17.2 Starting a review

A review is created by selecting a set of documents to be reviewed in the usual way and clicking on Selected | Review.

The stages of creating a review are very similar to creating an issue. The first stage is to decide who the reviewers are, if any - selected in the same way as specifying the distribution list of an issue (see Figure 17.2-1).

Figure 17.2-1: Example of setting the review distribution list

A review is unlike an issue in that it is possible not to specify who the reviewers are to be. If no reviewers are specified, the review has an Open Distribution (see section 17.8 - Open Distribution) and so is available for comment by any folder member.

Selecting the type of review dictates what review fields will be available for reviewers to complete. The Type of review drop-down contains all of the issue types available in the current location plus the option No Type which employs the default issue type defined on the server. The default issue type is defined on a per server basis by the system administrator. Therefore, it is not possible to make any hard and fast statements about the response information required from users on a review using this type. The other types in the drop-down list are the issue types (see section 13.2.7 - Issue Type) available at the current level. Clicking "Next" progresses the review set-up to the next stage.

At this point, the details which can be specified on a review are almost identical to those available on an issue, as described in section 15.2.3 - The Issue Details and illustrated in Figure 17.2-2.

Figure 17.2-2: Example of setting the review actions

The significant difference is that the Response Type, Due Date and Comment & Action Notes fields may only be assigned a single value, not one per reviewer. (Thus the label All Users in the User column is exactly that - a text label and not a hyperlink.)
If no name is given, the review will be assigned a unique name depending on its Business Collaborator ID.

Clicking "Next" creates the review, indicated by , in a collection called Issues. If such a collection does not exist in the current location, it will be created.

Figure 17.2-3: Example of an open review which is available to receive responses

Unlike an issue, a review is available to receive responses from the instant it is created. At the point where the review is created, you are refreshed to the Review page - see Figure 17.2-3 - which is equivalent to the Issue Sheet and includes similar information. Full details of what an Issue Sheet displays are given in section 15.2.4 - The Issue Sheet and so only differences are highlighted here. The differences are:

• As there is no concept of sending out a review, the Review page does not have a progress bar or information relating to when it was sent out
• The Reviewer column of a Review page is equivalent to the Issued To column for an Issue Sheet
• As reviews cannot be delegated (see section 15.4.4 - Delegating an action), this column is omitted
• The Responses section of the page is considerably simplified by the fact that reviews only require responses as defined by the issue type of the review and this is not influenced by whether the issue type has field sets in common with those in the document type(s) under review
• In addition to the standard Date Responded and Complete columns, reviews have an additional Hidden column - see section 17.6.

Note also that a review has an empty Responses section at the bottom of the page as soon as it is created. Creating a review records a "New" event for the review.

As a result of creating a review, the Tasks In and Tasks Out columns (see section 15.4.3 - Tasks) will be updated to show tasks for the reviewers and the person who created the review respectively.