9.5 signoffs in docdb
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Document Signoffs

An optional component of DocDB is to allow some documents to be signed
by a group of people before becoming approved. People with Personal
Accounts can sign documents. The list of people needing to approve a
document is editable by the same groups that can edit the document
itself.

To freeze a document and its meta-information such that only managers
can modify it or unfreeze it, ask the DocDB administrators for the
procedure.

When displaying document version(s) in a list, there are obvious
indications of which documents are approved, which are unapproved, and
which are obsolete (even if they were approved at some time). All
information about who signed' each version of each document is kept.

DocDB contains the ability to allow any number of approval
topologies. For instance, person A or person B might be allowed to
sign at the first step, followed by person C at the second step. Or,
person A and person B may both have to sign (but in parallel) before
person C can sign. However, the current DocDB code only allows one
topology (an ordered list). When a document under control is updated,
the signoff list structure is preserved, but the approvals themselves
are cleared.

The signoff system provides a number of additional convieniences:

  1. Email notifications to signatories when a document is ready for
     their signature

  2. A way to list all controlled documents

  3. List of all documents a person is a signatory (actual or
     requested) on

A number of other features are planned and will be added as needed:

  1. Email reports of outstanding signatures needed (to desired
     signatory and other signatories of documents)

  2. More complicated approval topolgies (OR's, parallel paths, etc.)

  3. Reminders if a document goes unsigned for a while

  4. Restricting the list of people who may sign documents to a
     sub-set of those with personal accounts