will be set to "new". As long as this new version will not be released, the previous version of the document will still be shown as the current version on connected sites/ships.

 

There are two more states a document can have.

 

Outdated: As soon as a new version of a document will be created, previous versions of the same document will get the state "outdated" for indicating that a new version of this document does already exist. Outdated versions of controlled documents will be kept in the database for allowing access to older version of a document.

 

Archived: In some cases you might want to remove a document from the library. Click the button Archive and the document will be moved to the archive and will no longer be shown as a part of the current document package. Archived documents are not available for creating new versions.