Overview
The Controlled Document Management application organizes quality documents into categories and subcategories. These allow organizations to keep related documents together and define permissions on who can view and manage them.
When planning how you want to organize your quality documents, you may want to set up categories for each department or functional area in your organization. Permissions are set at the category level, so defining categories based on departments or functional areas makes it easier to give users access to the relevant documents.
Each category can have multiple subcategories. Subcategories are often defined for different document types, e.g., standard operating procedures, quality manuals, or work instructions. Defining subcategories for each document type makes it easier to find documents later because subcategories control the prefix used in document identifiers, e.g., the "SOP" in "SOP-12".
Category List
Domain administrators and Power Users with a role that includes the "can manage Controlled Documents"" capability have access to set up and manage categories and subcategories. To see the list of existing categories:
- Open the Controlled Document Management application.
- Choose Document Categories from the navigation bar on the left.
The category list shows all of the categories, their permissions, and whether they are active or disabled.
Adding a New Category
Before adding a new category, there are a few things you should set up in advance:
- A folder to store the documents for the category - you need to set up a folder in the Egnyte Collaboration file system where your controlled documents will be stored. For example, if you create a category for your Clinical team, you might create the folder /Shared/Controlled Documents/Clinical.
- A user group for users who will manage the category - users with "Category manager" permissions, will be able to add new quality documents, manage their effective dates, and retire the documents. They will also be able to see and download old, obsolete versions of documents. This group should be given either "Full" or "Owner" permissions to the folder defined for the category.
- A user group for users who will have access to view the documents in the category - users with "Category viewer" permissions will be able to view all of the Effective and Future Effective versions of documents in the category. These users will not be able to edit or change quality documents or their metadata. These users do not need to have permissions to the folder that stores the documents for the category.
After you have completed the steps above, you can create a new category by following these steps:
- Navigate to the Document Categories list
- Click the Add New Category button
- Give the category a name, e.g., "Clinical."
- Select the folder that you created to store the quality documents for this category
- Enter the group(s) for both the Category managers and the Category viewers
- Click Submit to save the category
Adding Subcategories
Once you have created a category, you can add subcategories to it. You must add at least one subcategory to each category since documents are added to subcategories. To add a subcategory:
- Click the category in the Document Categories list
- Click the Add new subcategory link above the Subcategories table
- Enter a name for the subcategory, e.g., "Standard Operating Procedure."
- Enter a prefix for the subcategory, e.g., "SOP." The prefix will be used when creating document identifiers. Documents in a category with a prefix of "SOP" will get identifiers like "SOP-1", "SOP-2", etc. You can use the same prefix in different subcategories (each in separate categories), but the document identifiers must be unique for a given prefix.
- You can select Allow downloading documents in the original file format if you want to allow all Quality app users with access to this subcategory to download the documents in their original file format.
Editing Categories and Subcategories
Once you have created categories and subcategories, administrators can edit them. All fields for categories are editable, but subcategories don't allow changes to the prefix field since that would change the identifier of documents.
Deactivating and Activating Categories and Subcategories
By default, categories and subcategories are created in an Active state. When in an active state, managers will be able to add documents to the category and subcategory. When deactivated, managers will not be able to add documents to the categories. Categories and subcategories can only be deactivated if there are no documents in them in either Future Effective or Effective statuses.
To change the status of a category:
- Click the category in the Document Categories list
- Choose the Deactivate or Active link in the bottom left corner of the screen
- Accept the confirmation to change the category status
To change the status of a subcategory:
- Click the category in the Document Categories list
- Scroll to the Subcategories list for the category
- Click the Deactivate or Activate link in the list
- Accept the confirmation to change the subcategory status