Approve Document

When the document is completed, it can be sent for approval.

The Approval stage of the lifecycle initiates the following events:

  • The document is locked meaning that unique permissions are applied to the document which removes edit capabilities from users with “contribute” permissions.
  • The document is incremented to the next minor version.
  • The Lifecycle Status is set to “In Approval”.
  • The Workflow Status is set to “eTMF Approval Workflow In Progress”.
  • An approval workflow is initiated and the initiator is prompted for approvers.
  • eApproval tasks are generated for each of the approvers selected.
  • An email notification advising of the assigned approval task is sent to each of the approvers.

To begin the approval process, the user will:

  1. Select Change Lifecycle Status from NextDocs on the document’s context menu.
  2. Enter the User-ID(s) of the approver(s) and validate by clicking on the validation button, or search for an approver or approvers using the people picker.
  3. Click on the “Start Workflow” button.


The approval process initiates a workflow and updates the Workflow Status to “eTMF Approval Workflow In Progress”. The Workflow Overview screen contains the Workflow Status Details, User Actions, Workflow Tasks and a link to the technical details for the currently “in progress” approval workflow.