DynamicPolicy™ provides an advanced workflow capability that enables a document Owner to define policy reviewers, approvers, and audiences in advance of promoting the policy document through each stage of the policy cycle.

You may create configurable workflows that apply to specific categories or types of policies.   This enables the assignment of groups or individuals who have recurring responsibility for the review, approval and publication of policies in a particular category or on behalf of a specific department.  For example, you may define an IT workflow for Information Technology policies so that the same group of designated managers reviews all policies, and a designated leader approves all policies.  When a policy is created using the IT workflow, the document reviewers and approvers are automatically assigned based on the workflow definition.  The creator of the workflow can specify whether any of the review, approval or publication responsibilities may be changed for an individual document created using the workflow (e.g., assigning additional or alternate reviewers or approvers).

Using the workflow capability, the Owner may define reviewer, approver, and audience groups outside the document creation process, using the same procedure as when the Owner promotes the Draft policy to Review, Review to Approval, and Approval to Published.

You may create a new workflow from either of two places from the Management | Policies tab:  The “Workflow Center” in the Navigation box in the upper left corner of the page, or “Add Workflow” under the Content Menu.

Follow these steps to create and configure a new workflow: 

1.Go to the Management | Policy Center screen.

2.Click the Workflow Center in the Navigation box.

3.In the Workflow Center, click Create Workflow. The new workflow screen appears.

4.Enter the name of the new workflow and press Save. The workflow is saved as a draft:

5.To complete the workflow definition, click the name of the workflow you wish to edit in the Draft Workflows section:

6.The workflow screen will display:

When creating a new or editing an existing workflow, you may change the owner of the workflow by clicking Owner in the Tools menu. The Change owner popup box will appear:

You may also create a copy of the workflow (by clicking Copy) to replicate the existing workflow.

For each workflow, you will define the groups or individuals assigned to review or approve the policy, and the audience(s) to whom the policy is targeted (“Published”).   You may also specify an individual who may publish the document after it has received the necessary approvals.  When the Allow to Change boxes are checked, the assigned reviewers, approvers, publisher or audiences may be modified for an individual document during the policy creation and review cycle.  If you do not want to allow changes to the individuals or groups specified in the workflow definition, uncheck the Allow to Change box for any of the stages or actions for which changes should not be permitted.  To assign responsibilities for document review, follow these steps:

1.Under the workflow Stages, click Review. The Select Group popup box will appear:

2.Click the right arrow and select a group from the drop-down list, then press the “+” button to add the selected group as a reviewer:

3.The group will be added.  After all reviewers have been selected, press Send to save the changes.

Follow the same steps to assign groups or individuals for the rest of the stages of the policy workflow, and to change the owner of the workflow. To change the individual who may publish the policy, select the name of the assigned publisher to the right of the Published by field name.

When all roles for the workflow have been assigned, you may either save the workflow as a draft by pressing press Save, or you may complete it and make it available by pressing Finish.  If you finish the workflow, it will appear as an Assigned Workflow in the Workflow Center, and will be available for use in document creation.

All new documents created using the workflow will contain the pre-defined reviewer, approver, audience, and publisher assignments.  The owner may change the role assignments for the workflow at any time.

When there are assigned workflows, you will select the appropriate workflow when you create a new document in DynamicPolicy^TM. When prompted for a workflow for a new document, simply select the appropriate workflow, and press Save: