Document Lifecycle & Overview

Stay organized and compliant with streamlined document management

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Written by Lydia Olu-Harding
Updated over a week ago

How can modern life science businesses manage ever-growing, increasingly complex documentation stacks, and ensure the right information is viewed by the right person at the right time in an increasingly remote world?

Customers can rely on Qualio’s end-to-end document lifecycle controls. Watch the video below, or continue onto the different sections of this article that briefly describe the different phases of the document lifecycle and get you directed to the additional information you are looking for.

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Documents Workspace & Library

Navigating for documents is a breeze with the Documents Workspace. Use the ownership and stage filters to identify documents you are still composing, are out for review, need training, etc. Additionally, use tags to filter and the search bar. Because Basic users don’t have the ability to create or review documents, they don’t have access to the Documents Workspace, but they can access the Documents Library.

The Documents Library will only display Effective documents, in other words, documents that have been approved and are considered “official” within your organization. Every Qualio user has access to the Documents Library, however, some documents may have restricted visibility due to tags.

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Templates vs. Documents

A key principle of Document Management is to maintain consistency of a document type’s format, structure, and default content. Without the consistency of templates there may be critical components of your document missing and time will be wasted recreating tables, subheaders, etc.. That is why document creation begins with creating a document template.

Templates are the base structure of your document. If your body was a Qualio document, the template would be your skeleton. Use templates to:

  • build out default tables for forms

  • specify the structure of Procedures, Work Instructions, etc. using subheaders

  • create repositories for drawings,

  • format and title important lists

  • and more

Only Quality Users can view/modify templates and can access from the Documents tab on the top navigation bar.

For more information on creating and managing document templates, click here.

Draft a New Document

A cogent and ordered QMS is impossible without consistently enforced document formats and structures. That’s why the document creation process within Qualio is driven by templates. Each template is customized to fit your organization’s unique requirements.

After selecting the correct document template, build your documents with a feature rich editor and use Smartlinks to connect with the latest version of related documents.

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Review Documents

Collaboration is key during the review process. Send your document for review to the right people with guided workflows that notify reviewers, track unique versions, and an editor that allows inline commenting and suggestions for asynchronous collaboration.

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Approve Documents

No more chasing colleagues for signatures and approvals! With the Approval workflow, document authors can send the document for approval to qualified approvers, get digital signatures, and log everything to the automated Audit Trail. Once approved, documents can also be sent to trainees for training.

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Make Document Effective

Once approved, documents must be made effective before appearing in the Document Library for Qualio users to view. And if you want to restrict visibility of certain documents to specific groups, you can do that with Tags.

Effective documents represent approved policies, procedures, and assets your organization is committed to upholding.

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Document Training

An optional, but important step in a document’s lifecycle is to train your organization, or specific teams and users on what those documents say. Create an assessment for applicable documents that trainees must complete after reviewing the document to check for knowledge absorption.

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Complete a Periodic Review

Document authors decide how frequently a document should be reviewed and updated, then Qualio helps with an automated workflow when that time comes.

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Retire a Document

When documents become outdated it’s time to retire them, but never delete them. Find retired documents in the “Retired” bin, just in case you need to review or revive a document.

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Next Steps

Feeling confident about the entire document lifecycle and ready to get started with document creation? Start with document templates. Or go back to exploring the Document Library and Workspace.

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