Working with drafts

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This section is designed to provide the administrator an overall picture of the Document Manager draft approval process (workflow).

 

Before you begin

Refer to the Set up draft approvals topic for information about preparing your work environment.

The draft approval process is an optional component that administrators can enable for each document library. The draft approval workflow allows authorized users to gain control over writing and editing processes. Users can also work with drafts without the draft approvals process enabled, and the drafts will simply skip the approval process.

In workflow, people are assigned roles in a process. For example, there may be a work team with a software developer and a technical writer. The writer starts the workflow process when he creates a document in Document Manager. When he saves that document, the document is automatically submitted for review to the developer. The developer can either approve the document, or send the document back to the writer for changes. This process repeats until the developer approves the document. When the document is approved, the document is made public in Document Manager.

There are two roles in workflow: author and reviewer. Only the members of the selected workflow approver group can approve documents in the workflow process. This group must be a member of the wpsDocReviewer group. Both authors and reviewers have a Pending drafts folder which is at the top level of the folder hierarchy in the library. The draft approval process is as follows:

1. The author creates and saves a document. When saving the document, the author selects the directory where she wants the document to eventually appear. However, the document does not show up in that directory until the review process is complete.
2. The document appears in the reviewer's Pending drafts folder.
3. The reviewer can either:
   1. Accept the document by clicking Accept.
   2. Reject the document by clicking Reject.
4. If the reviewer rejects the document or adds comments, the document appears in the author's Pending drafts folder.
5. If the document was rejected the author makes the changes, and saves the document again.
6. Steps 2 and 3 repeat until the reviewer approves the document.
7. When approved, the document appears in the directory the author selected when she first created the document.

There can be multiple reviewers; however, only one reviewer can approve or reject a document. There is no process for assigning which reviewer gets approval authority. The first reviewer to approve or reject the document makes the decision for all the reviewers.

For step-by-step information about working with drafts, see the online help that is available from the portlet title bar.

 

Related tasks

• Set up document management
• Performing basic tasks
• Searching documents and folders

 

See also

• Documents, folders, and views
• Using IBM Content Manager as a datastore for Document Manager
• Set up and maintaining your work environment
• Document management
• Document libraries
• Collaborating in Document Manager
• Viewing documents in HTML
• Productivity Components
• Troubleshooting

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