Whether a contract needs to be revised on a regular basis or documentation requires approval for disposition, there are many organizational instances when content and content metadata reviews are necessary. We get it: with all the other tasks that work demands, reviewing last year's policies is not always top of mind.
But your pending reviews and disposition approvals do not have to be a daunting task. We're going to dive right into how you can complete your reviews and approvals, and see your content review details all in one place for a simpler, more streamlined content review experience.
Content to Review from Multiple Team Members and Sources
Let's set the stage with a common case scenario. Jayson is the Head of Procurement for his organization, so he is responsible for signing off on all purchase, supplier, and vendor-related documentation. With all of this information coming from multiple people and places, one option is to manually keep track of where everything comes from, when the reviews are due, and who to forward the content to afterwards.
Another option is taking advantage of the Content Review List feature in Collabspace, where he can see the details around what needs to be reviewed, access the content, perform his reviews and assign item outcomes. It's coming up to the end of the quarter, and Jayson has to approve or disapprove a number of purchase requests: let's see how the process will look for him in Collabspace.
Defining Actions in Workflow Design
All the content that Jayson needs to review? Whether from SharePoint, File Shares, or other source repositories, it has already been streamed to Collabspace. Here, end-to-end document lifecycle workflows have been implemented (more on general workflow capabilities here). Review Actions can be added as these workflows are built out in the Workflow Designer to ensure the content is reviewed at the appropriate time in its lifecycle (see Figure 1).
Figure 1: This Collabspace workflow includes Jayson's upcoming purchase agreement review (orange review action).
Content Review Lists
After the necessary review actions have been defined, the content within that workflow will be queued and partitioned into a relevant review list. This list-based review approach is unique from anything else available on the market, and the lists can be filtered by Queue, Record Category & Policy, or Status (upcoming, in process, completed). By clicking into the Reviews Page, Jayson has access to the following information:
Details Panel
Here, Jayson can view whether the list has been started, who started it, how long a review has been pending, how many purchase agreements and contracts are in the list, and the details around possible outcomes with these reviews. In Jayson's case, there are three potential outcomes he can assign during his procurement review (see Figure 2).
Figure 2: Sample of the review list Details. Jayson's list holds seven pieces of content to approve or disapprove. Once someone designated Records Admin (likely a records manager) starts the list, Jayson can check it out and begin his reviews.
Categories and Policies
In this section, Jayson will see which review list categories and record policies his review falls under. If a workflow falls under multiple categories and Jayson is assigned to review them all, he will see multiple categories' content in the same review.
Figure 3: Jayson can see which record category and retention policy his reviews fall under.
Participants
Whenever Jayson is wondering who else has been assigned to a content review, this is the section he can check to see which of his fellow team members are also participants for that particular review list. Those with permissions can add any combination of security groups or individual users to a review if multiple teams are required.
Figure 4: Jayson can look under the participants section to see that his team member Hank has also been assigned to review content in this list.
Content Review Process
Jayson can access the Reviews page at any time for this high level information about the lists he is participating in. He can begin the actual review process once a team member designated Records Admin (often the organization's Record Manager) has started a list. Once that list is started, Jayson will receive a email notification so he'll know to check out the appropriate list and get to reviewing that purchase request and the other six pending items. If the Review List has over 9,500 items in it, Collabspace will auto-start the review process to prevent build up.
After he has read through the content, all that's required from Jayson is assigning each item to the appropriate Event-based outcome and it will automatically move to the next workflow action. If he approves the purchase request, he can select the Approve and Publish and the item will move to the Lock Down action. If he disapproves, he can choose to send it back to his team for revision, or complete a disposition review and approve the item's deletion from Collabspace and/or the original content source repository.
Once Jayson and his team members have completed their reviews and all item outcomes have been executed in Collabspace, the list can be marked complete and a review certificate will be generated showing all outcome assignments. This certificate is useful if an organization has business or legal requirements calling for content review details.
Figure 5: All items in this procurement review list have been assigned an outcome.
Lastly, the Reviews page has an audit option where it will show the entire history of the list: who started it, who checked out and back in, who completed various reviews.
Figure 6: The audit section shows the history of the list. In this case, Jayson approved two purchase orders, sent one back to his team to revise, and sent one for disposition.
Using these content review lists, Jayson has quick access to all his content and list details in one place so he no longer needs to keep track of the wheres and whens of his reviews. With this process simplified and streamlined, he has more time and attention for other pertinent tasks in his role.
Does Jayson's experience sound like one that you could benefit from? To learn if Content Review Lists and other Collabspace features are a fit for your organization, get in touch with us to chat, or read more about how you can transform your RM with this data lake repository. You can read more about Collabspace Workflows in our previous blog, or download our free solution brochure below for more information:
