Establish Approval Process — Key Exercises

Required Data

This exercise requires that you have completed the following exercises:

• Create Document Title and Revision

• Create Document File

Basic Data Setup

Creating a Document Group

A document group can be used when defining the access and approval process. A document group consists of one or several persons. You will now create a group consisting of yourself, Damon Hill, and Eddie Irvine.

Purpose: The purpose of this exercise is to create a document group that will be used when defining the document access. 

Windows:
Document Basics/Document Group

1. Open the Document Basic window and click the Document Group tab.
2. Create a new group named XX (where XX is your initials).
3. In the Group ID field, enter a short description (e.g., Race Car project group).

 General exercise for Document Groups

Creating an Approval Template

Purpose: The purpose of this exercise is to create an approval template to which you can later import to the documents. An approval template defines the steps of an approval process.

Windows:
Document Management/Basic Data/Document Basic/Approval Template

1. Open the Document Basic window and click the Approval Template tab.
2. In the Approval Template field, create a new approval template named XXINSTR (where XX is your initials) and enter a short description (e.g.,  Approval of assembly instructions).
3. Click in the table and create the following approval process:

4. Save the template (F12).

Result: You have created an approval template, where the first step should be approved by at least one member of the XX group (where XX are your initials) and by Damon Hill, the second by Eddie Irvine.

Main Exercises

Purpose: The purpose of this lesson is to practice on how to import an approval template.

Windows:
Document Revision/Access

Importing an Approval Template

In this exercise, we will use an already defined template for the approval process. It is possible, however, to create an approval process for each document directly on the Access tab. When an already defined approval template is copied to a specific document, the Approval Templ field in the Development tab gets updated with the approval template that was connected. This value remains in the Development tab even if the approval template is removed or new approval lines are added or deleted in the approval tab. If there is more than one approval template connected, only the template that was last connected will be shown. There is also provision to copy an approval template from the Development tab. The corresponding approval lines will appear in the Approval tab. But if you delete this entry from the Development tab there will be no effect in the Approval tab. 

1. Open the Document Revision window.
2. Query (F3) for the following search criteria:

3. Click the Approval tab.
4. Right-click and then click Copy Approval Template.
5. In the Template field, select XXINSTR from the List of Values.
6. Click OK.

Note: The approval steps of the template are entered in the table. 

7. Select the row containing DAMON and click Remove (the red X sign on the toolbar). 
8. Select the row containing EDDIE and click Remove (the red X sign on the toolbar).
9. Save the changes. (The rows are not removed until you save the changes.)

Result: Only group XX (where XX is your initials) should now remain as the approver and the approval list should look like this:

Note: It is possible to make changes in the approval process even if you are using a template. The changes will only apply for your document revision, not for the template itself.