Understanding review and approval stages

The Solution Accelerator provides a number of stage types to encapsulate the types of workflows you can execute as follows:

• Serial review: Each reviewer in the stage comments and completes the review one at a time, sequentially. The order in which reviewers participate in the review depends on the order that they were listed in the review template.

• Parallel review: All reviewers in the stage can add comments and complete reviews at the same time.

• Serial Approval: Each approver participates in the approval process one at a time, sequentially. The order in which approvers participate in the review depends on the order that they were listed in the review template.

• Parallel Approval: Approvers in the stage can approve or reject the review at the same time.

There is flexibility to define the number, sequence, and mix of review and approval stages to reflect varying review and approval workflow requirements. For example, the review template can define the stages as parallel review- serial review-serial approval review . Then, in another review template, the stages can be defined as parallel review- serial approval-parallel review-serial approval .

Each stage can define one or more of the following parameters:

• Review stage identifier: The name for the stage.

• Stage Duration: The length of time the participants have to complete the review or approval of the content. The time frame can be days, hours, minutes, or business days. The minimum duration is 10 minutes.

• Expiring stage: Specifies whether the stage expires after the time for the stage duration has past. When disabled, it allows reviewers who missed the deadline to complete their task and lets the review continue instead of ending.

• Task Type: Defines whether the review is completed using LiveCycle Workspace 9, a connected review using Email, or a Custom Task Type. Custom tasks are optional processes that you create in Workbench 9.5. The custom processes can change how a task is assigned to and completed by participants.

• Custom processes: LiveCycle processes that execute before and after the stage. They do not modify the review behavior but perform tasks to enhance the review process, such as watermarking review documents.

• Reminders: Specifies whether reminders are sent and when they are sent relative to the stage duration.

• Wait for expiry: Specifies to wait until the stage duration expires before marking a stage complete or expired. By default, a stage is considered complete when all required participants have completed their review or approval task.

• Participants in the review: The reviewers, moderators, and approvers in a stage that are automatically added to the review. Only participants assigned to a stage can access the review document.

  A set of review participants is defined for each stage. Each stage can have a different set of review participants.

Reviews are considered complete when all stages defined in it are complete. A stage is considered completed when all mandatory reviewers have either completed their tasks by clicking Mark Review Complete, Needs Rework, or Declined.

In the scenario where the wait for expiry option is set, the stage does not complete until the time duration is reached.

For example, five mandatory reviewers and three optional reviewers are given three days to review a document. All mandatory reviewers complete the review in the first day. Though the stage is technically considered complete, the next stage in the review does not start until the duration for the stage expires. In this scenario, the wait for expiry option is useful to give optional reviewers an opportunity to provide feedback.

When the stage duration expires, completion criteria is evaluated to determine whether the next stage is executed. For example, in the case of an approval stage, if any one approver selects reject, the stage and review terminates. A review can only progress to the next stage when all approvers select approve. Voting capabilities are not used in the Solution Accelerator.

If the wait for expiry parameter is set, then completion is evaluated when the duration of the stage has elapsed. A stage can also expire if the required participants do not complete the review before the deadline date. An expired stage ends, or expires the review. Any subsequent stages are not started. When stages are set as non-expiring, a stage that expires does not end the review.

Comments in one stage can be visible to participants in other stages if a parameter in the review template is configured to allow so. Alternatively, participants can be limited to seeing comments only in the stage in which they participate.

For approval stages, approvers do not see comments entered during review stages.

When a stage completes successfully, the next stage starts when the review initiator starts it. Alternatively, stage progression can be configured to automatically start the next stage once the preceding stage completes, called straight-through processing . Straight-through processing is useful in reviews where no requirements exist for manual intervention by a review initiator. When straight-through processing is not used, the review initiator is required to start each stage manually.

If any required reviewers indicate that changes are required to the document, it is returned to the review initiator. The review initiator makes the appropriate adjustments based on the comments provided by the reviewers. After the review initiator adjusts the content of the document, they can generate a new version of the content and upload it to the review. Review initiators can either revise (restart) the review stage or the entire review. After a stage or review has been revised, participants are notified that a new version of the content is available for review. If necessary, older versions of the content can be made available for reviewers to reference.