Document approval is used in the production of documents that are to meet a certain quality standard. After being created and edited, a document is checked by one or more responsible persons and finally released or rejected. In the case of rejection, the process can also be run through several times after reprocessing.
In BSCW, document release is defined for individual documents or entire folders by specifying the individual steps of the review and the persons entrusted with it. If document sharing is defined for a folder, it applies to all documents of that folder and all its subfolders.
Figure 74: Document release (schematic representation, 2 release steps)
After the process has been defined, the release for a document can be started by a member of the folder in which the document is located. The document is placed under version control and is blocked from further editing for the duration of the review. The people involved in reviewing the document are notified by email when the review is pending and can now review the document and either accept or reject it. The individual steps of the approval process are run through one after the other. If a document is accepted in the last step, it is thus released. Rejecting the document at any step ends the approval process and the document can be edited again and subjected to the approval process once more. The initiator of the approval process is also notified of approval or rejection by email.