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Submitting a Document for Approval

Important: If you submitted a document for review, you don't need to submit it to approval. The document will automatically be submitted to approval once all reviewers accept it.

If a document's template contains no required reviewers, you can submit a draft document directly to approval, skipping the review step. You must assign at least one approver before submitting a document for approval.

Note: Only the document owner or a document control administrator can submit a draft document for approval.

Once you submit a document for approval, each assigned approver has the option to accept, revise, or decline the document in its current state. As each approver acts on the document, you receive a notification email. When all approvers have finished, you receive another email notification, and the document is sent to one of two places. If one or more approvers revise or decline the document, it is sent back to draft status. If all approvers accept the document, it is automatically published (unless the document has been assigned a publication date sometime in the future, in which case the document is moved to pending status until that date).

You can also check approver status from the document's Overview page (see Working with the Document Overview for details). To access the document while it is in approval status, see Finding a Document in a Specific Status.

To submit a document for approval,

Find and open the document in the draft, collaboration, or review status (see Finding and Opening a Document for help).
Click Options, and then click Submit for Approval.

(Optional) If the document has any assigned reviewers who have not finished yet, a window similar to the following is displayed. To skip any unfinished writers and submit the document for review, click OK.

(Optional) In the Submit for Approval window, delete the default text—"New Document" or "New Version"—and then type the purpose of the new document or a summary of changes for the new version of the document. All assigned reviewers, approvers, and readers will be able to see your comments.

(Optional) To add what you wrote to this document's discussion board, click Post to Discussion Board (see Working with Document Discussions for details).
Click Submit.
In the Results window, click OK. The document is automatically closed for you.

Note: If no approvers have been assigned to the document, you will see a window like the one below. Click Go there now, assign one or more approvers, and then click Submit for Approval again.