6.6 Deprecated document reviewing

The recommended method of reviewing documents in Business Collaborator version 4.9 is described in Section 17 - Reviewing. This section is only included for backwards compatibility where document reviews had already been constructed using the previous functionality.

6.6.1 Introduction

6.6.2 Starting a document review

6.6.3 Adding reviewer's comments

6.6.4 Reading reviewer's comments

6.6.5 Adding fields to the review form

6.6.1 Introduction

In the course of producing a document, it must invariably be reviewed - someone other than the document author must read the document and judge it, often against a predefined set of criteria, then the reviewer must return their comments to the document author to make some changes in the light of the comments. Often, there are several reviewers making comments about the document, perhaps each criticising different aspects of the document.

There are several aspects of a review which are important: It must be kept with the document as it is an important record of the factors influencing the development of the document.

• It must be possible to identify the comments of each reviewer.
• It should be obvious when the reviewer made their comments.
• It should be clear what aspects of the document the reviewer is commenting on at any one time.
• Reviewers must be able to review documents no matter what format they are in.

The document reviewing feature within Business Collaborator satisfies all these criteria and is easy to set up and use.

6.6.2 Starting a document review

Click on [Start Reviewing]. It will usually be one of the document authors or a document editor who does this. The editor is then presented with a form (as shown in Figure 6.6-1) to fill in to allow them to prescribe the different fields which the reviewer must complete.

The default set is:

• Reviewer - which may be automatically completed with the reviewer's name when the reviewer submits their review.
• Date- which may be automatically completed with the date when the reviewer submits their review.
• Comments - a general paragraph in which the reviewer may type in their comments in an unstructured manner.

Often, the default set of fields is quite sufficient for a document review. If this is the case, the editor should click on "Apply Changes". On returning to the folder containing the document, the    icon will be visible beside the document to be reviewed. Additional fields can be added as described in section 6.6.5.

Figure 6.6-1: Setting up a document for reviewing.

6.6.3 Adding reviewer's comments

To add their comments, a reviewer should click on  |  Review  for the document to be reviewed. A form (as shown in Figure 6.6-2 will appear with fields into which the reviewer may enter their comments. If the default fields have been used, there will only be a single text box into which the reviewer may type text (the Comments field). (The remaining fields will be automatically completed by the system.) When the reviewer has finished entering their comments, they should click on "Add review" to submit their comments.

If there is a red arrow in the 'required' column beside any text box, something must be entered in this field or the system will not accept this to be a valid review.

If non-default fields have been added, the reviewer should enter text in all the boxes as shown. When the reviewer has finished entering their comments, they should click on "Add review" to submit their comments.

After a reviewer has added their comments, the    icon will appear to indicate that the document has been reviewed.

Figure 6.6-2: The Review page.

6.6.4 Reading reviewer's comments

To view reviewers' comments, click on the    icon which will display all of the comments which reviewers have already supplied. These comments will be displayed as:

Figure 6.6-3: The View Reviews page.

Review comments may also be added from this page by clicking  View/Change   |  Review  .

6.6.5 Adding fields to the review form

The editor can add as many additional fields as he wishes to the review form which all the reviewers must complete. For instance, he may wish to separate the comments on each section into a different paragraph. In this case, he must first add as many additional fields as he wishes to add.

If the editor wishes to add fields to the review form initially, he does this by selecting the required number of fields in the list box and pressing the "Go" button. If the editor wishes to add more fields to an existing review form, he should click on the    icon. On the Document reviews page which appears, he should then click on  View/Change  |  Edit Fields  to go to the Document Review Fields page.

Fields where the entries are only going to be a few words long should be set to type "string". Where a longer piece of text is likely to be entered by reviewers, the type "paragraph" should be selected. Other types which may be used include: date, time, date and time, email address and web link (URL). (For more information on these types, see section 8.3.3.) The URL (web link) type is very useful for inserting a link to another document. For instance, this would be used if the document reviewer wished to add or alter a significant amount of text from the original document. He would upload his amended version of the document (or a document containing his additions), then add a link in the review form to this document so that the author could go directly to the new text when reading the review.