You are here:

Approving a Document or Questionnaire

If you have been assigned the approver role, a document owner can assign you to approve a document or questionnaire. Then, when that document/questionnaire is submitted or approval, you receive a task assignment notification in the form of an email (if you are set up to receive emails from PolicyTech), and a task is added to your My Tasks list.

Note: If, in addition to being assigned the approver role, you've been assigned the Completes Approval Assignments in Bulk role, you have the ability to complete multiple document approval tasks at once. See Approving Multiple Documents at Once for details.

To open a document or questionnaire you've been assigned to approve, do one of the following:

Open the task notification email, and then click the link.

Click My Tasks, click the Approve heading to show those tasks, and then click the title.

Find and open the document/questionnaire using the Documents I Approve option for My Relationship when using Search or Browse (see Searching for a Document or Questionnaire or Browsing for a Document or Questionnaire).

(Conditional) If the assigned item is a document and, when you open it, you see a window like the one below, follow the instructions in Downloading a Document to Open It, and then resume with the next step in these instructions.

Note: If you see an alert like the one below, it means that another user (another approver or an administrator) is working on the document in edit mode. If, after reviewing the document, you need to revise it, you will not be able to do so until the other user finishes and closes the document. If you want to be notified when the document is available, select Notify me by email when the document is no longer checked out, and then click OK to clear the warning.

Check for and review all supplementary materials (see Reviewing Supplementary Materials for details) and the attached questionnaire, if there is one (for documents only; see Reviewing a Document Questionnaire for details).
Read the document/questionnaire carefully and completely.

Note: If you're approving a Word or HTML document, if one or more other approvers have already reviewed the document and made revisions, you see those revisions, with each approver's changes in a different color text. You can rest your cursor on (hover over) one of the color-coded changes to see who made the change and when.

(Optional) To see if other assigned approvers have revised or declined the document/questionnaire and their reasons for doing so, go to the Approver Status page of the Overview (see Working with the Overview for details). Click an approver's name to see any comments.

Accept, revise, or decline the document, or accept or decline the questionnaire. Click a link below for further instructions.