Document review cycle

The document review cycle includes phases and phase-related tasks which are: drafting, revising, approving, publishing, and closure.

Best practiced for managing review cycles

Assign individuals to review queues based on their task, such as Reviewers, Approvers, or other action. For example, you may have different individuals in queues like HR Review, HR Approve, Legal Review, and Legal Approve. This way, a document can be assigned to the correct individuals at the appropriate phase of the review cycle.

When a review queue is created, you can identify:

• Document ownership
• Task ownership
• Both

It is recommended you use one queue of people for document ownership and another for task ownership to clearly define reviewers, approvers, and document owners.

It is recommended that Administrators select Enable Auto-assign to each phase of a review cycle to ensure someone has ownership.

Always close out a review cycle. If you do not, the cycle will appear to be open indefinitely. If you have a centralized policy team that manages policies, it is a best practice for that team to start (DRAFTING phase) and close out (CLOSURE phase) a review cycle. If you have a decentralized team, ensure that someone is responsible to close the review cycle.

Tasks in review cycle phases

In each phase, you can have any number and types of tasks. Certain types of tasks can only be added under certain phases, for example, approval task must under APPROVING phase. When a task become active, the people in the Route to queue for the task get an email notification with a link to complete their work.

In a review cycle:

• Checkmarks identify complete phases and tasks.
• You can select the clock button to see the date and time for each completed phase.
• You can select the info button to see the review flow assigned.

Let's take a look at each phase.

Drafting

In the DRAFTING phase, a document may be written for the first time, or reviewed at the start of a review cycle. To speed drafting, reusable content such as components and widgets can be used. Once complete, the document moves to the next phase and does not return to the DRAFTING phase. See Creating a document

Revising

In the REVISING phase, the document is iteratively reviewed and revised. Reviewers in a review queue add comments and may have rights to enter edits in the document. Multiple people are typically involved in a review and several iterations of the review are often required. If a change is made after earlier reviewers have approved the document, the system detects the change, resets the review cycle at the appropriate point, and notifies involved reviewers to view and approve the change.
The REVISING phase is complete when all reviewers have approved the same, final document. See Revising a document.

Approving

In the APPROVING phase, people in assigned queues examine the document and either approve or do not approve the document and comment on any issues. If the document is not approved, the system reopens the REVISING phase and notifies appropriate reviewers.
The system manages as many revising/approving cycles as necessary. The APPROVING phase is complete once all approvals are given. See Approving a document.

Publishing

In the PUBLISHING phase, the document cannot return to an earlier phase. Publishing a document can trigger dependent document review cycles. See Publishing a document.

Closure

In the CLOSURE phase, any business tasks related to ending the review cycle are executed and the review cycle is complete. The system will initiate a subsequent review based on the review frequency. See Publishing a document.

Off-cycle reviews

If a document needs to be updated before the next review date, you can start an off-cycle review. See Starting an off-cycle review.

Due dates and To Dos

At any point, you can select the Review Cycle tab then a task to view the Due by date and who the document will be routed to next in the right pane.

In To Do, select Add to add a reminder for the task and a due date, such as consult a colleague. You can also add notes. If you have active or pending To Do items, you cannot select the Done with Task to close the task.