Document Review, Approval & Retire Cycles

In SOLABS QM10, document workflows can be set for the review and approval of a document and to retire a document. The different cycles (review, approval, and retire cycles) act differently as follows:

Review Cycle

A review cycle has 3 possible decisions:

• Ok, no change: The cycle will continue with the other reviewers until all reviewers have provided their feedback:
  • • If ALL reviewers select this decision, the approval cycle will be started automatically.
    • If there is no approval cycle set, the following message will be displayed to the last reviewer if OK, no change decision is selected:

• • • Then, the reviewer must select one of the 2 other decisions so the document is returned to the Authoring status where the approval cycle can be set.
• Reviewed, see comments: The cycle will continue with the other reviewers until all reviewers have provided their feedback. A comment can be provided and a file with comments can be attached. Once completed, the document will get back to Authoring status when the cycle is completed.
• Stop cycle with comments: The cycle will be stopped automatically (and will display the comments provided) when someone selects this decision and the other reviewers will not have this document to review anymore. A comment must be provided and a file with comments can be attached.

Related Video Tutorial: 

Document Review Cycle: https://youtu.be/1aCBq1boEOs

Approval Cycle and Retire Cycle

These 2 cycles behave in the same way. There are 2 possible decisions:

• Approve: The cycle will move to the approvers at the next level if the cycle is set in series (if in parallel, other approvers still need to complete their approval).  Once all approvers have selected an Approve decision, the cycle is completed and the document is at one of the approved statuses, depending on the selections chosen for Effective or Retire Date:
  1. • Approve & Effective
     • Approved, Not Effective
     • Retired
     • Awaiting Retire Date
• Reject: The cycle will be automatically stopped when someone selects this decision and returned to the Authoring status (for Approval Cycles) or the To Retire status (for Retire Cycles) and the other approvers will not have this document to approve anymore. A comment must be provided.

Once the document is APPROVED or RETIRED, it is NOT possible to ‘Unapprove’ or ‘Unretire’ it.  In both cases, an entry is created in the Document Audit Trail for this action and therefore this record will remain as an ‘official’ record for that version of the document.  If a change is required to an Approved document, a new version will need to be created and approved again.  It is not possible to act on Retired or documents in Awaiting Retire Date status anymore once the retire cycle is completed.

Related Video Tutorials:

Approving a Document in QM10: https://youtu.be/Z5KR2fNUdWE

Retiring a Document in QM10: https://youtu.be/wmFZiiLT3FQ