You are here: Topics by Document Role > Approver > The Publishing Process

The Publishing Process

All documents created in PolicyTechâ„¢ must go through the publishing process before they can be made available for general access to readers (all users). There are seven possible stages or statuses in the publishing process: draft, collaboration, review, approval, pending, approved, and archived.

The process starts when a document owner writes the original draft of the document. If desired, the document owner can collaborate with other writers to complete the first draft. The document owner then submits the document to review, where each reviewer can accept, revise, or decline the document. If all reviewers accept it, the document is automatically moved to the approval status. If revised or declined by one or more reviewers, the document is placed back in draft status, and a task email is sent to the document owner to review the revised or declined document, make the necessary changes, and then resubmit the document for review. (The document goes back to draft status only after all reviewers have accepted, revised, or declined it.) This part of the process can be repeated as many times as necessary to create an acceptable document.

Once all reviewers approve a subsequent draft, the document is moved automatically to approval status. Approvers have the same options as reviewers for dealing with the document (accept, revise, and decline). If all approvers accept it, the document is automatically published. If one or more approvers revise or decline the document, it again goes back to draft status where the document owner can again make needed changes and resubmit the document for review or directly to approval.

The only time a document is not immediately published upon approval is if the document owner designates a publication date sometime in the future. In that case, the document is moved to pending status until that date arrives, and then the document is published.

As soon as a document is published, task notifications to read the document are sent to all assigned readers.

If an approved document is a new version of an existing document, the previous version is automatically archived when the new version is published.