User story for taking ownership of authoring review templates

When the functionality provided in the solution template does not satisfy your requirements, you can take ownership to author the review template. The following are common reasons to author your own review template:

• Your organization has simple, static review and approval workflows that are not modified often. In this case, it is unnecessary to provide non-technical users the option to author review templates.

• You want to further simply the user experience and therefore want to take on development of the review template within the IT organization.

• You are not planning to use the GlobalCorp solution template and plan to create your own user interface.

• You want to integrate or invoke Managed Review & Approval functionality into an existing application or custom LiveCycle processes.

When you are required to satisfy one of the mentioned reasons, you are taking ownership of creating and handling the XML file representing the review template. You can programmatically author the review template or author it using an XML editor. When you handle the creation of the review template, you are required to add, modify, and set values of the XML elements in the review template.

Use functions provided by the Review, Commenting, and Approval building block to handle and manage the review template. For example, after you author a review template, it is necessary for you to store it to make it available to review initiators. In this scenario, invoke building block services in custom processes created in Workbench or use the Java APIs or Flex APIs to store the review template.

Additional time to create a user interface is not part of the estimate. Consider reusing portions of the GlobalCorp solution template where applicable.

To author a review template using XML editing tools or develop applications to create a review template, complete the following tasks:

1. Define the name and description of the review template.

   Include a description of the review and approval workflow or standard operating procedure (SOP) in the review template. Since each review template is stored on the same system, a status to indicate whether it is available (or Active) for use is available. (See Creating review templates in Review, Commenting, and Approval Building Block 9.5 Technical Guide .)

2. Configure how stages start after one completes and whether comments are visible from one stage to another.

   You can configure your stages to start immediately after another stage completes, which is called straight-through processing . Alternatively, you can configure your review so that review initiator or moderator intervention is required to start the next stage. (See Configuring straight-through processing for stages in Review, Commenting, and Approval Building Block 9.5 Technical Guide .)

   You can configure whether reviewers can see comments from previous stages and whether stages execute immediately after one completes. (See Setting comment visibility in Review, Commenting, and Approval Building Block 9.5 Technical Guide .)

3. Define the number of stages in the review.

   When you define a stage, you typically assign a name. The name of the stage typically provides details to its purpose. (See Adding review and approval stages in Review, Commenting, and Approval Building Block 9.5 Technical Guide .)

4. Configure how a stage executes and whether the stage is a review or approval stage.

   The type of stage that you configure determines how it executes. You can choose to implement a stage as a parallel stage, which allows participants to add comments collaboratively. Alternatively, you can configure your stage as a serial stage that lets one participant at a time review or approve the content. You can also configure how users complete tasks for review and approval stages and whether digital signatures are required for approval stages. Users can complete tasks using Workspace or email.

   It is common to use both types of stages together. For example, in a two stage review, a review document is sent for feedback in the first stage. In the last stage, an approval is required. (See Adding review and approval stages in Review, Commenting, and Approval Building Block 9.5 Technical Guide .)

5. Define the length of time to complete each stage.

   You can set time frames for each stage to complete. The duration can be expressed in minutes, hours, or days. A stage is considered expired when required review participants do not complete the review. If you do not want the stage to expire in an absolute time frame, you can set the stage to never expire. (See Setting schedules for stages in Review, Commenting, and Approval Building Block 9.5 Technical Guide .)

6. (Optional) Add participants and reminders to each stage.

   You set reminders, add supporting documents, and add review participants. (See Add default participants , Add default supporting documents , and Adding reminders to stages in Review, Commenting, and Approval Building Block 9.5 Technical Guide .)

7. (Optional) Add supporting documents.

   You can add supporting documents to review template, which adds a document or URL that is not part of the review content to every review. (See Add default supporting documents in Review, Commenting, and Approval Building Block 9.5 Technical Guide .)

8. (Optional) Add auditing to reviews.

   When auditing is important for reviews, take time to understand your auditing requirements. You can customize the auditing and create different levels of audits for reviews. After you implement audit levels, you can add auditing to a review by adding an XML element to the review template. (See Configuring audits in Review, Commenting, and Approval Building Block 9.5 Technical Guide .)

9. After you complete your review template, use building block services to save the review template to the server. (See Creating review templates in Review, Commenting, and Approval Building Block 9.5 Technical Guide .)

To further enhance your review, add addition XML elements to the review template. (See User story for extending review template functionality .)

• To manually author a review template, use a text editor or XML editor. Alternatively, build an application similar in functionality to the solution template to author the review template.

• To store the review template to the LiveCycle server, use provided building block Java APIs or Flex APIs. Alternatively, create a Workbench 9.5 process and invoke it using Email, Watched Folders, web services, Java EJB, or LiveCycle Remoting.

• To use Java Server Pages, HTML, Java, Flex, and .NET, use integrated development environments such as Flash Builder, Eclipse, or DreamWeaver.

• XML, W3C XML schemas. (IT Staff, LiveCycle Developer, LiveCycle Programmer.)

• Building processes using Workbench 9.5 or applications to store the review template. (LiveCycle Developer, LiveCycle Programmer.)