Document approval and publish process
Summarize
Summary of Document Approval and Publish Process
This process governs how documents are reviewed, approved, and published within the ServiceNow platform, ensuring controlled and sequential validation before publishing. It enables authors, owners, reviewers, and approvers to collaborate efficiently on document versions, maintaining quality and compliance.
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Key Features
- Roles and Permissions: Only users with
platformdocumentmanagementadminoradminroles can create approval and review rules. Document creators can add reviewers and approvers, initiate workflows, publish approved versions, and track activity streams. - Review Process: Documents can have multiple reviewers. A review can result in approval or rejection. The first reviewer’s decision applies if multiple reviewers are assigned. Rejection notifies author and owner and halts the process; approval moves the document to the approval stage.
- Approval Process: After review, documents proceed to approval unless no approvers are assigned. Approval sequences allow multiple approvers arranged in ordered groups. Within a sequence, the first approver’s decision determines progression or cancellation. Successful final approval marks the document as ready for publishing.
- Document Publishing: Only after successful approval can a document be published. Publishing retires prior published revisions and cancels any ongoing workflows on earlier versions.
- Approval and Revision Rules: These rules use condition builders to apply approval logic to documents. Reviewers and approvers added via these rules are linked to documents meeting specified conditions. Direct additions on document records do not integrate into these rules.
- Email Integration: Approvers and reviewers can approve or reject document versions directly from email notifications, facilitating quicker responses.
Practical Outcomes
- Streamlined document governance through structured review and approval workflows.
- Clear notification mechanisms keep authors and owners informed of review and approval outcomes.
- Sequential and conditional approval sequences ensure proper oversight and accountability.
- Automated retirement of older revisions maintains document version integrity.
- Role-based controls secure the creation and modification of approval/review rules, preserving process integrity.
A reviewer approves or rejects the document. A document can have multiple reviewers. During the approval process, the approver approves or rejects the document. A document goes through the approval process after the review process. A document is published after the review and approval process.
A document can have a reviewer or multiple reviewers and no approvers and vice versa. You must have the platform_document_management_admin or admin role to create approval and review rules.
- Add approvers and reviewers to a document.
- Initiate the approval and review workflow for a document version.
- Publish the approved version.
- See the activity stream of the approval and review workflow.
All approvers and reviewers have read access to the documents that they’re approving.
Document approval revision rule
Document review
If the reviewer rejects the document, the author and owner are notified and the review is canceled. The author, owner, and reviewer should discuss what changes must be made to the document. If the reviewer approves the document, the author and owner are notified that the review was successful, and the document can move to the approval stage. If multiple reviewers are assigned to a document, the first reviewer to act dictates what happens to the document. For example, there are two reviewers, A and B.
If reviewer A acts first and rejects the document, the review process stops and the revision state is set to Canceled. Reviewer B receives a notification email stating that the review was rejected and the status is changed to No Longer Required. If reviewer A acts first and approves the document, the review process stops and the document can move to the approval stage. Reviewer B's status is changed to No Longer Required.
Document approval
After the document has been reviewed, submit the document for approval. If the document doesn’t have an approver, the approval process is omitted.
If the final approver approves the document, the author and the owner are notified. After the final approval is successful, the document stage changes to Ready for Publishing in the Document versions list.
- Sequence 1: Approvers A and B
- Sequence 2: Approvers C and D
- Sequence 3: Approver E
The sequences take place in ascending chronological order, approvers A and B receive the approval request first (approvers C, D, and E aren’t part of the process yet). Similar to the review process, the first approver to act within a sequence dictates what happens to the document. If approver A acts first and rejects the document, the approval process stops and the state is set to Canceled. Approver B's status is changed to No Longer Required. If approver A acts first and approves the document, the process stops and approver B's status is changed to No Longer Required. The document then moves to approval sequence 2. After at least one approver in each sequence approves the document, the author and the owner are notified that the document has been approved.
Publish a document
After a document has been created and edited, the revision can be submitted for draft review and final approval. After final approval, the document can be published.
If the approval and publishing process is repeated, the published revision is retired when the new revision is published. Any workflows running against previous revisions are canceled when the document is published.