General Notes

A DMS (Document Management System) is designed to share documents, controlling the workflow, access permissions and organization in general.

Using the first level menu the user can access the various information stored in the system:

• Content: allows you to browse documents in a file manager style.
• My documents: has several entries to access documents of interest:
  • Documents in process: lists of documents awaiting review or approval by the user, documents owned by the user who await approval or revision, documents locked by the user.
  • All documents: list of all documents owned by the user.
  • Review summary: list all the documents that were reviewed or awaiting review by the user.
  • Approval summary: list all the documents that were approved or awaiting approval by the user.

This DMS also provides a calendar that serves as virtual bulletin board to share notes, appointments, deadlines and commitments.

Permissions

Authorized users can set if and how other users will access to various folders and documents submitted.

Permission levels

The possible access-levels are:

• Total permits: the user can perform any operation.
• Reading and writing: the user can update records and add content to the folders.
• Read only: the user can view the contents of folders and download documents.
• No Access: the user cannot view the contents of the folders or individual documents.

By default administrators have total permissions on each document and folder on the system. Similarly, the document owner has total permits on his documents.

Only administrator users can change the owner of a document.

Permissions management

For each folder or document permissions are managed through two different devices

• The default permissions are valid in the absence of further specific
• The list of permissions allows you to specify exceptions to the default permissions

Access inheritance

The permissions of folders and documents can be set as hereditary. In this case the files and folders inherit the same permissions of the folder that contains them.

Documents workflow

The system automatically handles the workflow for each document and stores changes, versioning, comments made, etc.

Validation cycle

The normal workflow requires, when loading a new document or a new version, to indicate some users or groups of users as reviewers and/or approvers. Users that are listed as reviewers and approvers are required to explain their approval to the document. When this operation is completed, thus all listed users have made their review/approval, the state of the document will set to 'released'.

The reviewer/approver can deny its approval to the document. In this case the document state is set to 'rejected'.

A doc that are not set reviewers and approvals take immediately the state of 'released'.

As approvers/reviewers one can indicate groups of users. In this case the review/approval should be made by any of the users belonging to the group.

The document owner may at any time amend the list of reviewers/approvers.

Documents status

Possible states for a document are:

• Draft pending approval: one or more of the approvals referred to have not yet expressed their approval.
• Draft pending review: one or more of the listed reviewer have not yet expressed their review.
• Released: the document has successfully completed its validation cycle.
• Rejected: the document has discontinued its validation cycle.
• Expired: you have exceeded the target date for completion of the validation of the document.
• Obsolete: the status of a released document can be changed to obsolete. This is intended as an alternative to the cancellation of the document. Obsolete state is reversible.

Expiration

For each document in production can be set a due date. Once passed the day set are no longer possible revisions or approvals and the document goes into an 'expired' state.

The deadline is considered only for the latest version of the document and has effect only on document processing.

Other features

Lock function

Lock function is designed to indicate to other users that a certain document is in process. Users having total permission on the document can however reverse the lock and proceed to a modification of the document.

Notifications

Each user can request notification on documents and folders. Adding a file or folder in your list of notifications you will receive reporting of transactions by other users.

Only the Manager of a group can decide whether or not to enter the group list reporting on documents and folders. Once inserted, the notifications come all members of the group.

Keywords and search

Each document allows the inclusion of a description and some keywords. These informations are used for research function.

In personal account menu each user can store a set of keywords grouped by categories, in order to speed filling during the loading of documents.

Pressing the search button without entering any word you access the advanced research page.

Calendar

There are three views: by week, month, year. Events are displayed in order of their insertion in the calendar.

Once inserted, the events are public and visible to everyone. Only the administrator and who has entered the event can modify it later.