What is the Under Signing by Author status?
The requirement in any document approval workflow is that everyone signs off on the same version of a document.
The Under Signing by Author status ensures that when an Author or Reviewer has made edits to a document that the Author can sign off on the same version.
This is to ensure that the document will only go to the Approver once all relevant updates have been agreed upon by the original Author of the document.
If there have been any version increases (edits) during Under Review status by either the Author/ Reviewer when the Reviewer signs-off on the document the document will be given Under Signing by Author status, and subsequently the Author who signed off before the version update will need to sign off again.
What can an Author do at the Under Signing by Author Status?
- 'Set to Under Signing by Approver' - this means they agree with the changes made by the Reviewer(s) and they sign off on the new version, following this action the document moves forward to the Approver(s).
- 'Reject to Draft' - the Author does not agree with the version signed off by the Reviewer(s) and wishes to push the Document back to Draft where only Author(s) can work on it.
- 'Reject to Under Review' - the Author wishes to push the Document back to Under Review where both the Author(s) and the Reviewer(s) can work on it.
It is also worth noting that if one Reviewer rejects any changes made, the item is sent back to Draft, even if all the Reviewers are required to sign off on the document.
(If you have configured that all Reviewers need to sign-off on a document then all the reviewers will need to review and sign-off on a document before it can continue in the workflow.)
Furthermore, if a Reviewer does not make any edits and no further updates are made by an Author in the meantime then the Reviewer has the option to push the document to the next workflow status or reject back to the Draft status.
This will mean that a document that has edits made during the Review status can then go directly to the Approver after the Under Signing by Author stage of the workflow has been signed off by the Author. However, depending on the set up of your workflow there are potentially 2 additional statuses following this where the document can be pushed back to Draft or Review status if further edits are required.
This article explains what options are available to each role in a document's workflow?