Quality Management System Workflow
- Robert Alexander Marshall
Quality Management System (QMS) workflow
A compliance review focussed workflow that has four states.
Documents
start in Draft
transition to In Approval
then to Approved for published content
The fourth state Obsolete is used to indicate that the document is retired - no new versions are expected
This workflow uses an e-signature process (user email and one-time password authorization) for each approval
Users or group of users that are allowed to approve the In Approval state content can be restricted. This list is configured at space level, by the space administrators and the workflow will assign these reviewers
Assigned reviewers receive a custom email notification on the workflow transition to the In Approval state
Workflow States
This workflow is ideal for teams that need to demonstrate compliance with guidelines, rules, or standards. This could include ISO standards, FDA regulations, or even internal corporate standards. The workflow utilizes multiple states.
Workflow State | Description |
|---|---|
Draft |
|
In Approval |
Assigned reviewers are emailed when the state changes to In Approval. These notifications are created by the workflow on a transition into the state. |
Published |
|
Obsolete |
|
Adding or removing a label or attachment does not action the updated transition when the content is in the In Approval, Obsolete or Published state. The updated transition only occurs if the content is edited and published (changing the Confluence page version).
E-signature in the Quality Management System workflow
All the approvals in this workflow (in the Draft , the In Approval and the Published state) require users who have been assigned to the content review to use their email and a one-time password (OTP) to confirm their identity when registering an approval.
Approvals (content reviews) are disabled in the workflow popup until the email and a token are entered.
Reviewers are prompted to setup a personal code when they first visit a page in the content review state and access the workflow popup.
As a reviewer, to be able to electronically sign for Document Approvals you will need:
your mobile device with a 2 Factor Authentication (2FA) app
your email address that you use to login to Confluence
This setup only needs to be undertaken by a user once in each instance. However, the 2FA app tokens are time-limited.
You need to use a time-based token generated by the authentication app each time you approve a page that requires an e-signature approval.
Entering the email address and token activates the approval buttons for the reviewer. These are validated when the Approve or Reject decision is made by the reviewer for the content review.
Set approvers using space parameters
The Quality Management System workflow automatically assigns reviewers to the content review in the In Approval state.
A space admin can set the list of users or groups as controlled document approvers for the content review by choosing the @Parameters lozenge in the space document control dashboard.
make the Quality Management System Workflow active
choose the @Parameters lozenge
Add users or user groups as parameter values to the dialog box.
The parameter values are retrieved by the applied workflow on a related workflow event. The user values for the parameter are assigned as reviewers to the In Approval state review on the transition to the In Approval state.
These reviewers undertake the final approval for the documents before reaching the final state - Published.
All assigned reviewers must undertake the content review and agree to Approve or Reject the content for the workflow to transition.
Space workflow
workflow-assigned reviewers are changed by editing the workflow parameters in the space tools Document Control dashboard
updated values for the reviewers are used on the next transition to the In Approval state
Page workflow
as a page workflow, the users to be assigned to the review in the In Approval state are added as document parameters.
values are set when initially adding the workflow
value can be amended using the Manage Page Parameters option in the page tools menu