Administering Knowledge Management › Document Approval Process

Document Approval Process

For administrators who want to control the management of their knowledge base, the ability to customize the document editing and approval process is essential. You can design Approval Process templates that specify how, when, and by which an employee document can be modified and published to the public. Approval Process templates can designate various approval processes best suited to your business environment. The approval process you implement can be modified over time to become simpler or more complex.

The Approval Process Manager lets you define Approval Process templates. By default, the Built-in Approval Process template is used. However, you can create a template or edit an existing template. When creating an Approval Process template, you define statuses and add tasks to the template. The approval process involves a series of tasks that are performed on a knowledge document. The owner that is assigned a task in the Approval Process template performs each task.

The following statuses are the various states the document is associated with during the stages of the approval process:

Draft

Specifies a new document.

Published

Specifies a document that has passed through the complete approval cycle and becomes part of the viewable knowledge base.

Rework-Draft Version

Specifies a rework version of a copy of the document that is replaced in the knowledge base after it is verified and republished.

Retired

Specifies a document that has reached its expiration date. You can also create your own statuses, which you later associate with tasks.