Using Approval Activites in the Document Management System

There are two types of activities supported by the FileHold document management system; the document approval activity and the document review activity.

The approval activity is designed to facilitate the formal collection of signatures / approvals for an individual file version. This activity is designed to be quickly included alongside one or more activities as part of a workflow template or when initiating ad-hoc workflows.

Unlike the review activity, the approval activity has different requirements for completion. The approval activity is considered complete once all participants have signed-off as 'approved' on the file. If at any time one participant 'rejects' (does not approve) the document, both the activity and the workflow terminates; even if other participants in the activity have yet to start their tasks or there are other activities in the workflow that have not yet been started. 

As with the review activity, once the approval activity starts participants are notified by email and via their personal task list that they have been assigned a task to approve a document. Email notifications contain a link that will direct the user to the document in the My Tasks folder.

The activity starts if it is the first activity in a workflow or when the previous activity is completed.

To complete their tasks participants must sign-off when approving or rejecting the document. This sign-off requires the user to enter their FileHold document management system password as a secure means of verifying identity.

Only when all participants approve the document is it considered approved and the activity is completed.

Note: Approval or rejection of a document is at the document version level therefore the situation may arise where you have several versions of the same document some of which are approved and some that are not.
Once the document is approved and the activity is completed the next activity in the workflow begins. If the activity is the last one in the workflow the workflow is marked as completed.

If any one of the participants rejects the document the document is considered not approved. As with the document review activity, participants are able to provide comments and / or attach a feedback document to the file they are rejecting.

If a document is considered “not approved” the workflow instance is terminated and subsequent workflow activities are automatically cancelled within the workflow document management software.

Note: In order for the approval activity to run it must be included in a workflow.