Out-of-the-Box Workflow Functions
SharePoint provides a range of user-friendly workflow functions, including:

• Approval: Routes a document to the designated people for approval. Approvers can approve or reject the document, request changes, or reassign the approval task.
• Group Approval: Similar to the Approval workflow, but uses a designated document library and offers a personalized view of the approval process(es) in which a user is participating. Group Approval provides a hierarchical organization chart from which approvers are selected and includes a solution that was designed specifically for East Asian Markets: approvers are allowed to use a stamp control instead of a signature to indicate their approval.
• Collect Feedback: Routes a document to the designated people for review. Feedback provided by the reviewers is automatically compiled and sent to the document owner when the workflow has completed.
• Collect Signatures: Gathers signatures needed to complete an Office document.
• Disposition Approval: Manages document expiration and retention by allowing participants to decide whether to retain or delete expired documents.
• Translation Management: Manages document translation by creating copies of the document to be translated and assigning translation tasks to translators.
• Issue Tracking: Manages the issue tracking process for active issues. Each time a team member completes an assigned task related to the issue, the issue’s owner is notified so that he or she can sign off on that task and move the issue to the next step in the process.

Versioning (i.e. Document Number System) Options
When you’re dealing with multiple versions of a document you need to have a system for numbering successive versions, so that everyone involved can easily tell which version they’re looking at. “Versioning” is the method by which successive iterations of a document are numbered and saved. Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 has three versioning options:

• None: No previous versions of documents are saved and no numbering system is used. In this case, previous versions of documents – and the comments that accompanied them – are not retrievable. This option is only recommended for document libraries that contain unimportant content or content that will never change.
• Major Versions Only: Numbered versions of documents are retained using a simple versioning scheme (such as 1, 2, 3). To control the impact on storage space you can specify how many previous versions to keep, counting back from the current version. Each time a new version of a document is saved all users with permissions to the associated document library are able to view the revised document. Major versioning is a good choice if everyone on a team needs to be able to view all iterations of each document, and if you do not need to be able to differentiate between draft and published versions.
• Major and Minor Versions: Numbered versions of documents are retained by using a major and minor versioning scheme (such as 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, 2.0, 2.1).

Auditing (Tracking Document Changes)
Auditing is an optional function that can be used to monitor changes that have been made to a document. If you need to keep track of who modified a document, and when and where the changes were made, auditing is the feature for you. Audit policies can be configured to automatically record user actions that affect the document content and/or lifecycle, including when items are edited, viewed, versioned, published, or deleted.

Document Check-In and Check-Out
To ensure that only one person makes changes to a document at a time, SharePoint allows you to require that users check documents in and out of a document library before editing them. It is always recommended that you do this, as requiring document check-in and check-out gives you better…

• Control of Version Creation: When a document is checked out, the author can save the document without checking it back in. Other users of the document library will not be able to see these changes and a new version is not created. A new version (visible to other users) is only created when an author checks in a document. This gives the author more flexibility and control.
• Capture of Metadata: When a document is checked in, the author can write comments that describe the changes made to the document. This promotes creation of an ongoing historical record of the changes made to the document.

Document Metadata
SharePoint’s metadata function provides a means for categorizing your content and, when implemented correctly, a way to ensure that search results will be more relevant within the context of specific users, roles and responsibilities. Similar to the Metatags used on web pages, metadata is essentially “information about information.” Facts about what’s been done to the document (and why) can be entered into the customizable Document Information Panel that is shown at the top of the document, as well as categorization, search terms, and other pertinent data.

Many organizations find that SharePoint’s document management capabilities save time, effort, and a great deal of frustration. If you’re finding it difficult to deal with document workflow – especially managing multiple updates to documents – than this is something that you ought to be looking at. Give us a call and one of our SharePoint experts will be happy to talk to you about your specific needs and how this solution could work for you.

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