ALB includes document routing functionality that enables fee earners to review documents on screen and approve or reject them, before they are committed to paper.
For your firm to take advantage of this feature, the system administrator must enable document routing in Utilities - System Parameters.
To work with document routing, fee earners and support staff need to create a view for My Home Page that contains the Document Review element; see Customising My Home Page.
As a fee earner, you use the Document Review element of My Home Page to view a list of matter-related documents produced by a support staff member for a given period. By default, you will see all documents produced today with status Ready for Review. After checking a document, you can approve or reject it.
As a support staff member, you create documents as normal and they are automatically given status Ready for Review and can be viewed by the fee earner. You later check for rejected and approved documents.
Amend any rejected documents and change their status to Ready for Review so that they reappear in the fee earner's list.
Send approved documents to print, email or fax.
A typical document review process is set out in the following table.
|
Stage |
Who does this? |
Description |
Where? |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Document creation |
Member of support staff |
Produces a document, quick letter or form. The document's status is automatically set to Ready for Review. |
Matter Details or a case management module |
|
Document review and status update |
Fee earner |
Reviews list of documents that have status Ready for Review. For each document, updates its status to Approved or Rejected. |
My Home Page - Document Review element |
|
Rejected document amendment |
Member of support staff |
Checks for any rejected documents, amends them and updates their status to Ready for Review. These documents return to the Document review and status update stage. |
My Home Page - Document Review element |
|
Approved document distribution |
Member of support staff |
Reviews list of documents that have status Approved. Sends documents to Print, Email or Fax. |
My Home Page - Document Review element |
There are seven preset document statuses, listed in the table below, and the system administrator can add any additional ones required by your firm, via Utilities - Core PMS.
|
Document Status |
Meaning |
|---|---|
|
Ready for Review |
Document is ready for review by the fee earner |
|
Approved |
Document has been checked and can be sent |
|
Rejected |
Document needs to be amended and then rechecked |
|
Printed |
Document has been printed |
|
Emailed |
Document has been emailed |
|
Faxed |
Document has been faxed |
|
New |
Document has been imported or is a copy of a document on the client record |
A status can be set up as a restricted usage status. This means that unless a user has permission to use restricted statuses, they will not be able to change a document to this status. Permission is set up by the system administrator in Utilities - System Licensing & Users.
Example
Support staff shouldn’t be able to set a document to a status that approves the document, so such statuses need restricted usage.
Related topics
Customising My Home Page