SOP approval workflows and electronic signatures

Define who drafts and who approves each kind of document, route drafts through signature stages, and publish with effective and review dates.

A document workflow decides who may draft a document and who must approve it before it takes effect. Manage workflows on the "Document workflows" page. Every organization has a default workflow, and you can add more for particular document types, site groups or subspecialties.

Building a workflow

Click "Create workflow" and work through three steps:

1. In "Applies to", choose the document types, the site groups (or all of them, including any added later) and the subspecialties the workflow governs.
2. In "Who drafts", choose the primary drafters.
3. In "Approval chain", add one or more signature stages, ending in the final publish gate.

For each stage you choose:

• who can sign (people with an organization role, members of a site group or subspecialty, or specific people)
• whether the stage is assigned automatically, and whether the task goes to everyone who qualifies or takes turns
• how many signatures it needs (everyone assigned, any one, or at least a number you set)
• who may waive or replace a signer
• which publication fields the stage fills in, such as the effective date, next review date and review owners

A workflow can also set a default review interval and require reading on publication, saying who must read and attest, within how many days, and how often to re-read.

Submitting and signing

When a draft is ready, click "Submit for approval" and pick signers for any stage the workflow does not assign automatically. Each signer gets a task in My Queue and signs with their electronic signature. A signer can reject the document with a reason, and the submitter can withdraw it.

The final signer sets the "Effective date" (today or later), the "Next review date" and the "Review owners", and may add cover page comments. Where the workflow allows, they also choose whether the document has a public link. Their signature makes the revision effective.

When a signer is unavailable

The people the workflow allows can waive or replace a signer, always with a reason. The Primary Site Administrator can also skip a stage or sign on override, again with a reason. The final stage can never be skipped, and the last remaining signer cannot be waived, so every document is approved by someone.

Required reading

If the workflow requires reading on publication, the document is assigned to its audience as read-and-attest training the moment it takes effect, and again when a new version is published.