How controlled documents work (EDMS)

The EDMS (Electronic Document Management System) is myWork's quality-management library for controlled documents — the SOPs, policies, manuals, forms and specifications that the business has to keep accurate, approved and read by the right people.

A controlled document is not just a file. It has a version, a formal review-and-approval path, a named audience who must read and sign it, a retention rule, and a complete audit trail of everything that ever happened to it. This article explains how that works, end to end.

Controlled vs. uploaded. The EDMS can also hold plain “Uploaded PDF” files for reference. Those are informational only — they skip review, approval and sign-off entirely and live in their own Uploaded Files tab. Everything below is about controlled documents.

Where to find it

The EDMS lives under the top-level EDMS menu. What you see depends on your permissions.

Your home Dashboard also shows an “Open Signing Queue” tile whenever you have documents waiting to be acknowledged.

The people involved

Every controlled document carries an approval matrix — a list of job positions and the role each one plays. There are four roles:

• Author / owner — creates the draft, writes the content, and sets everything up. Only the author (or an admin) can edit a draft.
• Reviewers — check the content during the Review stage and vote.
• Approvers — give the final sign-off during the Approval stage and vote.
• Audience — the people who must read and sign the document once it is published.

The matrix is built from job positions, not named individuals — so whoever currently holds that position is the one who has to act. Each document type can carry a default matrix (a “rule”), so common reviewers, approvers and audiences are added automatically; rule-added rows show a “Per Rule” badge and can't be removed by hand.

The document lifecycle

A controlled document moves through a fixed set of states. Each forward step is deliberate, and the system advances the document automatically once everyone in a stage has voted.

1. Draft

A new document starts as a Draft — the only editable stage. The author:

• writes the content in the rich editor (formatting, tables, images, inline links) — or uploads a source PDF instead, in which case that PDF becomes the document;
• sets the audience, reviewers and approvers in the approval matrix;
• optionally adds compliance standards and traceability links;
• can use Save (drafts also auto-save every 30 seconds), Preview, and the Discussion tab to talk things through with reviewers using @-mentions and anchored comments (see Discussion, below).

When it's ready, the author clicks Submit for review. Two things are checked first: there must be no unresolved discussion comments, and every pasted image must have alt text. Submitting freezes the content, title, audience and approver list — from here on, editing requires sending it back to Draft.

2. Review

Each assigned reviewer opens the document and votes:

• Approve — records their sign-off; or
• Request changes — sends the document straight back to Draft, clears all votes, and records their comment (a comment is required).

A reviewer who already approved can Revoke approval to re-open their vote while the document is still in Review. Once every reviewer has approved, the document advances to Approval automatically.

3. Approval

The same voting happens with the assigned approvers. When the last approver approves, the document is published automatically in the same step. An approver (or an admin) can also Invalidate the document here, with a mandatory reason.

4. Published

The document is now live. Publishing a new version automatically marks the previous published version as Superseded (kept, but clearly archived). At this point the read-and-sign obligation kicks in for the audience — see the next section.

Going back, or stopping

• Return to draft — the author or an admin can pull a document in Review or Approval back to Draft (clearing all votes) to make further changes.
• Discard / Invalidate — a document can be cancelled with a required reason from Draft (Discard) or Approval (Invalidate). Discarded documents disappear from readers' lists but are kept for the audit trail — nothing is ever truly deleted.

Discussion: comments, replies and resolving them

Every document — while it's in Draft, Review or Approval — has a Discussion tab for talking through the content without leaving the page. There are two ways to raise a point:

• Anchored (in-text) comments — select a passage in the Content tab and click the 💬 bubble that appears. The comment pins to that exact text (shown as a yellow highlight) and also appears in Discussion with a “Show in text” link back to it.
• General comments — type straight into the box at the top of the Discussion tab when there's no specific passage to point at.

A banner at the top of Discussion nudges you toward anchored comments — pointing at the exact sentence is easier for everyone to follow than a general comment that could be about anything.

Replying. Click Reply under any comment to answer it directly. The reply nests underneath, one level deep, so a question-and-answer thread stays together instead of scattering into unrelated new top-level comments. @-mention a participant in a comment or a reply to pull them in even if they haven't commented yet — they're notified in the document's chat channel.

Resolving. A comment can be marked resolved (and unresolved again) by the document's admin, its author, or the person who posted that comment — so whoever raised the point can close it out themselves once they're happy with the answer, without waiting on the author. Only top-level comments count toward the submit gate: every one of them must be resolved before the document can be submitted for review, but an unresolved reply never blocks it.

Handing over a document (release & claim)

Ownership can be handed over without naming a specific person. The current owner (or a QMS admin) releases the document, and it becomes available for any document author to claim. Whoever claims it becomes the new owner and the author of the current version.

• Release — on the document page the owner clicks Release ownership. The document is now unowned: it shows an “Available to claim” banner and appears under “Documents available to claim” on the dashboard and in File Manager.
• Claim — any document author opens it and clicks Claim ownership. They immediately become the owner and the author shown on the document; earlier versions keep their original author.

This is separate from a document’s Draft → Review → Approval status — a document can be released or claimed at any stage. Every release and claim is recorded in the audit trail and posted to the document’s chat channel.

Linking to another document or an uploaded file

While writing a document you can turn any text into a hyperlink — to another controlled document, or to a separate file you upload into the EDMS (for example a blank PDF form, a template, or a supplier manual you did not author). This is the right way to make a supporting file downloadable to your readers: put the file in the EDMS and link to it, rather than pasting a network-drive or personal-cloud path that other people can’t open.

Reference file vs controlled document — pick one:

• A plain reference file (a blank form, a template, a manual) that does not need its own review / approval / sign-off → upload it as an Uploaded File (Step 1). Anyone signed in can open and download it.
• A file that must itself be governed (versioned, reviewed, acknowledged) → create and publish it as a controlled document instead, then link to it the same way. Do not use the POLICY type for something you want everyone to download — POLICY PDFs are download-restricted to their reviewers / approvers / audience.

Step 1 — Upload the file into the EDMS

1. Open EDMS ▸ File Manager.
2. Click Upload PDF.
3. Choose the PDF and give it a clear, findable title (e.g. “Weekend Guest List / Gate Roster Form”) — you’ll search for it by this title or its code in the next step.
4. Save. It appears in the Uploaded Files tab as an Uploaded File. Uploaded files are informational only (no review, approval or sign-off) and are readable and downloadable by any signed-in user.

Step 2 — Link to it from your document

1. Open your document in the editor. If it is in Review or Approval it is frozen for editing — use Return to Draft first (author or QMS admin), then continue.
2. On the Content tab, select the text that should become the link.
3. Click the link button in the editor toolbar.
4. In the popup, use “🔍 …or search a document by name or code”, type the file’s title or code, and pick it from the results. The hyperlink is inserted on your selected text.
5. Save — and resubmit for review if you returned the document to Draft.

How readers download it

When a reader clicks the link, the PDF opens directly in a new tab — they can view it there and download it. (A link to a controlled document instead opens that document’s reader page.) Access is still checked when it opens, but uploaded files and published documents are readable by everyone signed in, so your whole audience can get the file.

Good to know:

• Upload (or publish) the target first, then link. A link to a file that isn’t in the library yet — or to a document still in draft — resolves to nothing, or to “no access”, for your readers. (An empty link with no destination is exactly how a link ends up pointing nowhere.)
• Don’t paste a raw file path or personal-cloud link (network share, OneDrive, …) — other people won’t have access. Only a file uploaded into the EDMS is reliably reachable by everyone.
• The same search box also finds any published controlled document, so you cross-link between controlled documents the same way. To link to a public website, just paste the web address into the link box.

Versions and revisions

Versions are numbered MAJOR.MINOR and start at 1.0. To change a published document you create a new revision from it:

• a MAJOR revision (e.g. 1.3 → 2.0) is for significant changes, and requires readers to agree the previous version is superseded when they sign;
• a MINOR revision (e.g. 1.3 → 1.4) is for small updates and is acknowledged as a light “minor update”.

Only one open draft can exist per document at a time, so two people can't fork the same document in parallel. You can also Compare versions side-by-side from the published library.

Required reading and sign-off

Once a document is published, the people in its audience are required to read and acknowledge it. This is the compliance heart of the EDMS.

Who has to sign

The audience is defined by rules, not a fixed name list:

• a specific job position,
• a whole department (optionally including sub-departments, or only the department's managers),
• or an entire organisation.

Crucially, the audience is recalculated live. If someone joins a targeted department after the document was published, they are automatically pulled into the required-reading set.

Signing it

In EDMS ▸ File Viewer, each person sees a Pending action list with an acknowledgement deadline banner (green = in time, amber = due soon, red = overdue). They open the document, read it, and click Read & sign. The acknowledgement is a typed digital signature that records who signed, the exact version, the date/time, and the device and IP address — a legally meaningful, auditable record. For a major version they additionally confirm the previous version is superseded; for a withdrawn document they can acknowledge its deprecation.

The deadline and escalation

The target is 3 working days to sign, counted from the days the person is next actually at work. A background check runs three times a day (08:00, 12:00, 16:00): anyone still outstanding past the deadline triggers an escalation to their manager (falling back to the document author if no manager is found). Each person is only escalated once per document per day, so managers aren't spammed.

Document owners and admins can open a sign-off list for any published document to see exactly who has signed and who is still pending.

Projects, folders and filing

Controlled documents are organised in a two-level hierarchy under EDMS Projects:

• a Project (e.g. a product line or department area), containing
• Folders (and sub-folders) that hold the documents.

Folders can also carry folder notes and attachments (external links or uploaded files). These are explicitly labelled “Uncontrolled” — they're handy context, but they do not go through the approval matrix. Documents are filed into a folder either when created or via Assign documents on the folder.

Projects and folders have their own access list so you can keep sensitive material restricted (see Permissions below). Deleted projects, folders, notes and attachments go to a Trash and can be restored.

Traceability and compliance

The EDMS supports V-model traceability — linking documents to each other (for example, a requirement satisfied by a design, verified by a test). You manage these on a document's Traceability Links tab, and view the whole web in the Traceability Matrix.

If a project is flagged as compliance-required, its documents cannot be published until they carry both a “Satisfies” and a “Verified by” traceability link — a safety gate so controlled records can't go live without their evidence chain. Documents can also declare the standards (ISO / regulatory) they conform to; those appear on the published PDF.

Retention

Each document inherits a retention class and retention period (years) from its project. When a document is published, the system stamps a “retain until” date so records are kept for as long as policy requires.

The audit trail, notifications and chat

Everything is logged. Every creation, edit, vote, comment, matrix change, status change, image change, escalation and download is written to an immutable audit log you can review on the document's Audit tab — and the published PDF includes a full document control sheet (metadata, standards, audience, traceability and the complete audit log), with a footer recording who downloaded it and when.

Each controlled document also has its own chat channel. The system posts updates and notifies the right people at each stage — reviewers when it reaches Review, approvers at Approval, and the audience when it's Published or when the audience changes. You can open the channel, subscribe with the star, or share the document from its page, just like other myWork records.

Sharing with people outside myWork

For an external party (e.g. an auditor or contractor) who has no login, an admin can generate a secure share link. The recipient can view the document and record an external acknowledgement (name, company, email — with date and IP captured), without an account. Share links can be set to expire.

Who can do what

Access combines system permissions with per-project/folder access lists.

On top of that, each project or folder has an access list with three levels — Viewer (read), Editor (read + edit), and Manager (read + edit + grant access) — and private folders are hidden from people who only have project-level access. Reading and signing documents you're an audience member of is open to everyone; it needs no special permission.

Quick tips

• “I have documents to sign.” Go to EDMS ▸ File Viewer (or the Dashboard's Open Signing Queue tile), open each one, read it, and Read & sign before the deadline.
• “I need to write a new SOP/policy.” Open EDMS ▸ File Manager → Create New Document, pick the type, write it, set your reviewers/approvers/audience, then Submit for review.
• “It won't let me submit.” Resolve any open top-level Discussion comments and make sure every image has alt text.
• “It won't publish.” If it's in a compliance-required project, add the required Satisfies and Verified by traceability links.
• “I need to change a published document.” Open it from the published library and start a new revision (Major or Minor) — you can't edit a published version in place.
• Just need to store a reference PDF? Use Upload PDF — it skips the whole approval/sign-off process.