In BIMcollab, document approval is part of the document management process. Documents can be approved (listed in the Published Documents tab) in one of two ways, depending on whether the document is part of a workflow:
If not part of a workflow: This can be done manually from the Document Details page
If it is part of a workflow: Approval happens based on the outcome of a Review task
⚠️ Attention: By default, users can view documents in the Published category. If a user need saccess to Shared (non-published) documents,t he administrator needs to enable it on the project level per project team role, or on a phase level
by going to Workgroup role > Permissions and checking the box for "Has access to non-published documents."
Approve a Document Manually
📝 Note: To be able to manually approve documents, users need to be in an appropriate project user role, or a phase role with appropriate permissions, including the permission to "Manually approve documents".
Document versions can be approved at any point using the [Approve] button on the document details page.
Go to the documents tab.
Select the document number you would like to approve.
Click on the [Approve] button located in the action bar.
A window will appear asking if you would like to publish the latest version of the document. Click on "Yes, publish".
The document is now visible in the Published Documents list.
Once a document version has been approved, the Approve document button will disappear. Only once a new document version has been uploaded, then this button will become available again.
The information about the approval, including the person who approved it, is logged in the Events tab of the document details page.
Approve a PDF document with a stamp
Specifiaclly for PDF docuemnts, you can add an approval stamp to the document when manually publishing.
From the documents tab, select a PDF document you would like to approve.
Click on the [Approve] button located in the action bar.
A window will appear asking you if you would like to add a stamp. You can select only stamps based on the existing Approved stamp type, Rejected stamp type is not available.
Preview the selected stamp in the same window, and publish the document. The stamp will be placed on the front page of the PDF document in the position determined by the stamp setting.
Approve a Document through a Review
If a document is part of a Workflow, documents can also be approved through the completion of Review Tasks. When the administrator creates a Review action, there is an optional "To publish" checkbox. If this is selected, once the review task is approved, the associated documents will appear in the Published folder. The outcome of the review - Approved or Rejected - not only determines the subsequent step in the workflow, but also determines the status the review task will receive, and under which filter the document it will appear.
With this option, documents can only be approved by the responsible person of the Review Task. The completion of this will also be attached to a deadline as determined in the workflow.
If the “To publish” checkbox is not selected, an approved review task does not publish the document. The document stays in the Shared category with an approved icon and does not appear in the Published folder. Use this for intermediate reviews, when a document needs several rounds of feedback and approval before it is final. To publish the document, add a final Review action with the “To publish” checkbox selected to the workflow.
💡 Tip: For more information on how regular users can view the details of workflows that are created for a project as well as their associated documents, refer to this article: View active workflows as a user
An action is triggered in a workflow that requires a document Review Task to begin, and the responsible persons are assigned to this.
If the review task has the “To publish” checkbox selected, the document moves to the Published folder when approved. Otherwise, it stays in Shared with an approved icon.
A responsible person will then complete the review task by selecting the [Approve] button for the relevant Review task.
The document will then move from the Shared category to the Published category
When a new document version is uploaded, another Review task is automatically triggered if the new version’s metadata matches the Workflow criteria. The review process for this version starts again in the Shared folder, marked with the “Older version has been published” icon. Meanwhile, the previous version stays in the Published folder. The new version replaces it in the Published folder only when a Review task with the “To publish” checkbox selected is approved. If a review without “To publish” is approved, the new version stays in Shared with an approved icon, and the previous version remains published.
💡 Tip: For more information on how to handle Review Tasks, refer to this article: Review tasks
📝 Note: It is only possible to use one of the above methods to approve a document. If a document enters a workflow with a Review Task, the manual approval button will automatically become unavailable (greyed out).